Burnt Orange Report

Thank You, Senator Barrientos

By Phillip Martin

The Statesman has a good article, but here's my own:

Though I know it's chic to follow Texas Monthly's lead and pretend like Sen. Barrientos never did much of anything, I find it short-sighted and insulting to attempt and diminish someone who has served in the Texas Legislature since 1975 and worked tirelessly for his constituents to a single, snarky put-down. He's done a tremendous amount for Austin and the state, from giving thousands of dollars of scholarships every year to Hispanic high school students in his district to refusing to cave on the issues that matter most (something some of our other Democratic Senators were continually unable to do).

Though his successes working with public education, seniors, and state employees are numerous, I wanted to tell the story of how Sen. Barrientos actually helped launch my interest in covering politics:

Back in high school, I wanted to write an article about my school's high school dropout rate for our high school paper. My high school class had shrunk from 540 students to around 370, and I wantd to know why TEA said we only had a 2% dropout rate. Everyone I called in the capitol told me one place to go: Sen. Barrientos' office.

I met with his staff when I was a fledgling high school newspaper writer, and was treated like I wrote for the NY Times. They helped me out tremendously and taught me all about how terrible TEA's dropout system works. I ended up writing a front-page story that won an honorable mention in a statewide UIL-competition.

This was actually the first political reporting I ever did, and to this day, fixing the problems facing our state's education system remains the number one reason why I'm in politics at all. Had I not had as engaging and satisfying experience that first time, I may have never gotten interested in politics.

Therefore, I simply wanted to thank Sen. Barrientos for all the hard work he's done in the past years. He is about things that a lot of folks in politics don't pay as much attention to or really care about: honor, respect, and hard-work.

Thank you, Senator. You've had a great impact on my life, and I wish you nothing but the best with your retirement.