amarillo's biggest decision in 2021
YOU
Comes Down To
%20copy.png)
our review of key mayoral candidates
ginger nelson recommended
A mother, attorney, and successful small business owner, Ginger spent years putting her legal expertise and business acumen to work for Amarillo’s families. She ran for Mayor to focus the city’s resources on creating jobs, keeping taxes low and our crime rate under control. Under her leadership, Amarillo has had one of the highest levels of economic growth in Texas. Nelson had this success as Mayor while fighting a winning battle against cancer. She has become a role model for others facing this deadly disease.
In addition to her success bringing the Texas Tech Vet School to Amarillo, which provides $76 million to our local economy annually, Ginger has led our City to the highest level of economic growth in 30 years – including attracting the new Amazon facility and creating thousands of other jobs.
Despite fighting her health battle at the same time, Ginger led Amarillo through the pandemic without increasing taxes to cover the monumental additional costs and helped create a vaccination program so successful it has become a model for the nation.
Mayor Nelson also increased our police budget during the time liberal cities across America were defunding the blue. Nelson did all of this while successfully keeping Amarillo property taxes among the lowest of similar sized cities in Texas. She has stated her dedication to low taxes.
We believe that with Ginger’s steady, focused leadership, the best truly is yet to come for our local economy.
claudette smith not recommended
Born in Dallas, Claudette is a young woman who registered to vote here in 2018 and has been running for office since 2019 according to her LinkedIn.
Claudette seems to go from personal crisis to crisis. Her previous employer filed suit after they fired Claudette saying she didn’t deserve unemployment benefits because she committed misconduct repeatedly while employed.1 The Fire Marshal had to file suit against her business because she and her common law husband refused to make safety repairs. Separately, the state placed a tax lien on her and her husband’s business.
In a recent Channel 4 News Interview, Claudette herself conceded that Amarillo’s tax rate under Ginger Nelson is lower than many of the other cities in Texas and stated her unhappiness with the successful effort to bring Amazon’s 500 jobs to Amarillo.2 Bringing in big employers is one of the reasons our taxes are low.
One big policy concern is Claudette’s Joe Biden style “court packing” plan to add more seats to the City Council. She told local news “As far as expanding the city council, I think that’s absolutely necessary.”3
We hope she will trust Amarillo voters to choose their own councilmembers rather than push to stack the council with her own people. She was unsuccessful in her last attempt for office, when she lost by nearly 40 percent.
This time around, Claudette has repeatedly used an image of herself with Congressman Ronny Jackson to imply she has his support. Congressman Jackson has stated twice that he is not endorsing her or anyone else.4 He trusts the voters to make up their own minds. Claudette is definitely not ready to lead the city.
1. Source: Case #73942B, 181st District Court, 5/1/18; 2. Source: KAMR News Interview, 4/13/21; 3. Source: KAMR News Interview, 4/13/21; 4. Source: Jackson Facebook Post, 4/12/21.
POL AD PAID FOR BY AMARILLO MATTERS PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.