As the vote nears for Governor Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Act, 5th District State Representative David Hawk addressed the House of Representatives. Below is a transcript of Mr. Hawk’s remarks.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Folks, I don’t begrudge how anyone votes on this bill, but I do find incredible frustration on the antics and the comments that I’ve seen over the last few days that questioned the integrity of anyone in this room, or questioned the integrity of anyone down on the first floor. That’s wrong.
Everyone in this room has the same equal vote to do what we’re trying to do. I am a “No” on this bill, but I’m not opposed to it because of any of the comments that anybody has made. I’m not opposed to the bill because of any of the antics that we’ve seen over the last two days. I’m opposed to the bill because the people in my district have asked me to oppose the bill.
All the shouting that goes on, and what you heard right there does nothing for me. It only makes the situation worse. What I want to focus on is leadership. I’ve done leadership small town, leadership big town leadership. I even spent a month of July at Harvard, which doesn’t do much for my street credit to Co-op by the way. But a question comes comes up, “What are you going to do if an issue like this comes up? You’ve got all this polling data. You’ve got all this information. You got the statistics. You’ve got all this.” And I say “Well, I’m gonna try to tell my district exactly what’s going on. I’m gonna try to tell them this is, this is why I’m gonna vote this way, and this is the information I’m receiving.” And the instructor said “You vote your district. That’s the people that sent you there”
So, once again, instead of getting upset, let’s understand why we came to the vote we’ve got today.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker
