Democratic Texas Senate candidate M.J. Hegar explained her opposition to the Green New Deal at a party luncheon Wednesday.
Hegar said climate change was an existential threat to her children and said “aggressive action” was needed.
But Hegar said she did not support policies like the Green New Deal, which has been championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)
{mosads}“I feel like so often we are attaching so many things to the key thing that we’re trying to accomplish that it politicizes it and makes it if you disagree with it, you’re a climate change denier, or if you agree with it, then you’re a socialist,” she told a questioner in the event audience.
“And it’s just so much oversimplification and talking point nonsense and finger-pointing,” she added, saying that she often felt like she was “washing the windows on a bus going off the cliff.”
Hegar, an Air Force veteran who narrowly lost to Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), announced in April she would challenge Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in 2020.
The sweeping environmental proposal has been a point of contention between the party’s centrist and progressive flanks, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dismissing it as “the Green Dream” earlier this year and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) rebuking young activists who asked her to support the measure.