Kamala Harris wins major endorsement from American Federation of Teachers at Houston convention

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The nation’s largest teachers union endorsed Kamala Harris for president at her national convention in Houston.

The American Federation of Teachers’ 3,500 delegates voted overwhelmingly in favor of Vice President Harris after their previous choice, President Joe Biden, withdrew from the race.

“The American people have a big choice to make in choosing Kamala Harris as president,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in an interview with ABC13. “We must come together to defend democracy, human rights and the economic rights of working people.”

Although public education and health care are the main themes of this week’s national convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center, politics remains at the forefront.

Colin Allred, a North Texas Democrat running against Ted Cruz, did not mention Biden or Harris, though he endorsed Harris in a written statement over the weekend. He did, however, mention Cruz.

“When I was in the NFL, we had a word for guys like Ted,” Allred said. “We called them ‘me guys.’ Me guys always think of themselves first.”

At the same time as the convention, Cruz held a press conference in Houston where he did Let’s talk about Biden and Harris and relate their political approach to Allred.

“Joe Biden’s record is 100 percent Kamala Harris’s record,” he said. “Colin Allred, (during) his first four years in Congress, voted 100 percent with Nancy Pelosi.”

The race between Cruz and Allred is not at the top of the list or at the forefront of attention given the developments of the past weekend, but it is among the high-profile races affected by Biden’s withdrawal.

Texas is a politically important state, which is why the nation’s largest teachers union chose Houston for its convention and endorsement Monday. Houston Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia was one of the first to mention the surprising development in her morning speech.

“Was this whole weekend a civics lesson?” she asked the crowd. “We’re lucky because his partner throughout this weekend was Kamala Harris and she’s going to be the next president of the United States of America. She’s going to be the first woman president.”

Despite Republican attacks on Harris’ policies and experience, she is not the official Democratic nominee.

Gov. Greg Abbott joined Cruz and other GOP leaders in saying the immigration problems at the U.S. southern border are as much his fault as Biden’s.

“She has completely failed on the border,” Governor Abbott said. “The United States has never suffered more than it has today because of these open border policies.”

Harris was never a frontier tsareven though that has been the GOP mantra through 2021.

Harris has been tasked with leading the administration’s efforts on Central American immigration. If she is appointed to the post, the border is expected to remain an issue in the three and a half months leading up to Election Day.

Abbott has been particularly critical of the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis, which has seen a sharp increase in the number of migrants seeking asylum and entering the United States illegally. However, border crossings into the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have declined every year since 2021, according to the administration.

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