Former State Sen. Don Huffines was in Amarillo on Thursday to speak at the Conservative Patriots 4 Texas meeting. Ahead of the meeting, Huffines sat down to talk with The Amarillo Pioneer about several issues, including the upcoming fourth special legislative session, abolishing property taxes, his political future, and more.

Please note: This interview has been edited for clarity.

AP: So, how does it feel to be in Amarillo?

Huffines: I’ve always loved coming to Amarillo. Great patriots up here. It’s a dynamic city and Amarillo is underappreciated.

AP: Can you give us a preview of what you’re going to talk about tonight at Conservative Patriots 4 Texas?

Huffines: Sure. We’re going to talk about my experience in the Texas Senate. We’re going to talk about property taxes, about the budget, education freedom. And we’re going to talk about where we see Texas going.

AP: Let me ask you about property taxes.

Huffines: Okay.

AP: One of your big issues has been eliminating property taxes. Prop 4 just passed a couple of nights ago. It increases the homestead exemption, but it doesn’t really do anything to eliminate property taxes, right?

Huffines: That is correct.

AP: If you were casting the vision for this state and driving the direction of our state government, how do we get from the passage of Prop 4 — which a lot of legislators probably feel is sufficient — to actually eliminating property taxes? What’s the roadmap to that?

Huffines: The roadmap starts with the voters. It starts with the grassroots and with the pressure to elected officeholders. We need to educate everyone on how possible it actually is. And it’s very possible if we have fiscal discipline. Texas has a huge surplus — we had $60 billion more to spend this session than we did last session. They increased state spending by 42 percent. It’s the largest increase in modern Texas history to spend that much more from cycle to cycle. So we have a lot of extra money and the plan is real simple. Just apply 90 percent of that surplus we get every year to buy down and compress the property tax rate.

It’s a little bit harder to get rid of all property tax, but it’s certainly very doable to get rid of the school tax. That’s where my focus has been this session was educating the legislators of how easy that is if they have fiscal discipline. Because the state already pays about 50 percent of the tax anyway for schools. The plan isn’t to change how much money the schools get, we’re just changing where the money comes from. Instead of coming from local taxpayers, it’s going to come from statewide.

AP: You know that the school districts’ argument will be that it takes away local control. How do you balance local control with eliminating the school tax?

Huffines: Because the state already dictates how much they can keep in the funding formulas. They don’t have a lot of local control. Whatever control they have today they could maintain with the money coming from the state.

AP: Aside from eliminating property taxes — which I know would be number one if you were calling the special session…

Huffines: No, the border would be number one. Property tax is number two.

AP: If you were governor right now — let’s just say it changed overnight and Governor Abbott decided to retire and you took his spot — what else would be on your agenda?

Huffines: I love that question. They did a lot to improve this session. There were a lot of issues they tackled that we brought up during the campaign. Medical freedom and vaccine mandates.

What would be the number one thing aside from those? I would say fiscal discipline and making sure the taxpayers are taken care of. Another one — term limits. That would be my number three. We don’t have any in Texas. Some cities can change their charters to do term limits, but we don’t have them statewide. I think I could get it done because the people want it.

AP: There’s broad consensus on that.

Huffines: Yeah, even the left wants term limits.

AP: So, looking forward, John Cornyn is going to be up in 2026. Governor Abbott is going to be up in 2026. There are a few other offices that could be of interest. Are you going to run for anything statewide again?

Huffines: I get asked that question a lot and it’s really difficult to beat an incumbent. As you know, and as everyone knows, statewide, it’s almost unprecedented. I knew that when I ran for governor. I knew it would be very hard. But to answer your question more definitively, I’m keeping my options open. It really depends on the field and who all is running.

AP: One final question: we have two state legislative races in Amarillo right now. We have an open race in District 87. There’s an incumbent running in District 86, where he has a challenger. If you were giving advice to the candidates, what would you tell them?

Huffines: I think that they need to understand and communicate clearly to the voters that they know what liberty is and what it’s about. They need to understand the Constitution. They need to know that liberty comes from God, and not the government. They’ve got to understand that the more government we have, the less free we’re going to be.

The fundamental role of government is to defend our God-given liberty. It trumps everything. There is a role for government, but it’s got to be that the individuals always look not to government. When you empower government, you’re taking away not just liberty, but everything an individual can use to expand themselves.

I would tell the candidates that if they don’t believe in our party platform, they need to read it and understand it. And communicate to the thousands of us that put it together every two years which parts they don’t agree with. They need to be honest. There are 300 planks in there — it’s really comprehensive. Let everybody know and just don’t lie. The thing about politicians is they are professional liars. And they’re good at it and they’ll tell you what you want to hear so they can have your vote and your money, then they go down there and they won’t do it. Hold them accountable. Do you believe in our party platform or not? If you don’t, are you really a Republican?

For more information about Huffines, visit donhuffines.com.