Uvalde mother whose daughter was killed in 2022 school shooting on the ballot for mayoral election

UVALDE, Texas – A Uvalde mother who has driven for harder gun rules after her daughter was amongst the 19 kids killed in the Robb Elementary School attack is on the ballot Tuesday in a bid to grow to be mayor of the South Texas the city, which was left divided by means of one in every of America’s deadliest mass shootings.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio, 34, would grow to be Uvalde’s first feminine mayor and has mentioned charting a brand new route for the the city of 15,000 citizens, the place variations persist over the right way to transfer ahead from the tragedy. That contains persevered calls for duty over the hesitant response by police, who didn’t confront the teenage gunman for greater than an hour.

Running towards Mata-Rubio are Cody Smith, a former Uvalde mayor who left place of business in 2012, and Veronica Martinez, an area basic school trainer.

This is the first mayoral election in Uvalde since the May 24, 2022, shooting. The gunman performed the assault in a fourth-grade study room with an AR-style rifle, a weapon Mata-Rubio has known as on lawmakers to prohibit in the wake of dropping her daughter, 10-year-old Lexi. Two academics have been additionally killed in the shooting.

Since her daughter’s dying, Mata-Rubio has become one in every of Uvalde’s maximum outspoken folks. She has testified earlier than Congress and helped release a nonprofit known as Lives Robbed that pushes for stricter gun rules.

The winner exchange Mayor Don McLaughlin, who intensely criticized Texas state police in the aftermath of the shooting. He is stepping right down to run subsequent 12 months as a Republican for a seat in the Texas Legislature.