Name
Leilani Barnett
City
Wichita Falls
State
Texas
Zip Code
76310
Campaign Website
BarnettforTexas.org
All Candidates
Further information about Leilani Barnett's positions can be found at BarnettforTexas.org, facebook.com/leilani.barnett, X @BarnettforTexas. To invite Leilani to speak at your organization, club, nonprofit, or event, contact her at Leilani@BarnettforTexas.org. Leilani Barnett says her motivation for wanting to serve Texas lies in wanting to make it a better place to live and work for her three bonus grandchildren ages 2 to 15, who are the lights of her life, and for all the other Texas families, students, and working people. An educator and advocate for schools and communities, Leilani believes in fair practices, fair elections, and fair wages for every Texan. She brings solutions to our problems, not political agendas.
Bio Questions All Candidates
"When we talked about home," says Native Texan Leilani Barnett, "we were talking about Wichita and Clay Counties." Now, she hopes to represent all of District 69, including the public schools in each of its 14 counties, its rural hospitals, and the working people and servicemen and women of the area. In addition to a Bachelors and two Masters Degrees, Barnett will receive a Ph.D. in Education in 2027. She has not only worked in schools, but also for the National Children's Advocacy Center, training law enforcement officers, judges and attornies, social workers, and mental health professionals on the treatment and prosecution of child abuse cases. Barnett is a person of faith who believes in integrity, service, and people above party.
As a classroom teacher with 30 years' experience, I will fight tooth and nail for appropriately funded public schools. I will bring that same commitment to raising teacher pay and improving conditions for working families, service members, veterans, farmers and ranchers, and retirees. I’ve carefully studied the economic and healthcare pressures families face across our 14-county district. My roots here date back to my great, great grandparents, farmers and hard working people of faith who believed in community, responsibility, and looking out for one another. Whether your roots are here also or you just unpacked your bag, I am committed to listening first and making practical, independent decisions to improve life for you and your family.
If location, funding, and construction of Lake Ringold had progressed, water supply would be a much less urgent issue than it is for District 69 today. However, if you elect me, I will prioritize crafting bills that fund targeted water reservoir projects, as well as pipelines, new technology, and stronger stormwater capture systems. In addition, I will advocate for safely treated wastewater, incentives for industries to recycle desalinated coastal water, and smart sensors to detect and fix leaks. Ultimately, we must expand the Texas Water Development Board’s plans to meet future personal, agricultural, and industrial water needs. Doing so will help support incoming data centers without harming farms or depleting our drinking water supply.
Safe and fair elections are the heart of our democracy. District maps should ensure that every Texan’s vote counts equally -- no matter where they live or the color of their skin. That's why redistricting happens each decade after census data is released. However, because of pressure from Washington, D.C., Texas had a special session the summer of 2025 and House Bill 4 was passed. The district lines in our state were manipulated, redrawn to undercut the opposing political party and to skew election results. Such unprincipled gerrymandering reduces the voting power of targeted groups. Stronger laws are needed to guarantee that all Texans get to decide for themselves who wins elections.
It’s not right to leave Texans in harm’s way, but extreme winter storms and summer heat waves still stress our state’s failure-prone grid, threatening lethal outages. Fixing the grid will take consistent investment and planning, but I will also support modernizing transmission lines so electricity moves more efficiently across the state. I will promote expanding storage so demand spikes are easier to manage, and I will explore modest connections to neighboring grids to add flexibility without sacrificing Texas’ independence. Affordable energy also demands investment in wind farms, solar systems, and modernized natural gas infrastructure. North Texans deserve reliable energy to power our homes and businesses without breaking our budgets.
