From the Panhandle to the Capitol: Meet freshman House Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez

While the state’s 89th Legislature is in session, The Texas Newsroom will be helping you get to know the people behind the politics. This story is the first in an ongoing series profiling Texas’ lawmakers in their own words. 

Long before she was elected to represent the Farmers Branch area in Dallas County, Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez was born in the 80’s in Hereford, TX, “basically in between the Amarillo and Lubbock area of the Panhandle.”

She was raised by her grandparents after her mother, Clarabeth Hernandez, who had her at 18, needed time to get on her feet.

“I lost my dad to suicide,” Garcia Hernandez, who was a toddler at the time, told The Texas Newsroom. “He committed suicide by a gun.”

Living with her grandparents, Garcia Hernandez said she was never alone.

“My grandparents were raising…like, six grandchildren in a two bedroom house,” Garcia Hernandez said. Her grandmother, Rosa Garcia, was the main caretaker for the kids.

“She had rheumatoid arthritis, and so she wasn’t able to work. But she was, you know, full time — taking us back and forth to school, getting us ready…cooking food, taking it to my grandfather for his lunch time,” and more.

Meanwhile, her grandfather, Frank, worked as a groundskeeper for the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, which was located Hereford until 1994.

While she told The Texas Newsroom she never felt like she lived in a poor household, her grandfather often had to work weekends and evenings mowing lawns. Sometimes Garcia Hernandez would tag along with her cousins.

“Our whole thing as cousins was…whoever it was that got to go on the John Deere lawn mower with him was like, you know, the highlight,” she said. “Otherwise everybody else was like — you were pulling the weeds or you were doing the weed whacker.”

After a long day of year work, she said their grandfather would take them to the corner store and get the cousins cream sodas and peanuts.

When it came to education, Garcia Hernandez said she excelled in her studies, always at the top of her class in Hereford. But she left sports to her sister and cousins.

“My sister is the athletic one… I was just like a pure bookworm,” she said.

A big move to Dallas influenced her views on public education

But being at the top of the class didn’t last long. By the time she was ready for middle school, her mother was ready to take on being a full time parent.

Her mother lived in Garland, a city northwest of Dallas, with her husband, Juan Hernandez, and two stepchildren. So that meant a big move and change for Garcia Hernandez; along with an unsurprising revelation on where she stood in her new school district.

“When I moved to North Texas, I was way behind my class and that was what made me realize the difference in the inequity in public education,” said Garcia Hernandez.

With the help of a tutor — and her stepfather, now her adopted father, being strict on education — she was able to catch up and graduate high school early and attend the University of Houston on scholarship.

“I wanted to get away from home” said Garcia Hernandez, “but my adoptive father also had family there in that area.”

Garcia Hernandez went on to receive her BBA from UH, where she also participated in extracurriculars, including student government and a sorority. Doing those things, she said, gave her an insight into politics, and she even found a role model in lawyer and then-Texas Sen. Sylvia Garcia, who is now in Congress.

“I just watched her very closely because she was a Latina,” said Garcia Hernandez. “It was inspiring to see a woman like her being in a place of power and thinking that that’s an…accessible place or dream for somebody like myself.”

The path to becoming a lawyer

When it came time for Garcia Hernandez to decide what she wanted to do professionally, like her role model, she chose to pursue law.

“I worked for two different law firms because I was trying to decide…whether I wanted to go to law school or not,” said Garcia Hernnadez, who dreaded her first job in consumer debt law.

“That was awful,” said Garcia Hernandez. “That actually almost made me decide that I didn’t want to do law just because I was on the side for the companies.”

She did, however, enjoy her second job at a defense firm and decided to take the LSAT. Garcia Hernandez then started law school in Michigan, but that didn’t last long.

“I was actually up in the Michigan area for a year and then my grandfather fell very, very ill,” said Garcia Hernandez.

Between going back to Hereford to visit her grandfather and attend classes in Michigan she came close to being kicked out of her program. That’s when she decided it’d be best to transfer schools.

“I literally transferred back right before my grandfather passed away,” said Garcia Hernandez. She says if she hadn’t she “would’ve ended up missing his funeral.”

While her grandfather was sick, Garcia Hernandez spent many nights at his bedside studying and doing homework. One of those nights brought her the “most special moment” she ever had with her grandfather.

“At this point, he was not waking up as frequently. And so we knew he was, you know, getting close towards the end,” she said.

But this evening, he did wake up. Excited to spend some time with him, she moved her chair closer, then “grabbed his hand and he pointed to my book… and then he, like, literally said ‘Read.’”

“And that’s who my grandparents were,” said Garcia Hernandez as she brushed aside tears. “My grandparents are why public education is important to me.”

After graduating, Garcia Hernandez passed the bar and worked at her father’s law firm in Dallas, focusing on personal injury and immigration law. But she maintained the passion she has for helping people, even at times to the detriment of her own income.

“Quite honestly, I’m not an incredibly…lucrative immigration lawyer,” she said, often telling clients “you can actually come and see me on the weekend whenever I volunteer with Catholic Charities…And instead of paying me to do this, with Catholic Charities we can do it, and we can only charge you a minimal fee.”

Garcia Hernandez also joined several bar associations. Her involvement with them exposed her to local and state politics. She became well-known in her district through her community work and eventually chose to run for office and was elected to represent Texas House District 115 in 2024.

Now she is serving her first term as a state lawmaker. Hernandez is a member of several committees this session, including the Appropriations and Intergovernmental Affairs committees and the Permanent Standing Subcommittee on State-Federal Relations.

In her personal life, Garcia Hernandez enjoys traveling and spending time with her husband, David Kuczer, an attorney she met while out with friends at BuzzBrews in Dallas.

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