Benjamin Flores, the Democratic nominee to run Texas’ General Land Office, has been diagnosed with leukemia, his campaign announced Friday. He will remain in the race while he receives treatment at MD Anderson in Houston.
“My mother taught me to never bow down. I did not bow down to challenges of winning my March primary, and I will not bow down to leukemia,” Flores said in a statement. “I will win back my health as well as my election to Land Commissioner in November.”
Flores is a cybersecurity expert and small-scale pig farmer who served on the Bay City city council and local economic development boards before running for the General Land Office this cycle. He defeated veteran and labor organizer Jose Loya for the Democratic nomination in March.
Flores is facing Republican incumbent Dawn Buckingham, who has run the agency since 2022.
Flores originally declared his intent to run for governor, but switched to land commissioner before the primary. He has said his priorities are getting money to public schools, supporting veterans, including by lobbying to get a veteran’s hospital in the Rio Grande Valley, and creating pathways to increase the solar and wind energy producers on state land.
While his cancer diagnosis will keep him off the campaign trail for the next few months, he said in a statement that he remains dedicated to the race.
“I am still an active candidate working regularly with my staff and getting closer to victory every day,” Flores said. “And with that victory, I will become the first Latino Land Commissioner in Texas history.”
The General Land Office manages 13 million acres of state lands, including 3,400 miles of coastline and tidelands extending over 10 miles into the Gulf of Mexico. The proceeds from the sale or lease of some of that land goes to the $57 billion Permanent School Fund, which distributes over $2.4 billion annually to Texas K-12 schools. The GLO is also responsible for distributing aid after natural disasters, supporting veterans with land and home loans and operating the Alamo.
Texas’ oldest state agency has been at the center of controversy in recent years. A yearslong federal investigation, which initially found that the state discriminated against communities of color in distributing disaster aid after Hurricane Harvey, was recently reversed by the Trump administration.
Buckingham has also sparred with leadership at the Alamo Trust, which oversees one of Texas’s most important historical monuments, over historical framing and social media posts she saw as too “woke.” The CEO was pushed out last year amid political pressure from Buckingham and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
