Quotes from MJ Hegar

Texans deserve a senator who represents our values, strength, courage, independence - putting Texas first.

In the military, there's a sense of camaraderie that can sometimes make people bystanders. There were a lot of really good men that I served with, but many of them watched me get discriminated against while looking the other way.

I mean that I consider myself a feminist. I think anybody who thinks women and men should be treated equally is a feminist, whether or not they know it.

In my opinion, you keep the standards very high and you maintain one standard. There shouldn't be two standards for women and men, there should be a standard for this job: To do this job, you should have to do these things.

We need to have leaders that aren't afraid to go against the grain to call out failures in leadership.

I am for the Second Amendment, but I am for common-sense gun legislation.

In the military, we are thrown into a melting pot of cultures and communities and we disagree a lot on how to accomplish the mission, but when it comes time to get the work done, we focus our energy on accomplishing the mission.

A lot of people ask why I don't fly for the airlines now. It's because of the rebel in me that doesn't like rules.

I'm a huge fan of bipartisanship and working together to get things done.

I have long-since said that working... together and accomplishing things in a bipartisan way doesn't mean compromising your values.

I think it's very clear to be able to be a working-class mom of two and veteran and to be able to take on an entrenched, establishment, dark-money-backed Washington lackey, that I'm gonna have to be able to excite people and gain momentum and gain attention and get people excited and energized.

We have to be leaders and sacrifice our own egos and be humble and go in and figure out what their values are, and then speak to those values.

The biggest problem in our government is that even those people who are there that are good and well-intended, there's too many people in positions to write legislation who have never experienced the challenges of regular people.

There's a reason that you hear something like 90 percent of our country wants universal background checks, but we can't get it passed legislatively. If we had a true representative democracy, 90 percent of our elected officials would want universal background checks.

When I was in my third tour in Afghanistan, I was shot down. I was injured to the point where I couldn't fly anymore, so I looked into what ground jobs I could do that fulfilled me as an adrenaline junkie and, more importantly, utilized my experience.

You know, when men perform in combat, they're expected to perform well. That's part of being masculine. And when one of them doesn't perform well, that man alone has let the team down, and that man alone is judged for it.

If we elect people who have never been to public school, never had to worry about counting on Social Security, then how can they effectively legislate?

I've seen men and women who were fit for combat that I wanted to fight beside, and men and women who I really wouldn't want to go back into combat with. It really doesn't have anything to do with gender.

And I'm used to being underestimated and I'm used to taking on tough fights and winning.

The reasons I put the uniform on are the same reasons I'm running for office.

The people who are sending our men and women in uniform into conflict need to understand that there are some things worth fighting for, but also understand the high cost of war.

History will do what it always does. It will make ignorant statements, in retrospect, seem shortsighted and discriminatory, and the women who will serve their country bravely in the jobs that are now opening up will prove them wrong. Just like we always have.

Yeah, I kind of looked around and I can't understand why nobody else is speaking up. Later when I faced the backlash of speaking up, I realized why nobody did.

I didn't want to crash into the ocean, but from watching Han Solo navigate an asteroid field to watching movies like 'Perfect Storm,' it would always kind of get my adrenaline up, and I knew it was something I wanted to do.