By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
Editor’s Note: The Post Newspaper has an open invitation for each of the other three candidates for District 23 to be profiled on our front page.
Patrick Gurski is a candidate for Texas State Legislative District 23. You will find his name on the Republican ballot at the primaries.
Amelia Gurski is three years old and is very much the apple of her daddy’s eye, but Henry Gurski, who is also known as Patrick Henry Gurski at eight months old, is grabbing hold of his daddy’s other eye. Erin, who has been Mrs. Gurski for 15 years, figured out the secret to a happy home life back before there were little ones.
“I cooked one meal and the plan worked. It was so bad, I’ve never had to cook another meal,” said Erin. Patrick now runs the family kitchen with all the meal prep and clean up being his duties. The couple divides the rest of the household chores.
Erin values her husband beyond his culinary art skills. “He’s my best friend and I just can’t say enough about him. If he is elected, I know he’ll be true to his word and he’ll keep the door open for opposing ideas and views,” said Erin. “Plus, he’s the best dad,” she added
“They bring me so much joy. My wife has been the biggest supporter. She’s my rock, I’ve been really blessed. At the end of a long day, holding my kids and being with my wife makes the stress of the day disappear,” said Patrick.
With childcare centers following CDC guidelines throughout the pandemic and shuttering their services due to Covid cases, Patrick found he was spending a lot of time working from home. “We decided Erin has the more valuable position so whenever they closed the childcare center, I was the one who stayed home,” he explained.
Patrick is a lawyer and lives in Galveston. He considers himself a generalist and handles a variety of legal cases. He also donates his services to Galveston County Veterans’ Court. “I provide legal defense for veterans who have been accepted into the program,” said Patrick, who is part of the Eiland & Bonnin law firm.
Choosing to go to law school came when Patrick and his wife moved to Galveston. “The economy was bad when we first moved here, and we wanted to stay on the island, so I started looking at professional degrees. I decided it was either law school or medical school and I’m not very good at math, so I took the LSAT,” said Patrick.
He completed his law degree from South Texas College of Law while Erin finished her nursing degree at UTMB and currently works as a nurse practitioner for UTMB.
Patrick joined the Texas National Guard a couple years after he married Erin.
“I knew I wanted to start a family some day and I started to think about what I would want my children to see as their father. Plus, I didn’t want to be watching about the war when I turned 50 and know I didn’t do anything,” said Patrick. During his time in the military, he deployed to Afghanistan for 10 months.
Gurski comes from a long line of people whose careers are in service to others. His father was a police officer in Beaumont where he grew up with his mother as a public-school teacher. His grandmother was an Army nurse, his grandfather served in the Army and his brother and other grandfather served in the Marines.
Patrick has worked for the Victoria County District Attorney’s Office and as a Senior Assistant Prosecutor in the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office, handling felony cases while overseeing the office’s Human Trafficking Division.
Crime and the issues at our Southern border with Mexico are a concern for Patrick. “The two issues go hand-in-hand, crime and border security,” said Patrick.
“What’s happening at the border is at its best a humanitarian crisis; at worst, it’s a takeover by the cartels of sovereign US soil,” said Gurski.
If elected, Patrick is committed to challenging current property taxes policies. Gurski believes the values should be set by elected officials not unelected bureaucrats. He would work to bring a cap of 3% increase versus the current 10%
He’d also like for property tax appraisals to be limited to every other year. “This would mean if you had a 30-year mortgage, you only have 15 tax rate increases. We need to slow the appraisal creep, so you aren’t seeing a 10% increase every year,” said Patrick.
At the end of a long day at work, as the sun sets and the sky takes on that golden glow, Patrick finds his happy place is being at home with his family and he’d like to keep the cost of owning a home reachable for all families and individuals.
