District candidate forum
Posted/updated on: April 17, 2026 at 4:07 pm
LONGVIEW – Looking to win the District 3 seat on the Longview City Council, two out of five candidates spoke on issues impacting Longview the most at a forum on Wednesday. According to our news partner KETK, District 3, which covers the south-eastern part of the city from Interstate 20 to north of U.S. Highway 80, has been under councilman Ray Wade since 2018. The seat opened up when Wade campaigned and lost the race to be a Gregg County commissioner during the March primary election.
Five candidates are vying for the seat to represent the district.
“[It’s] the oldest and most culturally enhanced part of our city,” candidate Marlena Cooper said.
Cooper, along with G. Floyd, were the two candidates present at Wednesday night’s forum, organized by the Longview Chamber of Commerce and the Longview News Journal.
“Wherever I go, whatever I do, I raise the standard,” candidate G. Floyd said.
Cooper is pushing to have more affordable housing options for people living in the area and families hoping to move to the district.
“We have a large transient population on our side of town,” Cooper said. “We are the home to the SLIP [South Longview Incentive Program] program. We need to be doing more things with that and I do believe that is a problem that we can work on.”
Floyd would like to address road conditions and attract more businesses to the district to boost the local economy.
“I want to bring some of those businesses back through work with the city, the chamber, LEDCO [Longview Economic Development Corporation] and all of the partnerships that we can develop private and public partnerships to help us be able to do that,” Floyd said.
Cooper and Floyd agree that the stray dog problem has gotten out of control on their streets.
“We got an animal control issue on our side that we really need to address better,” Cooper said.
The other three candidates who were not able to attend the forum are Darrin “Rudy” Rudolph, Brandon Smith and Brenda Woolridge. Early voting begins on April 20 and ends on April 28, with the election day being May 2.
