Rocking Out In South Texas-- Help Tom Wakely Beat The Conservatives Running To Be Governor Of Texas

-by Tom Wakely,
Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas

The filing deadline for the 2018 March Democratic primary has closed. We now know who all the Democratic candidates for Texas Governor are. The question that needs to be asked I will argue is this: do we want the Texas Democratic Party to move further to the right, return to the center or move to the left. But that question needs to be answered within the context of another question: how do we bring the 62% of registered voters not voting into the party because without them we don't win.

The Democratic gubernatorial primary line up offers Texas Democrats a very clear choice. Will moving the party farther to the right, nominating multi-millionaire Andrew White as our candidate to challenge Abbott, bring all those non-voters into the party? I seriously doubt it. Perhaps triangulation is the right strategy. Stay in the center, present your political platform as being above or between the left and right wings of the Texas Democratic party. Wendy Davis tried that in 2014 and she only got 13% of the registered voters to support her, so I guess that’s not the winning strategy.

So what is the winning strategy? Well, first off, we need to look at what binds all of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates since Ann Richards together: they all have been millionaires. So while Republicans don’t mind electing wealthy people to office, Democrats sure do. I would argue then that among disqualifying factors for a Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate is wealth. If we are truly committed to bringing the 62% of non-voters into the party our candidates for governor must have more in common with the 99% than the 1%.

Anyway... Let’s take a look at another Democratic candidate for governor, Lupe Valdez; who is she and what does she stand for? Well, it is hard to tell where she stands on the issues given that as of today, December 20th, she has no policy positions published on her website. However, we might be able to guess where she stands on some issues by published media reports. For example, the Austin-American Statesman reported that “Dallas County Sherriff Lupe Valdez, whose county ranks sixth nationally in deportations with more than 30 per week, said ICE has an office in the Dallas County Jail and that agents can come and go as they please. She said she isn’t sure how many people are deported for Class C misdemeanors but that she doesn’t think that it’s many.” We also know, according to the Dallas Morning News, that Valdez was given a $100,000 Telsa as a present on her 69th birthday.



Now, let’s go back to my original question, do we run from the right, the center, or from the left. In my opinion, we run from the left. So, how do I know that running from the left is a winning strategy? I don’t. But what I do know is that when I ran for Congress last year from the left, our campaign received more votes that any Democrat in the State of Texas running against an incumbent Republican member of Congress.

I am telling everyone and anyone who will listen to me, if we want to win elections, we must run on bold, progressive ideas like providing healthcare not health insurance to every Texan. We need to end the death penalty, we must raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, we cannot afford not to offer free community college tuition, we must ban fracking and flaring in Texas, it’s crazy not to repeal open carry-- it’s there for one thing only, to intimidate Government. It’s also imperative that we scrap our state’s franchise tax system and replace it with a business income tax.

That all said, there are three groups of voters that have traditionally voted in the March primaries in Texas. White progressives, like myself. Black women, and Latino’s in the Rio Grande Valley. The number of voters in a primary election is roughly 500,000. I am running on a progressive slate with Michael Cooper whose running for Lt. Governor. We both will need a good 250,000 plus votes to win the primary and avoid a runoff. For close to 5 months now I have been reaching out to white progressives across the state. Michael’s been reaching out to Black voters. Where we are lacking in outreach is to Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley. But we have come up with a plan, but we can’t do it alone. We need your help.

Our campaign has hooked up with Jorge Guevara, former lead singer with Elefante, a Latin rock band who was nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2005. Jorge, who now lives in San Antonio, my home town, has pulled together a new band that includes past and current members of Mana, a Gualdalajara rock band who have earned 4 Grammy’s as well as 8 Latin Grammy’s. They will be doing a Latino GOTV rock tour through the Rio Grande Valley next February. Michael Cooper’s campaign for Lt. Governor and my campaign for Texas Governor will be the beneficiaries of this GOTV tour by way of our being introduced to the thousands of voters who will attend these free concerts.

Tentative tour dates and cities are as follows. Except for San Antonio, all of the other cities are located on the Texas/Mexico border.

Eagle Pass: Sunday Afternoon - Feb 18th
Laredo: Monday Evening - Feb. 19th
Del Rio: Tuesday Evening - Feb. 20th
McAllen: Thursday Evening - Feb. 22nd
Brownsville: Friday Evening - Feb. 23rd
San Antonio: Sunday Afternoon - Feb. 25th

Tom told me he estimates the cost of this 6-city tour at $30,000. Your help in making this Latino GOTV rock tour of South Texas a reality will be greatly appreciated. The Act Blue Take Back Texas thermometer on the right includes Tom, as well as Michael Cooper, the Lt. Governor candidate who's running with him, and other progressive candidates like Ted Cruz's opponent Beto O'Rourke and the best House candidates in the state, like , to name a few, Derrick Crowe (TX-21), Jason Westin (TX-07), Lillian Salerno (TX-32), Dayna Steele (TX-36) and Hector Morales (TX-29).