Bob Gammage at DFT | by Ben
Austin's Democracy for Texas group had their monthly meetup tonight, and their special guest was Judge Bob Gammage, Democratic candidate for Texas Governor.
Not having been around Texas politics much, I didn't know what to expect going into the meeting. What I found was a very inspiring candidate, one that shared my frustrations with the national and state government and one who seemed to have some great ideas for solving Texas' policy problems. I'm finally excited about the governor's race again.
Gammage's stump speech started with an introduction to the "Dirty 30", the group of Democratic and Republican legislators that stood up to the long-standing Democratic machine in the 1970s and helped reform Texas government to serve the interests of its citizens. After serving as a state representative, he went on to serve in the state Senate, the US House, the Texas Court of Appeals, and the Texas Supreme Court, with the last two being statewide elected offices. Mr. Gammage talked about how he watched Bush, Perry, and the Republican Party turn corrupt and unaccountable, and how after working in the 2004 election to try to elect Kerry, he decided that the best way he could serve the state was to run for Governor, standing up against Rick Perry.
After giving his background, Gammage made a strong attack against Perry on the topic of school financing. To quote him, "Texas, if measured on its own, is the 8th largest economy in the world, yet we're 40th among the US state in public education spending." That's a real disgrace, and a real indicator of the priority that our government has given to educating children. If elected, he wouldn't raise property taxes, but instead would design a plan with no sacred cows, looking at all the sources of wealth in the state with the idea of spreading the tax base to fund our schools widely and fairly. I loved his question, asked multiple times in his speech: "Why on earth does the property value of a district have anything to do with the quality of their education?"
On the topic of health care, Judge Gammage felt strongly that every child born in the US should have the right to adequate health care, and he'd work as governor to promote this idea at the national level. I think that's a great strategy; the route to a great national right to health care will start by taking care of our children.
Gammage is an exciting candidate, definitely the best I've seen so far in this race. I'll close with another quote, one that direct addresses the current governor's television ads: "I'm proud to be a Texas, but, Rick Perry, I'm not proud of you". Well said.
Comments
This post made the Austinist best of the Austin blogs for this week.
Posted by: eliz. s. | February 3, 2006 12:59 PM