Six local progressive voters and one reporter greeted Van Os and his wife Rachel, Maria Luisa Alvarado, VaLinda Hathcox and her mother as warmly as the sun that had been beating down on us while we waited, but then the meeting got even hotter.
First, we learned that Guadalupe County Judge Donald Schraub had denied Van Os, who is running for attorney general, permission to speak on the steps of the court house, thus thwarting the candidates’ strategy to speak to passersby as well as Democratic supporters.
Van Os, who arrived in an SUV decorated with political stickers and wearing a white cowboy hat, plans to visit all 254 counties in the state to deliver his pitch to the people of Texas to take back the democratic process by catching them going about their daily business.
Van Os and Alvarado, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, are just as critical of beltway Democrats as they are of Republicans, maybe even a tad more critical. Both said that the Democrats’ use of political consultants and polling has taken the focus off meeting the real people of the state. Van Os also criticized the move toward the center that the Democratic Party has taken in the last few years, saying that big business has a party and a half in its corner these days. “This bigness is always going to have a party,” Van Os said, “but the people need a party too.”
This is the message Van Os and Alvarado delivered in a nut shell. Hathcox, however, gave the handful of voters who had gathered in Central Park something to think about. Hathcox talked about concrete problems she has noted, and researched, in the current workings of the General Land Office. She explained how she would tackle concerns that the proceeds of the use of public lands (for oil drilling, for example) aren’t getting into the permanent school fund as they are supposed to. She talked about her plans to reform gaming in Texas and to direct the proceeds to schools, as was the original plan when the lottery was instituted.
Hathcox demonstrated that she knew the history of the department she hopes to lead. She also has experience working in the General Land Office. Most importantly, she showed that she has the initiative and ability to learn as much as she can about current problems in this area. She earned the support of anyone who decided to vote for her this afternoon through competence and willingness to take the voters seriously.
Van Os and Alvarado need to take their cue from Hathcox, and take their own advice.
“The beltway Democratic Party has been turning its back on the grassroots party again and again and again,” Van Os said, insisting that he is part of the grassroots party. He criticized Democrats for having a defeatist attitude and for writing off the “red” parts of the country and state as unwinnable.
He said that Texas is a “huge domino” in the struggle to restore representative democracy to vigor in the United States. “Texas has to start the return of popular democracy. This evil [the current focus on big business and rollback of civil liberties] started here and it can only be dug up by the roots in Texas,” Van Os said.
Most of those in attendance expressed sympathy for this agenda, but wanted something more concrete from Van Os about how he would get the domino effect going.
Some of the group expressed downright anger at the party for leaving the grassroots hanging out to dry in small towns like Seguin. While the candidates wanted to talk about ending defeatism and getting people out to vote, Sylvia Manning and Art and Mitzi Preisinger, all of Seguin, were not content to stop there. These active progressives wanted to talk policy in a concrete manner, but the candidates stuck to their motivational speaking and to establishing that they are of the people rather than of the wealthy elite who now hold power in Texas, the nation and the Democratic National Committee.
As a critique of candidates who rely on pollsters, campaign consultants and large media markets, Van Os said, “Political communication from a person like me that has put himself up for public service shouldn’t be about profiling but about spilling my guts.”
This small group of Guadalupe-County voters waited in the hot sun to see those innards in the form of concrete plans for policies Van Os would institute if the voters elect him attorney general in November. But as Mitzi Preisinger pointed out before leaving, only Hathcox really did cough up.
Alvarado said she would be consider herself a success if the voter turnout in November is higher than it was in the spring primaries. While that might not be too hard to achieve given the abysmally low turnout in March and April, voters aren’t getting much from these candidates that would make them want to race to the polls.
Van Os faulted Republicans for thinking that country people aren’t smart enough to figure out that something’s gone wrong in American government, but his rhetoric suggested that he doesn’t trust us to follow the complexities of the post he is seeking. If he wants to get the vote of the smart folks in the small towns he will be visiting on his odyssey through Texas, he’s going to have to treat voters at least as well as the Republican candidates do.
I hope I’ll see him on my doorstep one day, ready to talk specifics like Valinda Hathcox did today. I’ve had a number of house calls from Republican candidates, but if Van Os turns up, he’ll be the first Democrat to grace my porch.
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