Victor Morales Shoots For The Texas House
December 17th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
For those Texans that never quite got enough of watching Phil Gramm get pushed by an unknown schoolteacher who ran a shoestring campaign and traversed the state in his pickup truck — testing the limits of grassroots politics in the face of a mammoth political machine — guess what? Victor Morales is back. And this time he’s aiming for a seat in the Texas House.
Morales says he expects to file for House District 4 just after Christmas, and this time he has in his sights Rep. Betty Brown (R-Kaufman).
Morales described Brown as a cog in Craddick’s machine.
“She pretty much does what Tom Craddick and the Republican Party tell her to,” Morales told me over the weekend.
HD 4 is just southeast of Dallas and includes Kaufman and Henderson counties along with the communities of Kaufman, Terrell, and Athens. Morales says he knows the district leans Republican — but he noted that plenty of Republicans are “very upset with Betty. ‘She doesn’t do anything, Victor,’” he said one Republican recently told him.
Morales said despite his two failed bids for U.S. Senate and a 2006 attempt against Ciro Rodriguez and Henry Bonilla in a special election for the U.S. House, he wants to test the water again.
“Is that energy still out there? I’m going to find out,” he said. “I’ll start by talking to a lot of people that Betty will never meet.”
At one point (after his primary loss to Ron Kirk), Morales denounced the Democratic Party and said he was an independent. But it appears liberals like Charles Kuffner are ready to forgive him (and Kuff points out what is perhaps a widespread sentiment within the party, that the Texas House might have been a better place for Morales to start anyway).
Morales said shortly thereafter the GOP tried to woo him.
“The Republicans came at me and said, ‘What would it take, Victor?’” he said. He said there was nothing the GOP could do to make him join ranks behind George W. Bush. “The idea that I would have to take a picture with George Bush… Oh, man. I won’t even go there.”
Morales said he was angry just after the loss to Kirk because he felt the state party tried to cheat him. He still proudly talks about his independence — and he’s still refusing money from political action committees (and he’s still teaching — he’s in his fifth year at a school in Kaufman).
“I still love what I do,” he said.
On some issues Morales comes down to the right of many Democrats, which may well make him competitive against Brown in HD 4. But he points out that his positions have not changed, and he scoffs at politicians he says just stick a finger in the air “to find out which way the wind is blowing.”
He says he believes the Constitution protects the right to own a gun, although he supported the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban passed under Clinton.
“I own a gun,” he said. “I’ve got the second amendment memorized.”
And Morales said he is “leaning” toward a pro-choice position, although “there’s too many abortions… Roe v. Wade is the boss. I would not have the government tell the woman what to do with her own body.”
Morales says he does not expect a challenger in the Democratic primary, and when the time comes to go toe-to-toe with Brown, he expects to be able to make inroads with what he called “common-sense Republicans” in the district.
