Deciding to run for Lieutenant Governor of Texas was not easy; part of me very much wanted to continue to enjoy being the former District Attorney of Travis County.
Democracy is more than just mass action; it is the sum of individual actions. That means that it makes a difference what each of us does. I found it hard to sleep at night thinking about how far things have gotten off track here in Texas without trying to make things better for regular Texans.
That's because the world, including us, is getting worried. We're all in need of a little more light. The spirit of democracy rests on the shoulders of justice, which in turn rests on the shoulders of an informed and responsible citizenry. Responsibility in a democracy rests on all of us together, and the doing of justice is everybody's job.
There has seldom been a time in our country or our State when the passion for justice was as strong as it is now. Nor has there been a time when there was a greater sense of unease, that things weren't the way they should be somehow. We feel that there are those who do better the worse things get for most of us, and that the worse they make things for everybody else the better they do.
What we each have to do, for the survival of our State, our nation and our democracy, is make our voices heard about the policies of government that shape and affect our lives. Please come to my campaign web site and get involved.
For sixteen years in Texas we've had one party rule and it's hard to imagine how anyone could say with a straight face that the officials currently in power have made things better for ordinary hard-working Texans.
But anyone who has been paying attention to national politics knows that it takes more than just changing the party in power to achieve real change.
It's easy to change whichever party is in power, but the hard reality is that if we're not vigilant, the same shadow party -- government by and for the favored few -- will just continue to run things their way and keep making out better and better as they make things worse for everybody else.
Corruption is like a relay race and the baton is easily passed from one political party to the next if both parties are not vigilant about policing their own ranks.
That's because politics is like a tepee -- it comes together at the top. In the places where the decisions are made that affect our lives, the powerful all too often come together and cut secret deals for their own benefit.
There are powerful forces that have been working hard over the past decade and a half trying to turn Texas into a third-world country. It is not enough that they enrich themselves at the expense of regular Texans; they want to reserve the top for themselves, with the rest of us struggling at the bottom.
The only thing higher than the luxurious private sky-boxes at our State college football stadiums are the tuitions our middle class families have to pay to send their kids to that same State college. Families have been running on treadmills for years, running faster and faster but never getting ahead and now it's becoming too expensive for them to educate their children.
The American Dream has always been a better life for our children, and that has included a college education. Now that dream is being betrayed.
And we've got a Governor who apparently never wants to leave his job even as he blocks unemployment benefits from millions of hard-working Texans who lost their jobs when Wall Street and Washington ran off with the economy.
And the Lieutenant Governor, traditionally the most powerful elected official in the State? From all the difference he's made for ordinary Texans the office might as well have been left vacant all these years. And the longer Texas goes with a State government that does nothing for ordinary people and everything for the powerful, the more relentlessly the federal government encroaches on the powers and prerogatives of the state.
Texans must retake our state government, for there are always those who are willing to fill the vacuum when a people will not govern themselves.
It's time for real change for Texas.
That's why I'm running for Lieutenant Governor. Please come to my campaign web site and get involved.