Former Reason intern Jeff Winkler takes a close,
though in the usual course of these sort of articles a bit comedic,
look for the Texas Monthly at the
people running for governor in Texas who are not Democrat Wendy
Davis or Republican Greg Abbott.
There’s Libertarian Kathie Glass, whose exclusion from the
debates because she isn’t polling well in polls from which she’s
excluded is discussed at length. She’s only raised about $141,000,
and only about $40,000 of that was from people other than herself.
But this return candidate is still fighting, campaigning harder
than most L.P. candidates:
Glass ran in the 2010 gubernatorial race and placed third, with
2.18 percent of the vote. This time, she’s upped her game and
turned it into a real professional outfit. Her campaign manager
husband, Tom, does logistics. She has a full-time staffer with more
than a dozen steady volunteers statewide. They’ve conducted
“internal polling.” She even produced an ad in Spanish. And then
there’s her ambitious tour through all 254 counties in Texas in
a Straight-Talk-Express-sized
campaign bus .“We go to places and events and things and go visit the TV
stations and newspapers. And that’s what we do [in every county].
We try to get coverage and get connected to an event,” Glass said.
“In smaller counties there’s just nothing that we can really make
happen there. But every county has a county courthouse.”The campaign also stops at nearly every single radio station
they come by. “I’m not talking about the talk radio shows. I’m
talking the tiny rock shop, country-western, Christian music,
whatever they’ve got there.”…..Some libertarian-minded folks task themselves with the Sisyphean
effort of dismantling governmental overreach brick-by-brick; Glass
wants to bulldoze, presumably with private contracts, the whole
structure to the ground. As someone who is a libertarian
sympathizer, even I cringed during an exchange in which she said
that if the Supreme Court issued a decision she didn’t like, she
would simply ignore it. “I’m going to be guided by my own
conscience,” she explained.Smith followed up with what seemed an appropriate query: ”Are
you running for governor or to be queen? Because this sounds like a
monarchical view of government.”“I’m sorry it sounds that way,” Glass replied. “It only sounds
like that because we haven’t followed [the Constitution] for so
long that it can seem extreme.”Smith said he was “trying to take this serious.” But this was
particularly hard since Glass would politely say, “I don’t know”
when asked a question for which she didn’t have an answer. Real
politicians never do that.
Then there’s the Green Party’s Brandon Parmer, who, as Winkler
relates at length, is impossible to contact or find, for either
media or his own party.
Then there is officially registered write-in candidate Sara
Pavitt:
Becoming a write-in candidate for Texas governor requires 5,000
signatures or $3,750. Since Pavitt’s basic campaign strategy is
“sitting back and [getting] into it in the fourth quarter, like a
football game,” she paid the fee. “My friends think I’m crazy to
run,” said Pavitt, “but I’m bipolar.”….She’s pushing for legalization of marijuana because, yes,
like millions of Americans she enjoys getting high, but also
because it provides medical relief. The VA doctors had her on
medications, the antipsychotic Risperdal, which has a whole
smorgasbord of side-effects (Parkinson-like symptoms, drooling,
constipation, vomiting, etc.). “Risperdal is the one making men
grow tits. And I said, ‘if it’s doing that to guys what do you
think it’s going to do to me?’” (The answer, I discovered, is
amenorrhea, which in English means no menstruation.)…..Pavitt is practiced in hand-to-hand politics, too. She worked
for Representative Lloyd Doggett three years ago and volunteered
for Wendy Davis before “she pissed me off.” Apparently, Davis
“bolted” when Pavitt once tried to talk to her about marijuana.
Then came the limelight and greed.“You can’t even email her, she’ll go gimme money, gimme
money, gimme money,” said Pavitt. “And I thought, ‘you’re
supposed to be representing the people. Some of us don’t have
money.’ Like I say, she got off the mark. I don’t even know what
she represents because all she does is bitch about Greg Abbott and
that’s not helping.”…..“I’m not planning on probably being governor. I just
wanted to screw with them.” But even Pavitt follows the rules. Her
campaign flyers, which she’ll pass out soon, are all stamped with
“Political Ad Paid for by: Sarah M. Pavitt,” as is required by law.
“If you don’t take care of it, they fine you $5,000. I’m trying to
do everything legal.”If she does get elected, Pavitt said she will “light that bong
up and tell everybody they can smoke marijuana.” And if she
doesn’t? “I’m going to lay up [on my new deck] naked and smoke
marijuana.”
Winkler ends with a stirring quote from Libertarian Glass,
presenting the best spirit of the ideologically committed third
party candidate: “That’s another thing in our Texas history. We
just don’t accept long odds as a reason not to try.”
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