Tempest In A Tea Cup - The Texas Observer

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02 | 19 | 2010 

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2010 PRIMARIES 

Tempest In 

A Tea Cup 

Can Debra Medina’s 

grassroots rebellion dethrone 

Texas Republican royalty? 

plus 

lite Ambitions 

Linda Chavez-Thompson 

and Ronnie Earle 

by melissa del bosque 

DAteline AmArillo 

Swinging with the Devil 

by Forrest Wilder

IN THIS ISSUE 

12-16 lite 

Ambitions 


Why Democrats Ronnie Earle 

and Linda Chavez-Thompson 

want to be lieutenant governor 

REGULARS 

01 Dialogue 

02 Political 

intelligence 

05 eDitorial 

05 Ben Sargent’S 

loon Star State 

19 HigHtower rePort 

20 Dateline: 

amarillo 

A militant church 

group declares spiritual 

warfare on Panhandle 

heathens. 

by Forrest Wilder 

23 S tat e o f t H e m e D i a 

The news from 

Haiti overlooked the 

real tragedy. 

by bill minutaglio 

17 When 

the 

DemocrAts roAmeD 

by robert Green 

A look back at the 1972 Democratic 

primary that changed Texas politics 

24 critic’S noteBook 

Blood and Noodles 

by Josh rosenblatt 

25 Book review 

Star Power 

by steven Kellman 

26 Poetry 

by olupero r. Aiyenimelo 

27 urBan cowgirl 

Still Dancing With 

Who Brung Me 

by ruth pennebaker 

28 PurPle State 

The Emperor’s Clothes 

by bob moser 

29 e y e on te x aS 

by brandon thibodeaux 

ON THE COVER 

phoTo by bRANDoN ThIboDEAUX 

06 republicAn 


oF the 

people 

by bob moser 

Debra Medina’s 

grassroots rebellion 

Feb. 6 tea party rally 

in Cleburne 

phoTo by bRANDoN ThIboDEAUX 

Observer 

ONLINe 

Watch an original 

video report on 

Repent Amarillo’s 

protests. Also 

download a copy 

of the Kino Flores 

indictment. 

www.texasobserver.org

A JournAl of free Voices 

s i n c e 1954 

OBSERVER 

Volume 102, no. 4 

founding editor Ronnie Dugger 

ceo/Publisher Carlton Carl 

editor bob Moser 

MAnAging editor 

Chris Tomlinson 

AssociAte editor Dave Mann 

culture editor Michael May 

inVestigAtiVe rePorter 

Melissa del bosque 

stAff Writer Forrest Wilder 

AssociAte Publisher Julia Austin 

circulAtion/office MAnAger 

Candace Carpenter 

Art direction EmDash LLC 

MArketing AssistAnt 

Jaime Kilpatrick 

WebMAster Shane pearson 

coPy editor Rusty Todd 

Poetry editor 

Naomi Shihab Nye 

interns Laura burke, Robert 

Green, Lara haase, hudson 

Lockett, Maddie pelan, Jen Reel 

contributing Writers 

Emily Deprang, Lou Dubose, 

James K. Galbraith, Steven 

G. Kellman, Joe R. Lansdale, 

Robert Leleux, James E. 

McWilliams, Char Miller, bill 

Minutaglio, Ruth pennebaker, 

Josh Rosenblatt, Kevin Sieff, 

brad Tyer, Andrew Wheat 

contributing PhotogrAPhers 

Jana birchum, Alan pogue, 

Steve Satterwhite 

contributing Artists 

Michael Krone, Alex Eben 

Meyer, ben Sargent 

texAs deMocrAcy 

foundAtion boArd 

Lisa blue, Melissa Jones, 

Susan Longley, Jim Marston, 

Mary Nell Mathis, Gilberto 

ocañas, Jesse oliver, bernard 

Rapoport, Geoffrey Rips, 

Geronimo Rodriguez, Sharron 

Rush, Kelly White, Ronnie 

Dugger (emeritus) 

our Mission 

We will serve no group or 

party but will hew hard to 

the truth as we find it and 

the right as we see it. We 

are dedicated to the whole 

truth, to human values above 

all interests, to the rights of 

humankind as the foundation 

of democracy. We will take 

orders from none but our own 

conscience, and never will we 

overlook or misrepresent the 

truth to serve the interests of 

the powerful or cater to the 

ignoble in the human spirit. 

dIalOgUE 

preaching to the converted 

An anti-choice Bible-thumper took an opportunist job? (“Conversion Story,” 

Jan. 22.) Planned Parenthood needs to be more careful with which nut jobs 

they hire. It’s like the PETA activist who takes a job at the slaughterhouse to 

expose it. She knew what it was. Krissy Acevedo 

p o s t e d a t t e x a s o b s e r v e r . o r g 

th e r e is no denying t h at s omeone w h o w a s alive 

is no longer alive once an abortion is finished. Prochoice? 

Certainly the fetus would choose to live if 

given the option. Amazing that anyone who advocates 

life and living for the most helpless of all 

humans can be vilified and smeared! 

Fredrick shirley 

m u r f r e e s b o r o , t e n n e s s e e 

i h av e w a t c h e d abortions being performed. i h av e 

studied the after-effects in many first trimester 

abortions. I never saw a baby. A zygote can mature 

into a fetus—but it is the evolution of cells. It takes 

nine months for the evolutionary process, and what 

begins as a fetus does not even have a brain. It can 

feel no pain. [Abby] Johnson is merely trying to 

raise money and name recognition. 

Arthur Frederick ide 

r a d c l i f f e , i o w a 

in others’ shoes 

th e dat e l i n e in t h e Jan. 22 issue (“close to 

Homeless”) is very similar to others in the mainstream 

media. I am disappointed the Observer 

lacked any analysis of the institution of homelessness. 

To add insult to intelligent readers, you used 

stock photos. Roll over in your grave, Russell Lee. 

Don’t waste the back of the magazine with things 

readers can get elsewhere or you lose the value of 

the Observer. D’Ann Johnson 

a u s t i n 

Alone on the plains 

hav i n g read the article by ch r i s tomlins on about 

“The West Texas Surge” (Feb. 5), I am reminded 

that only part of West Texas is being served by statewide 

candidates. As the longest-serving Democratic 

county chair in Texas, and being in a county that has 

been forgotten, I have seen candidates run a commercial 

on a West Texas Tv station and think they 

have covered counties like ours. If they would spend 

a couple of days out here in the boondocks, they 

could get many more votes. A few years ago a state- 

wide candidate came here, and when the results were 

known, that candidate led the ticket. Democrats carried 

counties that had not voted Democratic in years. 

bob Dean 

r e e v e s c o u n t y 

living in Fear 

i w e l l remember t h e fear t h at i, or a p l ay m at e, 

might wake up one morning and be paralyzed from 

polio (“Lessons Unlearned,” Jan. 22). I escaped, but 

several did not. I give thanks each day for the Salk 

and Sabin vaccines that saved me, and future generations, 

from that dreaded disease. I also give thanks 

for parents who had the good sense to welcome vaccinations 

that were available during my childhood. 

Are we now in danger of current and future generations 

reliving history because we haven’t learned 

what my generation learned? howard butler 

g e o r g e t o w n 

th e key passage is s u r e ly t h at texas parents are 

“choosing whether to vaccinate their children.” 

That’s exactly the right thing to do, to make 

a choice based upon knowledge and not to be 

herded into the line for mandatory vaccination. I 

note a very satisfying trend both in the U.S.A. and 

U.K. that parents are taking a much more carefully 

informed view about whether their child should 

be vaccinated. Those who choose not to do so are 

not anti-vaccine, but caring parents who want to 

do what’s best for their kids. tony bateson 

o x f o r d , e n g l a n d 

sound Off 

editors@texasobserver.org 

FEBRUARy 19, 2010 THE TExAS oBSERvER | 1

POlITIcal INTEllIg 

phoTo by 

MATT WRIGhT-STEEL 

ON THE sCENE 

Kinky’s Farm 

wh e n ki n ky fr i e d m a n f i n a l ly arrived close to 

10 p.m. on Feb. 5 at the “Barn Bash” celebrating the 

25th anniversary of Galveston’s revived Mardi Gras 

and parade (for which the Kinkster would serve the 

next day as grand marshal), he didn’t, and frankly 

couldn’t, make much of an impression on the 1,100 

revelers. Many in the shoulder-to-shoulder crush had 

been partying hard since the barn doors opened at 7 

p.m. (For $20, unlimited beer and wine.) And they 

had other matters on their minds than the March 2 

Democratic primary in which Kinky is running for 

agriculture commissioner against rival Democrat 

Hank Gilbert. 

Almost everyone expressed some admiration for 

Kinky, but most had missed the news in mid-December 

that Friedman was abandoning his second run 

for governor in favor of the more obscure post of 

agriculture commissioner. (Four years ago, running 

for governor as an independent, Friedman attracted 

more national-media coverage than the rest of the 

candidates combined. He received 12 percent of 

the vote.) “Agriculture commissioner? Get outta 

town,” said Christine Haas, a 45-year-old Galveston 

hairdresser. Aircraft mechanic James J. (Speedy) 

Dodranich, 58, describes himself as “one of those 

Tea Party idiots who believes this country needs to 

be run by the people and not the politicians.” He said 

of Friedman: “I wish he’d stuck with running for governor, 

but Kinky’s gotta do what Kinky has to do. I’d 

vote for him for President if he’d run.” 

Minutes after Friedman’s arrival, the blaring 

band at the back of the barn surrendered the stage, 

2 | THE TExAS oBSERvER WWW.TExASoBSERvER.oRG

ENcE 

and the candidate spoke—or tried to. The din from 

the crowd drowned out his words for all but maybe 

the 50 people closest to the stage: “Hi, I’m Kinky 

Friedman,” he said. “vote for me for agriculture 

commissioner: No cow left behind! My platform is 

simple: Protect the land. Take care of the animals. 

Listen to the people.” 

With that, Friedman and his entourage stepped 

out the barn’s back door and into the adjacent 

parking lot of the Artillery Club, Galveston’s most 

exclusive dining venue. The club’s manager spotted 

Friedman and invited him and his campaign manager 

in for a complimentary meal (rack of lamb, 

baked oysters, crab cakes). They sat in a private dining 

room, doubtlessly because Friedman was puffing 

away on his iconic Cuban cigar (“I’m not supporting 

their economy, I’m burning their fields”) 

in blatant violation of Galveston’s tough new antismoking 

ordinance. But those fumes didn’t stop 

a procession of what Friedman calculated were 

“more than 100” of Galveston’s elite from coming 

in while he held court. 

Kinky’s routine may not have changed much since 

2006, but his run for ag commissioner isn’t generating 

the same interest. During Saturday’s parade in 

Galveston, Friedman rode in a car with his campaign 

signs stuck to both rear doors. But parade organizers 

had discreetly placed blue masking tape over the 

phrase “for Agriculture Commissioner,” so the sign on 

the grand marshal’s ride read only “Kinky Friedman.” 

—tom curtis 

CampaigN TRail 

sandra rodriguez’s 

second take 

in 2008, sandra rodriguez c a m e within 1,000 votes 

of winning the state representative race in western 

Hidalgo County. Her campaign against Democratic 

incumbent state Rep. Ismael “Kino” Flores was expensive 

and grueling. Flores had kept an iron-fisted hold 

on the border communities in District 36 for 13 years. 

At a low point in the campaign, the two candidates had 

to be separated by sheriff’s deputies during a heated 

argument outside a county precinct office. 

Rodriguez, 50, a former probation officer and high 

school teacher, had little appetite for a rematch with 

Flores. In late July 2009, she decided to sit out the 

next election cycle. That decision didn’t last long. 

Flores was indicted in July for allegedly hiding more 

than $847,000 in income and assets from state regulators. 

Flores also had lost his political pull at the 

Capitol with the ouster of former House Speaker Tom 

Craddick. In August, Flores announced he wouldn’t 

run again, and Rodriguez jumped back in. 

Though Flores has left the race, Rodriguez hasn’t 

broken free of her old rival. She will face Flores’ 

anointed successor—Sergio Muñoz Jr.—in the March 

Democratic primary. Muñoz, a 27-year-old lawyer, 

announced his candidacy the day after Flores called 

it quits. Political insiders in Hidalgo County think 

that Flores is supporting Muñoz’s candidacy. 

The race has been the most costly and talked-about 

in Hidalgo County this election year. The candidates 

have spent a combined $296,000. Rodriguez raised 

$156,000. Muñoz brought in $77,000 and received a 

$125,000 loan from his father. 

Rodriguez has allies with deep political roots in 

the district. She is the wife of a former state district 

judge. Billy Leo, former mayor of La Joya, a political 

kingmaker in western Hidalgo County, and a Flores 

foe, supports her. Leo’s daughter, Lita, is Rodriguez’s 

campaign manager. Muñoz, meanwhile, has endorsements 

from the mayors of Mission and Pharr, two 

traditional allies of Flores. 

Sometimes you just can’t shake an old foe. 

—melissa del bos que 

HOpsON’s CHOiCE 

A Gop convert stirs 

up the tea party 

wh e n s tat e rep. ch u c k hops on, a c o n s e r vat i v e 

Democrat from rural East Texas, switched to the 

Republican Party in November, some Democrats saw 

it as more than a political setback. 

“I feel betrayed by his lack of conviction,” Phillip 

Martin, a former Hopson legislative aide, wrote on 

the liberal Burnt Orange Report blog. 

Distaste at Hopson’s party-hopping wasn’t confined 

to former allies. Six hours after his announcement 

he had a serious opponent in the Republican 

primary. Michael Banks, a 62-year-old Jacksonville 

dentist, is challenging Hopson from the tea-party 

right with a grassroots campaign. 

Banks describes his opponent as a liberal who 

switched parties because “his polls showed him that 

he couldn’t win in 2010 as a Democrat.” 

In 2008, Hopson defeated his Republican opponent 

by 114 votes in a region that tilts Republican. McCain 

walloped obama with 71 percent of the vote in a district 

that includes Jacksonville, Rusk and Crockett. 

Sen. John Cornyn, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and 

Gov. Rick Perry have endorsed Hopson. At the end of 

2009, Hopson reported raising $176,000; Banks had collected 

$5,700 and loaned his campaign nearly $80,000. 

Nonetheless, Banks says Hopson is “shaking in his 

boots.” Banks—a hunter, fisherman, and kayaker— 

the stAte 

oF texAs 

Total 

single-unit 

construction 

permits: 

mAy 2006 

16,399 

mAy 2007 

12,014 

mAy 2008 

8,006 

mAy 2009 

5,596 

Source: U.S. 

Census bureau 

reAD the inDictment 

against Kino Flores at 

txlo.com/kfindict 


tWeets oF texAs 

“Shami’s 

performance 

fell flatter than 

hair that has 

been ironed 

with the CHI.” 

@KathTX’s analysis on Twitter of the Democratic primary 

debate between houston Mayor bill White and Farouk 

Shami—creator of the “ChI,” a ceramic hairstyling iron. 

Dang, bill White hardly sounds 

like a Democrat ... are we sure 

he’s not running on the wrong 

ticket by mistake? 

@rdlynch 

Whoa whoa whoa, no 

electricity bills by 10 years 

from now?! yeah, I was right. 

Desperate promises. 

@Andycates, on Farouk Shami’s promise to do 

away with electricity bills. 

Is it just me or does 

bill White keep saying yoUston 

instead of hoUston? 

@Mmuszynski 

Without Mexicans it'd be like 

a day without sunshine in 

our state—thank you for that 

quote Farouk. 

@johnmcclelland 

For the lAtest political analysis, read bob Moser’s purple Texas at 

www.texasobserver.org/purpletexas 

Ted and Betty Dotts 

phoTo by ZACh LoNG 

reAD more 

about the lawsuit 

brought against LISD at 

txlo.com/gsa 

WAtch A trAiler 

for a documentary about 

sex-ed in Lubbock at 

txlo.com/knox 

has led a high-profile fight to preserve 25,000 acres 

of rare hardwood forest along the Neches River 

where powerful water interests in Dallas want to 

build a reservoir. 

It’s not the most orthodox selling point for a conservative 

politician, but Banks contends that it has 

put him in touch with thousands of voters. He takes 

partial credit for forcing Hopson to take a stronger 

stand against the reservoir. 

Could his advocacy open him up to charges of 

being a tree-hugger? 

“They tried to briefly, but the people in East Texas 

and the district know better,” Banks says. 

The Republican nominee will face Democrat Richard 

Hackney, CEo of a pharmaceutical consulting company 

and Cherokee County native, in November. 

—forrest wilder 

TyRaNT’s FOEs 

ted and betty Dotts 

lubbock is not g ay-f r i e n d ly. a few years ago, w h e n 

some straight high school kids tried to support some 

gay kids by forming a Gay-Straight Alliance, the Lubbock 

Independent School District banned it. A school 

board member explained, “If I let something in like 

y’all, I’d have to let in the Ku Klux Klan.” 

The district’s decision violated federal law. However, 

in Caudillo v. LISD, the judge ruled that “the local 

school officials and parents are in the best position to 

determine what subject matter is reasonable.” 

“It was terrible. We felt very cut down,” says Betty 

Dotts, who had called in a lawyer from Lambda Legal 

in Dallas. Betty and husband Ted, a retired Methodist 

clergyman, have been fighting for gay rights since 

1975, a continuation of their civil rights activism that 

began in the 1950s. Betty and Ted are also advocates 

for comprehensive sex education in a school district 

that teaches “abstinence only.” Faced with high sexually 

transmitted disease and teen pregnancy rates, 

Betty and Ted teach sex-ed in church. 

In 1993, a friend asked Betty and Ted to start the 

first group for Parents, Families and Friends of 

Lesbians and Gays in Lubbock. Betty said she “felt 

like a huge wave of water was coming over me and 

I was drowning,(because) I know the people here.” 

Nevertheless, she scheduled the first meeting. 

Betty kept the lights low, and security stood at the 

door on the church’s second floor. When 50 people 

showed up and weren’t protesters, she was relieved. 

But many in the congregation were angry. 

“We got some very harsh letters—some from our 

own Methodist ministers,” Betty says. 

The couple also received menacing phone calls. 

Betty remembers wondering how far the critics 

would go. But Mary vines, one of Ted’s former 

parishioners, says Ted has a way of diffusing resistance. 

“He would be at home with the Greek philosophers,” 

she says. 

Ted and Betty have now made their home a haven 

for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth. 

Ted meets with a transgendered support group 

twice weekly. The Dotts show the kids unconditional 

acceptance; a rare thing in Lubbock. 

—lau r a bu r k e 


letter From the publisher 

to the texas observer Family, 

it h a s been a g r e at honor for t h e past t w o 

years to be CEo/Publisher of The Texas 

Observer and to preside over the creation of 

two new Observers (print and online), the 

expansion of its coverage, its plunge into 

social media and the continuation of its tradition 

of great editors, writers, poets, photographers 

and graphic artists. 

I take leave of my formal position at the end of 

February, but the commitment I have had to the 

Observer since my father first thrust it in my hands in 

the 1950s will endure. “you need to be reading this,” he 

said to my junior-high-school self. And, sure enough, 

he was right. So right, as my father often was, that it has 

had a special place in my head and my heart ever since. 

The Observer will always serve up, as it has since 

its first issue in December 1954, the best journalism 

in Texas, the most astute coverage of politics, 

government and culture—all with an irreverently 

progressive point of view echoing the original mission 

of founding editor Ronnie Dugger and founder, 

Frankie Randolph. 

How appropriate that this enduring voice of progressive 

Texas was made possible by a woman at a 

time when feminism and the fight for equal rights 

was, at best, nascent. The Observer began, and has 

loon stAr stAte ben sargent 

properly remained, focused on justice—for women, 

for people of color, for LGBTs, for folks in poverty, 

for members of labor unions, for all working families, 

for the downtrodden and voiceless. It has stood resolutely 

against corrupt power in the halls of government 

and the boardrooms of faceless corporations. 

The Observer has been sustained by the generosity 

of its friends, Bernard and Audre Rapoport and our 

late, beloved Molly Ivins foremost among thousands 

of others. All of them deserve the Observer’s thanks 

and the thanks of Texas. I invite all Observer readers 

and all friends of the best investigative journalism to 

join me as observer Partners to assure Texas always 

has the toughest non-partisan, nonprofit public 

interest watchdog in the nation. 

Thank you all for making The Texas Observer possible. 

As journalism evolves to accommodate constantly 

changing technology, the Observer has never 

been more necessary. 

Join me in striving to make The Texas Observer 

the essential reading that it has always been for more 

than 55 years. 

—ca r lt o n carl 

“You need to 

be reading 

this,” my father 

said. And, sure 

enough, he 

was right. 


photographs by 

brandon thibodeaux 



REPublICAn 

of tHE PEoPlE 

Can Debra Medina’s grassroots rebellion 

dethrone Texas’ Republican royalty? 

by bob moser 



see ViDeo of Debra Medina 

at the “Sovereignty or Secession” 

rally at http://txlo.com/6 

on a Saturday afternoon in Burleson, even the 

hottest politician in Texas has trouble scoring 

a table at Babe’s, a popular fried-chicken joint. 

Her name is called after 15 minutes huddled around 

an industrial heater against the frosty, early-February 

breeze. Then there’s a snag. “Is your whole party 

here yet?” the young hostess asks sternly. “We can’t 

seat you until all four are here.” 

“Then it’s a party of three,” Debra Medina says, flashing 

a grin at husband Noe and the reporter—me—who’s 

been chasing her around North Texas. “Good Lord,” she 

says, hustling us through the door while peeking at the 

time on her BlackBerry, “let’s get inside while we can.” 

A member of Medina’s skeletal staff, the fourth 

in the party, is mired in Metroplex traffic. As usual, 

it’s up to Medina to keep things on track. She’s used 

to it. The first-time candidate has been running a 

shoestring campaign for a year now—fueled by little 

more than a wing, a prayer and a radical libertarian 

platform. She’s running against two of America’s 

most powerful and well-funded Republicans, Gov. 

Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. As late 

as December, her grassroots insurgency looked predictably 

hopeless, with Medina sitting at 4 percent 

in polls of likely GoP voters. But commanding performances 

in January’s two televised Republican 

debates have vaulted her into contention, confounding 

every political expert in Texas. A few days after 

lunch at Babe’s, a new poll would show Medina just 

four points behind Hutchison for second place and 

an April runoff with front-running Perry. 

It’s been a dizzying, meteoric rise for this trained 

nurse and small-business owner from Wharton 

County. Asked earlier in the day what her last week had 

been like, she’d flashed a smile and said, “I don’t know 

where I’ve been, literally. We’re getting invitations from 

all over the state.” Then she tackled a Dallas forum in 

her trademark style: strident, folksy and bookish, all 

bundled together into an oddly compelling package. 

“This is, really, a war. I think we use the word ‘campaign’ 

a lot without realizing that that’s a military term. But 

that’s where we are in this race, trying to prosecute this 

war in a way that’s going to result in victory on March 

2. I am going where the fires are hottest and talking to 

people and recognizing that this really isn’t about me. 

We are where we are today because there are a bunch of 

Debra Medinas across the state who’ve had enough, and 

they’re engaging in the battle.” 

Medina had $68,000 cash on hand on Feb. 1, compared 

with her opponents’ war chests of more than 

$10 million apiece. She drew donations in January 

from some 1,400 Texans—more than three times the 

number of folks who gave money to “Kay and Rick,” 

as she likes to call them. “I absolutely believe that 

we’ll make the runoff,” she says. “This race is going to 


e won with shoe leather and elbow grease.” 

The right-wing fairy tale that is Medina’s campaign 

began in late 2008. While her only elected office had 

been chair of the Wharton County GoP, Medina had 

attracted attention from hardcore conservatives 

around the state with a guerilla run at the state party 

chairmanship in 2008, which ended in a lawsuit and a 

restraining order against her by party leaders. She also 

helped run Ron Paul’s Texas campaign in 2008 and 

chaired the state chapter of his Campaign for Liberty 

in the aftermath. In that capacity, she starred at an 

“End the Fed” rally in Houston in late 2008. There she 

hollered eloquently through a bullhorn, organizing the 

troops behind Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve—a 

move that, she said, would be the logical first step 

toward abolishing the “illegal” federal bureaucracy. 

Soon afterward, dissident Republicans and libertarians 

began pressing her to run. She was skeptical, but says 

that her daughter Janise, a 24-year-old interior designer 

in Houston, talked her into playing David to the two 

Goliaths of Texas Republicanism. “She said, Mom, you’ve 

been talking about these things for 20 years,” Medina 

recalls. “Why not step up and fight the good fight?” 

If not for the explosion of the Texas tea-party movement 

on Tax Day 2009, no amount of fighting spirit 

and shoe leather would have taken Medina anywhere 

in this race. “We started getting invitations to these 

tea parties,” she says, “and I’m like, guys, that’s four 

days before my daughter’s wedding. I can’t be running 

around making speeches—but, then, I can’t miss this.” 

With a fast-growing army of volunteers, she organized 

“Medina for Texas” teams to talk her up at 45 tea parties 

around the state. She gave rousing addresses on tax 

day in Round Rock, Waco and Burleson, where she was 

introduced to the frying talents of the cooks at Babe’s. 

She’s waited nine months to get back here—and nothing, 

not a waiting reporter from National Public Radio, 

not Metroplex traffic, not hundreds of shivering folks up 

the road in Cleburne anticipating her appearance, could 

stop her from getting some more of this chicken. 

“I don’t get to eat much real food these days,” she 

says, projecting her South Texas drawl—swallowed 

vowels and dropped g’s—over the piped-in country 

music as we slide onto benches around the table. 

“Now, this place, you sort of order family style.” She 

turns to Noe: “How about catfish and fried chicken?” 

He nods and orders while she talks about her unlikely 

campaign. Noe’s a quiet fellow who helps run his 

wife’s medical-billing business and steers clear of 

politicking. “It’s too dirty for me,” he’d told me earlier, 

chuckling. “I like to stay in the back.” 

Debra Medina is wondering aloud how long Rick 

and Kay will ignore her as she creeps up on them in 

the polls. “I don’t think we’ve seen much indication 

that either one of them even acknowledges that we 

exist,” she says, stirring Sweet‘N Low into iced tea. 

“So far, they’ve just kind of kept at each other, and 

they’re proving our case for us. In all of the media 

they’re running, she’s telling all of Texas how bad he 

is, and he’s telling all of Texas how bad she is, and I’m 

going, ‘yeah, they’re right: They’re both bad!’” 

Medina laughs. Despite the alternately studious and 

fiery persona she projects on the stump, she laughs a 

lot when she’s offstage. A sturdy-framed, plain-faced 

47-year-old, Medina is an ardent Southern Baptist 

whose first galvanizing political issue was abortion 

(unlike most libertarians, she’s against it, no exceptions). 

In other ways, she fits the tea-party profile. 

She wants Texas to nullify federal laws, toss the EPA 

out, slash health care funding, abolish property taxes 

in favor of sales taxes, and allow law-abiding citizens 

to pack heat without licenses. 

But she also has an independent streak that perplexes 

and delights her fans. In Dallas this morning, 

she’d momentarily stumped the audience by calling for 

a moratorium on death sentences in Texas. She talks at 

length, over lunch, about her disgust with the border 

wall running through South Texas, which “does nothing 

but consume private property and waste resources.” 

She speaks passionately about bringing her husband’s 

fellow Hispanics into the Republican fold, saying that 

Perry’s failure to do so “almost makes me cry.” 

“Republicans have a conversation with the Hispanic 

community starting in September of election years,” 

she says. “Democrats have those conversations all the 

time. And we’re surprised at how they vote?” 

At any other political moment, Medina would 

surely be much too much, even for right-wing Texans. 

Too radical; too off-script; too downright strange. 

Last summer, she gave a now-notorious speech at 

the Texas Nationalist Movement’s “Sovereignty or 

Secession” rally at the state Capitol, declaring, “We 


see meDinA answer 

questions at the first Gop 

debate at http://txlo.com/5 

“We’re gonna 

stand up and 

accomplish 

a revolution 

without 

shedding a 

drop of blood.” 



Car from the 

parking lot of the 

Cleburne rally 

“She’s telling 

all of texas 

how bad 

he is and 

he’s telling all 

of texas how 

bad she is, 

and I’m going, 

‘Yeah, they’re 

right: they’re 

both bad!’” 

heAr A sonG for 

Debra Medina at 

http://txlo.com/4 

are aware that stepping off into secession may in fact 

be a bloody war,” and adding, “We understand that 

the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the 

blood of tyrants and patriots.” When I bring up those 

comments, she asks, “Did you get them in context, 

not just the tree of liberty part? 

“I was trying to say to that audience, that was a militia 

kind of audience, hey people, we need to remember 

that revolutions are bloody. If you wanna go down 

the route of secession, yes, in fact, from time to time 

the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of tyrants 

and patriots, but let’s not forget: That’s a bloody war. 

Before you set us off on that course, how ‘bout we try 

nullification and interposition first? Because otherwise 

we’re gonna lose lives in that battle. And there 

are times when that’s a cost that we all pay, and willingly 

pay. But if we don’t have to, let’s don’t.” 

She swivels around to Noe. “Did you get pepper?” she 

asks. “It’s a little sweet,” she says, referring to the sugary 

green beans and creamed corn. “Good, though.” 

ON THis samE saTuRDay, the first national Tea 

Party Convention is winding up its lavish proceedings, 

with folks who’ve paid $549 to pack the fancy ballroom 

of a Nashville hotel to hear a six-figure speech by 

Sarah Palin. The scene in Cleburne, the next stop for 

Debra Medina’s road show, is a study in contrast. 

A couple of hundred folks have been hanging out 

since morning in the front lot of the Forrest Chevrolet 

dealership, chatting and huddling under blankets and 

listening to local right-wing rabble-rousers. Most are 

wearing “Medina for Texas” stickers on their hunting 

vests and puffy jackets. It’s a guns-and-camo crowd, 

white and working class, folks too sensible or too 

strapped to make the trip to Nashville. 

When Medina takes the plain, pinewood podium, 

holding forth under a big American flag hanging from 

the ladder of a local fire department truck, she’s got 

no teleprompter, no crib notes on her palm. She also 

has no simple, crowd-pleasing anecdotes to feed the 

folks. But in her peculiar way, she fires them up like 

nobody else could. 

“While I’m the one with the microphone in my hand,” 

she says with appealing sincerity, “I want you to know 

that I know we’re in this fight together. 

“I really do believe that there is wisdom in the minds 

of men, and that it’s really important for me as a candidate 

for governor to get out among the people to talk to 

you, to look you in the eye, to listen to your concerns, and 

to together finesse the solutions that we need for Texas. 

“I have said at many, many events: Private-property 

ownership and gun ownership are the essential elements 

of freedom. We must allow men and women 

to keep that that they labor for. When a nation, when 

a government, when a state takes from people what 

they’re working for, they quit working, and they quit 

producing, and the whole society suffers.” 

After a digression into the bad example of Russia, 

Medina continues: “Texas has the 13th-largest economy 

in the world. We get government off the back 

of Texans, we’re not gonna have an economic crisis. 

We’re not gonna have an energy crisis. We’re not 

gonna have an immigration crisis.” Folks whoop and 

clap and call out: “Medina, Medina!” and “Tell ’em!” 

“Do not allow the seeds of fear and doubt to take root 

in your life,” the candidate says soberly. “This is a time 

unlike any other time in our history, when we’re gonna 

stand up and accomplish a revolution without shedding 

a drop of blood. ... Don’t be fearful that it can’t be 

done. Take courage from people who have gone before 

us and laid out how important that is. This is not a state 

of can’ts. This is a state of cans, and we will, by golly! 

“The United States has always been a giving nation. 

We have never lacked for volunteers when something 

needed to be done. And yet today, many of us struggle 

to be able to help our neighbors like we would like to. 


Because our government has created such a weight 

on our back that we can hardly take a step.” 

“Amen!” a burly man in a mud-streaked vest shouts. 

“you get the weight of that government off our back, 

we stand shoulder-to-shoulder and do as this sign 

says”—Medina points to a “Nullification Now” sign held 

by a man—“we start to nullify illegal federal actions. We 

begin again to stand as a sovereign state in this federal 

union that our founders established. you know, the one 

where we’re supposed to have a very limited government 

and 50 independent, sovereign states! We don’t 

all look the same. We are an independent state. Texas 

will take care of Texas. Texas agriculture! Texas energy! 

Texas health care! Texas will take care of Texas!” 

Just as she’s hit the heights of crowd-pleasing teaparty 

rhetoric, Medina veers into a lengthy story about 

a man she met in Austin named Bruzzone. The name, 

she says, was different from the many Hispanic names 

she encountered growing up in Beeville: “the Garcias, 

the Gonzalezes, and even a few Medinas.” I look around 

the crowd, where I see only two nonwhite faces, and 

folks look a little surprised. What’s the punch line? Why 

are we hearing a story about Hispanic people? 

“He said he was from Cuba, his family had been 

there for four generations. I have often thought that 

when the -isms—socialism, fascism, communism, 

Marxism—come to America, we think they’ll come with 

purple spots, and we’ll recognize them. And here sat Mr. 

Bruzzone looking like any other average Texan. I said, 

Mr. Bruzzone, if I had taken a picture of you standing on 

the street in communist-dictatorship Cuba three years 

ago, and I took a picture of you today in the constitutional 

republic of Austin, Texas, tell me the difference 

between the man in Cuba and the man in Austin. And 

he said: ‘The man in Cuba had no dreams.’ 

“I think in Texas we’re perilously close to a place 

where our children have no dreams. We either stand 

arm-in-arm and we begin to defend again this constitutional 

republic, or our children have no dreams.” 

This is odd, I’m thinking—about as far from classic 

right-wing immigrant-bashing as you could get. But 

the folks in the front lot of Forrest Chevrolet eat it up. 

When Medina finishes, dozens cluster around her, 

telling her their stories and asking questions as she 

smiles and nods and looks them in the eye and listens 

intently. Medina is not Palin, with her scripted 

zingers, or Perry, with his pandering swagger. She’s 

your rank-and-file Texan’s smart big sister, talking to 

you like she figures you can take in something a little 

more challenging than usual. 

“We always like to poke fun at the other side,” says 

Philip Martin, communications specialist with the 

Texas Democratic Trust and a blogger for the liberal 

Burnt Orange Report who was one of the first to recognize 

Medina’s potential. “But the really absurd and 

ridiculous people are the ones with blind loyalty to a 

leader like Rick Perry or Kay Bailey Hutchison. I give 

Medina’s supporters credit for not allowing Perry to 

pull the wool over their eyes. The Republicans who 

support Perry are sheep. I’m scared of Medina’s supporters, 

but they are independent thinkers.” 

There are more of them than anybody imagined possible. 

They love it when she calls obama a socialist and 

warns of creeping fascism. They love it when she infuriates 

Republican regulars by saying she won’t support 

Perry or Hutchison if one of them beats her. “you walk 

the talk, and you’ve got my full support,” she says. “These 

folks have not been walking the talk for a long time.” 

Medina embodies a post-partisan conservative 

politics—party loyalties matter a whole lot less than 

staunch, anti-government ideas and a certain earthy 

genuineness that no incumbent politician can hope 

to muster. She’s not framing a message; she’s speaking 

her truth. 

When I leave her in Cleburne, Medina is still chatting 

with well-wishers. The NPR reporter is still waiting. 

After she finally gives him that interview, she and 

Noe will drive five hours south to their small ranch 

in DeWitt County, where he’ll hay the cattle and 

they’ll stay overnight with an aunt and uncle. Then 

they’ll head back to Wharton and spend Sunday 

and Monday fielding requests, fine-tuning itineraries, 

and trying to catch up on their medical-billing 

business. on Tuesday she’ll hit the trail again for 

another series of 16-hour days, one small campaign 

event after another, and—most likely—continue to 

climb in the polls, one aggrieved voter at a time. Her 

opponents will keep spending millions to assail one 

another on the airwaves and wonder: Where in God’s 

name did this Medina woman come from? 

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tHE CHoSEn onE 

Why Linda Chavez-Thompson wants to be lieutenant governor 


In a nondescript strip mall 

tucked between used-car lots and fast-food restaurants 

in southwest San Antonio, Linda Chavez-Thompson is 

plotting the course of her latest improbable journey: 

becoming Texas’ first Latina lieutenant governor. 

A petite, 65-year-old Democrat with a long history 

as a grassroots union activist sounds like an unlikely 

candidate to lead the chummy, largely Republican 

and male Texas Senate. But this is the same woman 

who went from picking cotton for 10 cents a day in 

Lubbock to executive vice president of the 13-million-member 

AFL-CIo—the first woman and minority 

to attain such a powerful position in the largely 

white and male-dominated union leadership in 

Washington, D.C. 

Chavez-Thompson knows how to deal with a boys’ 

club. She’s been doing it since 1967, when she took 

her first union job as a secretary in Lubbock. The 

office had air-conditioning—a major perk for somebody 

who’d been working in the fields since she was 

10—and paid her $1.40 an hour. She was the only 

woman and the only Spanish-speaker at the local 

chapter of the Laborers’ International Union. It was 

beyond her imagining that she’d be a powerhouse in 

the AFL-CIo’s national structure 30 years later. 

“The labor union of old was male, pale and stale,” 

she says. “My coming in as the highest-ranking 

woman and woman of color gave the labor movement 

a new voice, a new face, and a new initiative to 

help people believe that the labor movement could 

change their lives.” 

Texas Democratic leaders hope that Chavez- 

Thompson, with her compelling personal story and 

knack for grassroots organizing, can do the same 

thing for their party. Powerful Democrats did everything 

but get on bended knee to recruit her to run for 

lieutenant governor. 

The phone calls began in earnest in December, after 

Sen. Leticia van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat, 

decided not to run. Former Congressman Martin 

Frost, former state Comptroller John Sharp, and state 

Rep. Eliot Naishtat of Austin were among those who 

phoned a skeptical Chavez-Thompson to convince her 

she’d be the perfect candidate. 

Chavez-Thompson had retired two years before, 

returning to Texas to spend time with her two grandchildren 

and “chill out,” as she puts it. But since settling 

in San Antonio, she’d hardly been living a leisurely 

life. She joined San Antonio’s vIA Metropolitan 

Transit Board, worked part-time for the union and 

debated Latin-American labor policy at conferences. 

“My calendar was packed every single day, and I loved 

it,” she says. “My retirement never really panned out.” 

The arguments Democratic leaders pitched were 

compelling: She had a name and reputation that would 

garner Latino votes, and she would draw more female 

voters. Plus, she was a shoo-in to fire up the small but 

energetic union vote. 

“It was presented to me as the people’s agenda,” 

she says, “where working people would benefit if I 

became lieutenant governor. I started seeing it as 

a larger cause because I believe very strongly that 

Republicans have looked out for the wealthy interests 

in the state and listened more to highly paid lobbyists 

than to the people. They don’t want better worker’s 

compensation, or unemployment insurance, or a system 

where we pay less homeowners’ insurance.” 

After three weeks of mulling it over, she decided to 

take the plunge. Chavez-Thompson made it official 

on Jan. 4, the filing deadline. A few hours later, she 

got a phone call from former Travis County District 

Attorney Ronnie Earle, who had filed to run on Dec. 

18. “He asked whether anyone had spoken to me about 

running for state comptroller,” she says. “I said no, 

that I’d just filed for the lieutenant governor’s race.” 

Despite the initial awkwardness, Chavez-Thompson 

and Earle agreed not to “make disparaging remarks 

about one another during the race,” she says. She’s 

taken the same tack with her other Democratic competitor, 

Austin deli owner Marc Katz. “I’m running for 

lieutenant governor and not running against Katz or 

Earle,” she says. 

iT’s NO sECRET that Texas Democrats have sought 

for years to harness the state’s burgeoning Latino 

vote. Democratic leaders are betting that a Latina 

labor organizer near the top of the ticket will attract 

voters who have felt disenfranchised. Those voters 

will, in turn, boost the Democrats’ strongest prospect 

for winning a statewide office, former Houston 

Mayor Bill White, in the governor’s race. White has 

already made several trips to South Texas; he surely 

wouldn’t mind having Chavez-Thompson at his side. 

Chavez-Thompson, who also serves as a vice chair 

of the Democratic National Committee, rejects the 

idea that her candidacy is about bringing Latino 

votes to White. 

“Hell no,” she says, then stops herself. “I’ve been 

told I need to modify my union tendency to speak 

plainly.” She laughs. “But, heck no. It’s not about me 

being used. I would say I’ve been one of the loudest 

voices in the national party that we need to see more 

faces that look like me running for office.” 

That need is pressing in Texas, where Latinos comprised 

63 percent of population growth in the last 

decade. By 2040, the Latino population is expected to 

triple in metropolitan areas, from 5.9 to 17.2 million. 

In rural areas, the number of Latinos is expected to 

double, from 777,000 to 1.6 million, according to the 

Texas office of Rural Community Affairs. 


WAtch chAVez 

announce her candidacy at 

txlo.com/chavez 

reAD more 

about Marc Katz at 

txlo.com/katz 



leArn more about 

the Chavez campaign 

at txlo.com/lct10 

Juilliard Rejoins 

Texas State University 

for a Common Experience 

in the Arts 

Thursday, March 4, 2010 

7:30 - 9:30 p.m., Evans Auditorium 

(free admission) 

Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas 

www.music.txstate.edu/events 

voter registration among Latinos has grown in the 

state, with 2.4 million registered for the 2008 elections. 

“Demographics are destiny,” says Jerry Polinard, 

a political science professor at the University of Texas- 

Pan American in Edinburg. “If one party gets twothirds 

of the Latino vote, they’ll start winning every 

statewide election.” In 2008, exit polls showed Barack 

obama winning 63 percent of the Latino vote in Texas. 

In 2004, George W. Bush won the majority. 

“At the age of 10 I worked 10 

hours a day, five days a week, 

for 30 cents a day in the hot 

West texas sun. When there 

wasn’t work in the fields, I 

cleaned houses.” 

Many state Democratic leaders were flummoxed in 

2002 when their racially diverse “Dream Team” ticket 

led by wealthy businessman Tony Sanchez failed to 

galvanize Latino voters. Matt Angle is a Democratic 

strategist and director of the Lone Star Project, an 

analysis and fact-checking service. He worked to persuade 

Chavez-Thompson to run and says that in the last 

decade, candidates have realized that a Latino surname 

doesn’t automatically translate into Latino votes. 

“They have a responsibility to communicate to 

voters why they should support them,” he says. “I 

think there is a higher level of understanding of that 

now than in the past.” 

Chavez-Thompson knows that her odds of winning 

are long. No Democrat has won statewide since 1994. 

She began raising money for her campaign only eight 

weeks before the primary. Her goal, she says, is to raise 

$250,000. David Dewhurst, the Republican incumbent 

who awaits the Democratic nominee, has a per- 

The Juilliard School’s best musicians, dancers, and actors in their fourth annual 

collaboration with outstanding performers of Texas State University, directed by alumnus and 

renowned composer, pianist and Juilliard faculty member Dr. Wayne Oquin. 

The program will include theatrical scenes, monologues, music by well-known composers, 

and an Oquin drum solo with original choreography dedicated to the memory of the 

late Martha Nell Holmes. 

sonal fortune of more than $200 million—and strong 

support from big-business interests in the state. 

“If I become the candidate,” she says, “I’m sure 

his contributions will double because people who 

are interested in keeping him in office don’t want 

me in office.” 

Still, Chavez-Thompson’s life story has been about 

accomplishing seemingly impossible goals. The 

daughter of field hands in Lubbock, she was forced to 

drop out of high school during her sophomore year to 

work in the cotton fields and help support her large 

family. Even before that, she says, “I didn’t know what 

it was like to have a summer vacation. At the age of 10, 

I worked 10 hours a day, five days a week, for 30 cents 

a day in the hot West Texas sun. When there wasn’t 

work in the fields, I cleaned houses.” 

In her 20s, Chavez-Thompson married and had 

two children. She left her union office job in Lubbock 

to lobby for workers’ rights at the state Capitol. Then 

she moved to San Antonio. With a clipboard in one 

hand and a baby on a hip, she organized government 

workers in an environment hostile to unions. 

It wasn’t uncommon for workers to snub her, she 

says, not just because she was with a union, but also 

because she was Latina. 

By 1988, she’d become the first Latina to be appointed 

vice president of a seven-state region of the American 

Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. 

With the AFL-CIo losing membership, she focused her 

energies on recruiting women and minorities, which 

had previously made up a tiny slice of the union. Known 

for her negotiating skills, she began to be sought out 

nationally as a speaker and expert on grassroots organizing. 

She was elected executive vice president of the 

union in 1995. In 1997, she was appointed to President 

Bill Clinton’s Race Advisory Board. 

Chavez-Thompson often refers to her hardscrabble 

childhood in her speeches—and now in her 

campaign pitch. “I’m not a millionaire like David 

Dewhurst,” she likes to say. “Most Texans are not 

“If I make it out of the 

primary they are going to label 

me a union goon.” 

millionaires. I know what it’s like to go to work every 

day and try to provide for your family, but the further 

you go the further you get behind. I’ve worked some 

of those bottom-of-the-barrel jobs like hoeing cotton 

and cleaning houses.” 

She knows that her union background will be used 

against her, but says she won’t run away from it. “If I 

make it out of the primary, they are going to label me 

a union goon,” she says. “But if you look at the issues 

I’ve fought for my whole life, it’s about working families 

having a better standard of living. If you have a 

union job, you more than likely have health insurance, 

vacation days and sick leave so you can take a 

day off and not have to worry about how you’ll pay 

your bills at the end of the month. If someone wants 

to hold that against me, then let them.” 

Angle calls Chavez-Thompson a “three-fer candidate: 

She’s a highly accomplished woman, she’s a 


Latina that can resonate with the growing Hispanic 

population in Texas, and she’s someone who is driven 

by public service.” 

She’s still getting used to being a politician. In a back 

room in her campaign headquarters, which doubles as 

a storage area, she answers questions while sitting on 

a folding chair behind a card table. on the wall next to 

her, she’s taped up a picture of her chihuahua-terrier 

mix, Piquin, to personalize the space. She’s fielding calls 

on three cell phones. These days she spends a majority 

of her time on the phone, she says, trying to raise money 

so that she can get out her message statewide. 

“It’s always been easy to raise money for people 

and causes that I believe in,” she says. “But I have 

a really hard time calling people to raise money for 

myself. It’s still a work in progress for me to tell people 

what a wonderful person I think I am and, by the 

way, can they send me money.” 

a FEw NigHTs after our interview, I catch up with 

Chavez-Thompson at the first forum where all three 

Democratic lieutenant governor hopefuls would 

be speaking. The setting is not much fancier than 

her office: a roller rink in East Austin where several 

Travis County Democratic clubs have gathered. While 

other candidates and their staffers mill around the 

lobby, shaking hands and passing out fliers, Chavez- 

Thompson stands by herself in a holding area with 

a few other candidates, awaiting her turn at the 

podium—located near a “skate at your own risk” sign. 

Chances are, she knows, many of the Democrats in 

Austin have never heard of her, while her two opponents 

both live here. 

Marc Katz is the first candidate to speak, drawing 

some laughs when he trots out his oft-repeated joke 

about creating a deli sandwich modeled on Lt. Gov. 

Dewhurst: “It’s baloney on white bread.” Up next, 

Ronnie Earle begins with a lengthy parable about pulling 

children from a river, which eventually morphs 

into a metaphor for the state’s failed social policies. 

Chavez-Thompson doesn’t open with a homespun 

homily or a crowd-pleasing joke. After briefly 

introducing herself, she cuts to the chase, chiding 

Dewhurst. “He’s taking care of the fat-cat lobbyists 

while driving down wages for all of us,” she says. “My 

name is Linda Chavez-Thompson, and I am not a 

dime-store cowboy, and I don’t have the support of 

all the fat-cat lobbyists. ... I plan to be a different kind 

of lieutenant governor.” Then she outlines her platform, 

emphasizing higher education, better skilled 

workers and lower homeowners’ insurance rates. 

In the question period, a woman asks Chavez- 

Thompson how she’ll make the transition from 

labor leader to lieutenant governor. “you’ve got 19 

Republicans and 12 Democrats, so you better know 

how to negotiate,” she says. “I would say, let’s set an 

agenda. Let’s try and build and pass good legislation 

for the benefit of all Texans. And if you want to have a 

catfight, then let’s leave it until the end.” 

The audience applauds as Chavez-Thompson 

steps off the plastic crate she has used to reach the 

microphone. Within minutes, she’s out the door 

and headed back to South Texas, where she hopes 

to convince more skeptical Democrats that there’s 

one more surprising chapter yet to be written in her 

unlikely life story. 

photograph by 

matt Wright-steel 

MR. ClEAn 

Why Ronnie Earle wants to be lieutenant governor 

In his 32 years as Travis 

County district attorney, Ronnie Earle earned a 

national reputation as a prosecutor unafraid to take 

on Texas’ most powerful elected officials. He brought 

charges against 18 politicians, including the current 

Republican candidate for governor, Sen. Kay Bailey 

Hutchison, and—most notably—former U.S. House 

Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Earle once famously filed 

charges against himself for missing a campaign-finance 

report deadline. He paid a $212 fine. 

In December, 11 months after he left his district 

attorney post, Earle filed to run for lieutenant governor. 

The 67-year-old has been running a maverick 

campaign, raising his own money, and working 

without a full-time campaign manager. on March 2, 

he faces Linda Chavez-Thompson (see p. 12) and 

reAD the inDictment 

Earle brought against 

Kay bailey hutchison at 

txlo.com/rekbh 



“I’ve been 

called names 

by both 

Democrats and 

Republicans.” 

reAD molly iVins’ 

take on Earle at 

txlo.com/mire 

see A clip 

of Earle on CbS’s 

60 Minutes at 

txlo.com/re60 

Austin deli owner Marc Katz (see “Katz Being Katz,” 

Jan. 22) in the Democratic primary. The winner will 

square off against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Here are 

excerpts from an interview with Earle by Observer 

investigative reporter Melissa del Bosque. 

TExas OBsERVER: Why do you want to run for 

lieutenant governor? 

RONNiE EaRlE: I didn’t make it a year through my 

retirement before I started getting upset about what 

was going on in Texas state government. I am alarmed 

about the extent that big business and large money 

interests and the lobby influence what happens to the 

people of Texas through the legislative process. 

I believe everyone has an obligation to do what they 

can to make democracy better. That’s my basic belief. 

Democracy is a precious thing that requires everyone’s 

participation to flourish. We ought to do what we can 

to make sure that democracy does not diminish. 

What makes you the best candidate for the job? I have 

more experience in state government than anyone 

else. I was staff assistant in the governor’s office 

under John Connally. I was a municipal judge in 

Austin for some years and worked closely with police, 

and was a member of the Legislature elected to two 

terms [in 1972 and 1974]. I was district attorney 

for 32 years. I have learned a great deal about state 

government—both how it operates and how it should 

operate. I know its failures as well as its successes. I 

know how to make responsible and wise decisions 

about strategies that will take Texas toward prosperity, 

public safety and equal justice under the law. 

Why did the Democratic Party leadership recruit 

Linda Chavez-Thompson to run against you? It 

wasn’t the Democratic Party, it was a small handful 

of party insiders. That’s all I’m going to say about it. 

you are considered a hero by many for having prosecuted 

Tom DeLay. But do you worry that Republican 

senators will consider you too partisan to lead them? 

Will they run for the hills if you become lieutenant 

governor? (Laughs.) Well, the hills of Austin are never 

far away. During the time I was district attorney, I prosecuted 

something like 18 elected officials. Fourteen of 

them were Democrats, and four were Republicans. So 

much for partisan accusations. I’ve been called names 

by both Democrats and Republicans. 

Do you think Republicans might try to strip some of 

the lieutenant governor’s powers if you are elected? 

I’m not concerned about it. I think most Democrats 

and Republicans are tired of hyperpartisan politics. 

Most senators are fair minded and don’t want to part 

so radically from a tradition that has worked well for 

Texas for so many years. 

If Kay Bailey Hutchison were to become governor, 

do you think you could work with her? Well, I can 

work with anyone. The point is, what is in the best 

interest of the general public? That’s been my guide 

for my entire career. you are an employee, and your 

job is to do what is in the best interest of the boss, 

and the public is the boss. 

So you think you could have lunch with Sen. 

Hutchison and say, “Let bygones be bygones and let’s 

work together”? (Laughs.) I don’t do a lot of thinking 

about that. I think most about what would be best 

for the public. And if the public decides to elect Kay 

Bailey Hutchison, then I think it’s best for us to work 

together in the public’s interest. 

Do you worry about your ability to appeal to women 

and minority voters? My record stands on its own in 

terms of my appeal to women and minority voters. 

I’ve been a leader in seeking equal rights for women 

and for minorities throughout my career, in both the 

people I’ve hired and the positions I have taken. 

Do you think your history as a prosecutor in Travis 

County will hurt or help your chances of winning ? 

It will hurt me with the people that don’t like to recognize 

the rule of law, and it will help with people who 

do believe in the rule of law. As I said earlier, I have 

prosecuted far more Democrats than Republicans. 

What I did in office was apply the law, and the law 

criminalizes the abuse of power. For much of my time 

in office, the Democrats held power, which is why 

I have prosecuted more Democrats. My job was to 

prosecute those who broke the law. 

What reforms will you institute to make the Senate a 

more functional and transparent body? It’s ultimately 

up to the Senate. I don’t want to arrive with any preconceived 

notions. I would initiate a dialogue with the senators 

to see if we couldn’t reach a shared conclusion. 

Is there a question that you’ve never been asked that 

you wish a reporter would ask you? Hmm ... let me 

think for a moment. The biggest question right now, 

I think, is since when did a corporation become a 

person? I am referring of course to the recent decision 

by the U.S. Supreme Court [in Citizens United v. 

Federal Election Commission]. I am strongly opposed 

to labor unions or corporations contributing money 

to political campaigns. 


WHEn tHE 

DEMoCRAtS 

RoAMED... 

A look back at the 1972 Democratic primary that changed 

the future of Texas politics. by robert Green 

The primary battle between 

Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Debra 

Medina has exposed deep rifts in the Republican 

Party. The gritty battle between the state’s ruling elite 

is reminiscent of one of the most memorable primary 

battles in Texas history—the 1972 Democratic gubernatorial 

primary. 

The primary came on the heels of one of the 

greatest political scandals in Texas history. During 

a special legislative session in 1969, House Speaker 

Gus Mutscher, aided by Representative Tommy 

Shannon, pushed through passage of new state bank 

deposit insurance legislation that was designed to 

aid a Houston businessman named Frank Sharp. The 

next year, the United States Securities and Exchange 

Commission filed a suit against Sharp that revealed 

that many of the state’s top leaders, including 

Mustscher, Shannon and Gov. Preston Smith, were 

involved in a highly questionable business relationship 

with Sharp. Here’s how it worked: The leaders 

took out loans from Sharp’s bank, bought stocks in 

his company and then sold them for a profit once 

the bill passed through the legislature. (Gov. Smith 

eventually vetoed the legislation, on the advice of the 

state’s bank experts, but not until after he had made 

a profit on the stocks.) During the 1971 legislative 

session, a group of legislators calling themselves the 

Dirty Thirty pushed for Mutscher to resign and for 

the legislature to do its own investigation of the SEC 

allegations. They lost those battles, but managed to 

make Sharpstown the number one political issue in 

the state. Three months before the 1972 primaries, 

Mutscher, Shannon and Mutscher aide Rush McGinty 

were convicted of conspiracy to accept bribes. 

The scandal tarnished almost everyone in power, 

including Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, who only had tangential 

connections to Sharp. Barnes was then a young, 

aggressive and articulate candidate with national 

potential—many expected him to be president 

someday. Barnes blames President Richard Nixon’s 

administration for targeting Texas Democrats, and 

especially Barnes himself. He says Nixon tapes show 

the president telling Attorney General John Mitchell 

that “if you can’t get Barnes involved in the Sharp deal, 

get him involved with something. That’s who I want.” 

If Nixon aimed to tarnish the Texas Democratic 

establishment, he succeeded. Ben Barnes would run 

third in the primary, thus losing his bid for Governor 

and never again run for public office. Gov. Smith ran 

fourth in the primary, and Speaker Mutscher was 

replaced by an interim Speaker.More than half of 

the next Texas House would be new representatives. 

Ethics and reform legislation became a major campaign 

theme of the reformers, and was enacted the 

following session. The Texas Democratic Party took 

a step to the left, and politics in the Lone Star State 

would never be the same. 

Here’s the story of the 1972 Gubernatorial Primary 

told through people at the center of it: 

FRaNCEs “sissy” FaRENTHOlD: Farenthhold was 

a member of the Dirty Thirty, a progressive candidate 

who overcame long odds to become a serious candidate. 

She made it into the runoff against the more conservative 

Briscoe, who defeated her and was eventually 

elected governor. 

BEN BaRNEs: Then-Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes had the backing 

of the Democratic establishment and a promising 

career ahead of him. But he presided over the Senate 

when it passed the Sharp bills and that was enough to 

tarnish him and effectively end his political career. 

maRk wHiTE: Mark White would eventually become 

governor, in 1982. But in 1972 he was an advisor to 

Dolph Briscoe’s campaign. 


gus mutscher, preston 

smith, lyndon Johnson, 

and Ben Barnes, at 

“gus mutscher Day” in 

Brenham, Texas. 

phoTo CoURTESy ThE 

TEXAS STATE LIbRARy AND 

ARChIvES CoMMISSIoN 

heAr the interVieWs 

with barnes, White and 

Farenthold at txlo.com/sharp 

reAD About the chAnGe 

that diversified the Texas house 

in 1972 at txlo.com/newreps 

leArn more About the 

Sharpstown scandal at 

txlo.com/srptn 



Pictured from 

left to right: 

Dolph Briscoe (center right) 

phoTo by pAT vINE 

Ben Barnes phoTo by FRANK 

ARMSTRoNG oF TEXAS 

STUDENT pUbLICATIoNS, INC. 

sissy Farenthold, 

phoTo by ALAN poGUE 

oPPosite Page: 

governor Dolph Briscoe 

delivering the state of the 

state address. 

phoTo by MIRE SMITh phoTo 

reAD oriGinAl 

stories from the Observer 

archives on the 1972 primary 

at txlo.com/to72 

Before sharpstown ruined both 

their careers, the frontrunners 

in the 1972 primary were gov. 

preston smith and lt. gov. Ben 

Barnes. Tensions between the 

two men were running high. 

as a prank, smith’s campaign 

manager Bob Bullock had 

this poster made. 

BaRNEs: The thing just all worked out perfect—for 

Briscoe to have the money to spend on his campaign, 

Farenthold came along, and she was a woman, first 

woman since Ma Ferguson, she was a member of the 

Dirty Thirty—she’d never passed a bill—but it was 

unique and people were mad as hell. People just said 

“by God, they’re all corrupt, let’s get rid of all of ’em.” 

Dolph Briscoe said “I’m gonna wear my boots to 

Austin, because I’m gonna kick those crooks out of 

that Capitol,” and Farenthold said “I’ll make you an 

honest Governor.” The bottom started falling out of 

[my lead in] the polls. 

“It seemed to me that 

someone should be running 

for governor under those 

circumstances, and there 

was no one who was willing 

to take it on.” —fAREntHolD 

FaRENTHOlD: you’d have to look back at the situation 

in the ’71 legislative session, where we had 

started, I felt, the beginning of a reform movement 

in Texas. Some of us that were part of the Dirty 

Thirty would meet and talk about running a slate. A 

mosaic—a rainbow, whatever—long before the term 

was used. I was receiving letters—they were not like 

things from the National Rifle Association, where 

you get all the postcards that look the same—these 

were letters that were written, sometimes painfully, 

on paper that had lines on it, saying that this was 

a time for change in Texas. I knew that, on some 

level, there was an opportunity to develop what we’d 

started during the session. 

It seemed to me that someone should be running 

for governor under those circumstances, and there 

was no one who was willing to take it on. I don’t 

think they were as naïve as I was. They understood: 

They’d all been in the Legislature longer; they 

understood what a massive undertaking it was. 

wHiTE: Gov. Briscoe had been a leader in the agricultural 

industry in Texas for all of his life, and he 

was well known throughout the rural parts of Texas. 

I think a lot of us who live in Houston and in the 

urban areas don’t realize that it’s almost impossible 

to be elected governor of Texas without carrying, or 

at least breaking even, in the counties of rural Texas. 

you could call that his base, and there was just a general 

frustration with state government, rising out of 

Sharpstown. I think there was some arrogance on 

that part of our leadership—they kind of played an 

inside game—their way or no way, and if you weren’t 

on the first team, you didn’t get to play. 

FaRENTHOlD: It was such a different place. I had 

no consultant; I had people that had worked in 

politics, and were familiar with it, whose advice I 

took seriously, but I didn’t attempt to cultivate the 

business community. We ran that race a little under 

a million dollars. you’d be laughed out today with 

that kind of money. 

wHiTE: Barnes had money running out of his ears, 

because he had a lot of big-business financial supporters, 

who had been traditionally conservative 

Democratic supporters. He had the bulk of them 

because he’d known them and because they thought he 

was going to win. [But] three or four weeks out, people 

sitting around in the coffee shops in little towns all 

over Texas are saying “Well, I don’t believe I’m gonna 

be able to vote for so-and-so. I like ol’ Dolph Briscoe, 


he’s a good man, we’ve known him for a long time—he’s 

gonna take care of things down there.” 

BaRNEs: Here’s what [President Lyndon B. 

Johnson] and [Texas Gov. John Connally] told me: 

you’ve got to keep the business community involved 

in the Democratic Party, because if the businessmen 

ever leave the Democratic Party, then, Texas is going 

to go Republican and its going to stay Republican for 

the next 20 or 30 years. Gov. Briscoe was a popular 

guy. But Briscoe didn’t continue to build, he didn’t 

continue to try and bring people and business leaders 

into the party, and they made a hasty exit out of 

the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party. 

I think we saw a turning point in the Democratic 

Party moving to the left—not with Gov. Briscoe’s 

blessings, but it just happened. It happened because 

we weren’t doing the things to keep the businesspeople 

in there. 

FaRENTHOlD: If you look at the records, my 

announcement was on the twenty-sixth page of 

the women’s section of The Dallas Morning News. 

The perception of it certainly changed over time. I 

believed in what I was doing, let me put it at that. I 

remember, we started using a bumpersticker from 

what a cab driver said in Dallas: “I’m voting for that 

woman.” you have to remember that 1972, as far 

as acceptance of women in politics, was a far cry 

from what it is in 2010. At the time, I was the only 

woman in the Texas House, and [Barbara] Jordan 

was the only woman in the Senate, and as slow as 

it’s been in Texas, you can see the change all up and 

down the political list. 

thehiGhtoWerreport 

pERRy’s CORpORaTE wElFaRE sHENaNigaNs 

governors and m ayo r s 

love to win a prize in a 

game called “Corporate 

Welfare Roulette.” 

It’s a sort of casino 

game–politicos throw 

wads of taxpayer cash 

at a corporation as an 

“incentive” for it to 

move to their states and 

create jobs. When they 

“win” one of these bets, 

the politicos convene a 

media event to praise 

themselves for their jobcreation 

prowess. 

Governors and mayors 

hate it when their 

prize reneges and 

fails to deliver the number 

of jobs promised. 

Bad politics. 

Gov. Rick Perry has 

come up with a slick 

trick to fix this problem: 

When one of his 

corporate welfare deals 

doesn’t succeed, he 

redefines success. 

A watchdog group, 

Texans for Public 

Justice, documented 

that many of Perry’s corporate 

giveaways have 

failed to produce the 

job numbers required 

to get taxpayer money– 

and others will come 

up short in the reports 

they’ll file this year. 

So without consulting 

other state officials or 

whispering a word to the 

public, Perry has been 

BaRNEs: The only time I really get mad is when I 

see someone get on television and talk about how 

great we are in Texas. Texas is a great state, with 

great people, but we can do so much better than 

what we’re doing. I don’t ever sit on the edge of my 

seat and say, “I’m gonna jump into the arena again,” 

but sometimes I may sit up erect and say, “I tell you, 

I’m so sorry this happened.” If things had happened 

a little differently, if the winds had blown a little 

differently—maybe it’s false vanity on my part—but I 

think we could have made a difference. 

Robert Green is an observer intern. 

“amending” the terms 

of the deals. 

Such corporate slackers 

as Lockheed Martin 

Corp. and Tyson Foods 

Inc. have been allowed 

to create far fewer jobs 

than promised, count 

part-time jobs as fulltime, 

and even been 

oK’ed to use foreign 

workers rather than 

Texans to meet quotas. 

once his secret “fix” 

was about to be exposed 

by the watchdog, Perry 

rushed out a statement 

insisting nothing was 

amiss. “These contract 

amendments,” he lamely 

declared, “will refresh 

and reinforce the ongo- 

ing relationship between 

the [taxpayers] and these 

private sector partners.” 

Refresh? What happened 

to “a deal is a 

deal?” How oily is 

that? To see the full report 

on this scam, go to 

www.tpj.org. 

—Jim hi g h t o w e r 

FinD more inFormAtion 

on Jim hightower’s work— 

and subscribe to his award- 

winning monthly newsletter, 

The Hightower Lowdown— 

at www.jimhightower.com 


“by God, 

they’re all 

corrupt, let’s 

get rid of all 

of ’em.” 


amaRillO 

phoTo by 

MATT WRIGhT-STEEL 

see An oriGinAl 

video report at 

txlo.com/repent 

daTElINE 

he Who casts the First stone 

by Forrest Wilder 

A little 

The Meads enforced strict rules at the membersonly 

club: no drugs, no single men, no audio-visual 

equipment. Most couples, even ones who had been in 

“the lifestyle” for years, are on a first-name basis only. 

The location of the club is (or was) “to be kept strictly 

private.” So imagine the swingers’ surprise when they 

arrived at their New year’s Eve bash to find two dozen 

protesters, local media in tow, holding signs and singing 

songs. This was a most unwelcome coming-out party. 

ov e r a year ago, amarillo’s s w i n g e r s geared u p 

for their New year’s Eve party at Route 66 Party and 

Event Rental, a downtown business owned by a prominent 

couple, Mac and Monica Mead. Few in this conservative, 

church-heavy city knew about the weekend 

parties, and the swingers liked it that way. “Everybody 

in the lifestyle has to be very, very discreet,” says Mac, a 

leather-skinned truck driver with a shaved head, piercing 

blue eyes and an earring. 

Some protesters, mostly young men in their teens 

and early 20s, wore black hoodies and military fatigues. 

The men, Amarillo would soon learn, were foot soldiers 

of Repent Amarillo, a new, militant evangelical group 

that advertises itself as “the Special Forces of spiritual 

warfare.” Their leader, David Grisham, a security 

guard at nuclear-bomb facility Pantex who moonlights 

as a pastor, explained the action. “We’re here to shine 

the light on this darkness,” Grisham told the Amarillo 


Globe-News. “I don’t think Amarillo knew about this 

place. This is adultery. This is wrong. There’s no telling 

how many venereal diseases get spread, how many 

abortions.” The goal, Grisham says, was not just to save 

the swingers’ souls, but to shut the club down. 

It’s hard for the swingers to drum up powerful allies 

in Amarillo, where real men worship Jesus at one of the 

biggest cowboy churches in the world and conservative 

politics run deeper than the ogallala Aquifer. Citizens of 

Amarillo will tell you, with a certain pride, that their city 

is the biggest little town in Texas. For all the open space, 

it can seem like the walls are closing in. 

For the past year, this Bible Belt city of 200,000 

has been consumed by a culture clash between 

Repent Amarillo and their targets, a list that includes 

everything from gay bars to liberal churches. For the 

Route 66 swingers, Grisham’s “special forces” have 

been a near-constant presence. Jobs have been lost, 

families estranged, assault charges filed and businesses 

shuttered. So far, no public official has stood 

up to defend these businesses, which operate legally. 

To the contrary, Repent Amarillo has managed to 

turn the city’s own laws and employees into an effective 

weapon. Amarillo, it turns out, doesn’t have the 

stomach to stick up for gays, swingers, strippers or 

even Unitarians. Absent a peacekeeper, the conflict 

might end up being settled the old-fashioned way, 

frontier-style. “This will not end until somebody gets 

hurt, either us or them,” one swinger warns. 

ON a CRisp wiNTER NigHT, Mac and Monica Mead 

lounge at the Route 66 club and recount the strangest 

year of their lives. The club consists mainly of 

one room, a clean space with a tiny dance floor and 

some chairs and tables. off to one side is a hallway 

that holds three “playrooms,” each tackily decorated 

according to a different theme: oriental, Egyptian 

(featuring a wall hanging Mac’s son brought back 

from a tour in Iraq), and jungle. There is an eyebolt 

in the ceiling of the Egyptian room. Mac says it’s for 

one of the more popular attractions, a sex swing. Mac 

chokes up a bit explaining how the place has been a 

“home away from home” for many. The swingers are 

a decidedly working-class bunch: truckers, cabbies, 

schoolteachers and tow-truck drivers—hard-working 

couples, mostly married, who, for reasons known 

only to their libidos, enjoy having sex with each other’s 

partners. They’re mostly middle-aged and aren’t 

going to win any beauty pageants. 

A large-screen Tv, which the Meads occasionally 

glance at, displays the surveillance camera on the parking 

lot adjacent to the building. The lot, owned by the 

mayor’s husband, has been the staging area for most 

Repent protests. It’s also used by Route 66 patrons. 

Since the owner hasn’t objected, Repent members 

can use the space, which puts them in direct contact 

with swingers and their vehicles. Repent has been at 

every swinger get-together in the last year—32 times, 

according to Monica’s tally. 

After the New year’s party, Repent tried to get authorities 

to shutter the club, first suggesting to local law 

enforcement that the Meads were running an illegal 

brothel. When the cops showed no interest (on-premises 

sex clubs are legal in Texas), the group filed complaints 

with the fire marshal and the city’s code-enforcement 

division. As in many cities, Amarillo code enforcement 

is primarily complaint-driven. While it makes a certain 

amount of sense to focus on violations being noticed by 

the public, this case shows how easily the system can be 

manipulated. The city did find some minor violations, 

like the lack of separate-sex bathrooms. The club was 

shut down for five months while the Meads sank $20,000 

into bringing the building up to code. 

In June, when the building reopened, Repent 

Amarillo became an almost-constant presence, shouting 

through bullhorns, blasting Christian music, 

haranguing club members, following swingers in vehicles 

and sticking video cameras into people’s faces. The 

Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has been called 

out twice. Police records show that nearby businesses 

have called frequently with noise complaints. Repent 

even showed up on occasion when the Route 66 building 

was rented out for non-swinger events. “They have 

been here every time we open our doors, regardless of 

what kind of functions we have, whether I’m down here 

doing maintenance, cleaning, whatever,” Mac says. 

“They don’t have a life. Well, I guess we are their lives. 

We’re their blood. At three or four in the morning, we’ll 

open the door, and there they are. They come waddling 

out of their vehicles with their cameras.” 

At first, the swinger community was mystified by 

the attention. on the 60-some hours of surveillance 

footage the Meads have, a swinger can be heard telling 

a Repent member that the swingers haven’t done 

anything to bother them.“you’re going to hell, and it 

bothers me,” Grisham responds. “What bothers me is 

you’re going to hell.” 

Perhaps the most insidious tactic Repent uses is 

trying to destroy the reputation of the swingers. In 

Amarillo, people can be ostracized over a whiff of impropriety. 

on one tape, Grisham directs followers to get the 

license-plate numbers in the Route 66 parking lot. “A 

new couple can be here three or four hours,” says Mac. 

“Whenever they leave, the Repent Amarillo group will 

call them by first and last name, know where they live, 

know where they work, just within a very few hours.” 

Randall Sammons says he was fired from his job of 

13 years in August after his boss learned Sammons 

was a swinger from another employee, a Repent 

member. He believes he’s now as good as blacklisted 

in Amarillo. “I’m screwed at finding a job,” Sammons 

says. Russell Grisham, David’s 20-year-old son who 

“We’re here 

to shine the 

light on this 

darkness.” 

Repent amarillo’s 

David grisham, 

“Big John” leinen, 

and Tracy grisham 

phoTo by FoRREST WILDER 

leArn more 

about Repent Amarillo at 

www.repentamarillo.com 


mac and monica mead, 

organizers of the Route 

66 swingers Club 

phoTo by FoRREST WILDER 

leArn more 

about the citizens 

fighting Repent at 

txlo.com/notorepent 

reAD the 

inciDent report 

at txlo.com/potter 

has a conviction on his record for hacking the computer 

system at his high school, has posted the names, 

photos and workplaces of swingers on the Internet, 

including one man whose wife works for a school district. 

(“Family-wise, it will kill both of us,” the man 

says.) In at least two instances, Repent members 

called swingers’ employers. Mac, meanwhile, is still 

far from the come-to-Jesus moment Grisham wants. 

“This group claims to be Christian,” Mac says. “Sir, I 

am a Christian. I believe in the God almighty, but I do 

not treat people the way they treat us or others.” 

In December, the Meads tried to get an Amarillo 

justice of the peace to issue a “peace bond,” which 

would have required Russell Grisham to forfeit 

money posted with the court if he continued threatening 

behavior. The judge, Debbie Horn, said at 

the end of a three-and-a-half hour hearing that she 

didn’t have enough evidence to issue the bond. While 

the authorities’ hands-off attitude is mystifying to 

some in Amarillo, Norris, the city attorney, says the 

city’s inaction is easily explained: Nobody’s done 

anything illegal. “Both camps have pressed my office 

to use the power of government to shut down the 

other one,” he says. “The swingers want me to shut 

down [Repent]. Repent wants me to shut down the 

swingers.” He adds, “The First Amendment is alive 

and well in Amarillo, and Amarillo is strong enough 

to allow everyone to have free speech.” 

It’s debatable whether all of Repent’s actions are 

legal. In January, six Repent members showed up 

at a weekend swingers party at the private home of 

Cristal Robinson, Route 66’s attorney. During the 

party, Robinson says the group trespassed on her 

property and tried to block cars from entering the 

driveway. She called the police. Sheriff’s deputies 

showed up, followed not long after by a state trooper. 

The two law-enforcement groups apparently had different 

ideas about how to handle Repent, according to a 

Potter County incident report. The state trooper took 

photographs of the Repent vehicles and filled out suspicious 

activity cards, which go to the state’s intelligence 

center. The deputies, on the other hand, dismissed 

Robinson’s account and left Repent to carry on. 

Meanwhile the trooper stayed nearby. Deputies 

later received a report that the DPS trooper was 

“harassing” Repent. The deputies returned to find 

four “extremely upset” Repent members. “Big John” 

Leinen complained to the deputies that the trooper 

had treated them “like some sort of terrorist group.” 

Grisham claimed that the trooper had assaulted one 

of his people and broke a piece off the group’s video 

camera. The trooper told deputies he had observed 

Repent going through Robinson’s dumpster and 

asked why the deputies “didn’t write the protestors 

[sic] a citation for ‘disturbing the peace’.” The deputy 

answered, “because they aren’t disturbing the 

peace.” Deputies asked the trooper to leave, and no 

tickets were issued. 

The swingers were mystified: How did Repent find 

out about the party? The invited guests had been 

carefully screened; the event hadn’t been advertised 

online; and Robinson’s home is miles outside 

of town. Grisham claims he has an “inside source” 

but will say nothing more. With law enforcement on 

the sidelines, swingers have retaliated in other ways. 

Assault charges are pending against Monica Mead 

after Russell Grisham claimed he was assaulted outside 

the club. Mead contends she accidentally fell 

into Grisham. Charges were also filed against swinger 

Phillip Roark, who admits to slapping a video camera 

held by Russell Grisham. 

Meanwhile, Repent has put the Meads on the 

brink of bankruptcy. Since the protests started last 

year, the Route 66 building has been rented just 

three times, forcing the couple to put it up for sale. 

For Repent, God had delivered a victory. The group 

snatched up a Web site the Meads had let lapse, 

Route66SwingersClub.com, and turned it into a call 

for “adulterers” to “Repent or Perish!” 

iF iT wEREN’T FOR the giant wooden cross over the 

porch, the Grisham house would be indistinguishable 

from the other middle-class homes on the quiet street. 

Inside, visitors are greeted by a tidy, if somewhat shabby, 

interior. I interview Grisham and his fourth wife, Tracy, 

a pleasant, moon-faced woman whose bangs hang in her 

eyes, and Leinen, who asked to videotape our interview. 

Later, several men in their teens and early 20s show up 

dressed in camouflage pants. They sit staring at laptops 

and don’t say much. 

In person, Grisham is friendly and polite. “I was 

a sexual sinner before I got saved. I got saved seven 

years ago. Prior to that–yeah, I’ve been to strip joints 

and porn shops. I’ve done all kinds of things,” he says. 

“We understand the destructive power of sin firsthand. 

We’ve lived it. We’ve walked in those shoes.” 

These days he’s celebrating Repent’s victory over the 

swinger’s club. “We felt it was like the tip of the spear 

for sexual immorality for the devil in Amarillo,” 

he says. “So we went after that specifically, and we 

exposed it so it would wither and die. And it has.” 

Repent has made it clear that its crusade won’t end 

with the swingers. Last January, community theater 

group Avenue 10 was set to open Bent, a play about the 

persecution of homosexuals during Nazi Germany. 

The day before opening night, the fire marshal, police 

and code enforcers showed up, tipped off by a Repent 

associate, according to Sirc Michaels, co-founder of 

the theater. Avenue 10 didn’t have the right permit for 

holding events, and the space was shut down. 

What’s next for Repent? They’ve posted a “Warfare 

Map” on the group’s Web site. The map includes 

establishments like gay bars, strip clubs and porn 

shops, but also the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. 

Repent believes the 600-acre prairie park’s Walmartfunded 

“Earth Circle,” used for lectures, is a Mecca 

for witches and pagans. Also on the list are the 806 

coffeehouse (a hangout for artists and counterculture 

types), the Islamic Center of Amarillo (“Allah is 

a false god”), and “compromised churches” like Polk 

Street Methodist (gay-friendly). 

As I’m preparing to leave the Grisham house, 

Russell announces that CNN has called and asked 

for a live interview. In January, Repent caused a stir 

when the group rolled out BoycottHouston.com, 

a Web site that urges economic sanctions against 

Houston because the mayor is gay and a large Planned 

Parenthood building is being built. In the Bible, Jesus 

commands his disciples to spread the good news of 

the gospel throughout the nations. It remains to be 

seen whether Pastor Grisham’s slightly less uplifting 

message will resonate outside the High Plains. 


ill Minutaglio is a clinical 

professor of journalism at 

UT-Austin. he has written 

for the Dallas Morning 

News, The New York 

Times, Esquire, Newsweek 

and others. his new book, 

In Search of The Blues, 

will be published in April. 

the media 

failed to 

connect the 

breaking news 

in Haiti to the 

land grabs, 

industrial 

exploitation, 

and 

dictatorships 

that the united 

States had 

supported for 

decades. 

WAtch A ViDeo 

about the history of 

haiti at txlo.com/haiti 

BIll mINUTaglIO 

stAte oF the meDiA 

no Foundation 

Wh e n i w a s reportin g years ago in nicaragua and 

traveling with a squad of Sandinista soldiers, a 

weary woman in a village in the middle of a battle 

zone told me that I had “the face of a priest.” 

That didn’t necessarily mean that she liked me. 

After years of war, neglect and poverty, she had 

grown skeptical of newcomers, including priests 

coming to relay her impoverished reality to a 

higher power. 

I told her I was a reporter, but that didn’t erase the 

look of aching resignation on her face. History, no 

doubt, constantly reaffirmed her suspicions—here 

was another liberal anthropologist, this one posing as 

a member of the media, who had hacked through the 

jungle to study her. Like another sanctimonious ghost, 

another false promise, he’d be gone in a few days. 

It wasn’t hard to see that same resignation in the 

media moments emerging from this year’s Haitian 

nightmare. The parallels to Katrina and New orleans 

are not to be ignored: A natural disaster hits a region 

that—because it has been designed by slavery and 

racism—is filled with people acutely aware of their 

place in the caste system. 

And like Katrina and New orleans, the media 

faced a crucial debate: how to convey the symptomatic, 

grisly, turmoil…and how to hover above it and 

give the long, contextual (and, yes, condemning) 

view of Haiti’s wretched evolution. How to connect 

the breaking news to the land grabs, exploitation 

and dictatorships that the United States had supported 

for decades. Haiti was vulnerable long before 

the earthquake struck, and its history is almost a 

perfect microcosm of the lingering ruin left in the 

wake of super-powers hell bent on cornering the 

market on…you name it…sugar, spices, cotton and 

human beings. It was almost a pet phrase in the 

media for years and years—“poorest nation in the 

Western hemisphere.” 

A nonscientific view of the Texas media’s coverage 

of Haiti suggests plenty of symptomatic “first 

responder” coverage—the front-page images of bodies 

and snaking lines for food and water. And the usual 

scrambles to find “local” angles (Texans who perished 

in Haiti, Texans tied to the adoption of Haitian children, 

Texans doing relief work—often through church 

groups). The challenge, of course, was simply being 

able to hold a mirror to the immediate reality. 

“I give reporters a pass,” says John Burnett, the veteran 

Texas-based correspondent for National Public 

Radio, who just returned from Haiti. “Logistically, 

just getting around the shattered capital, finding officials 

who knew something, and holding one’s emotions 

in check were a challenge every day. 

“As in New orleans after Katrina, it was the journalists 

that alerted the world that this is a bad one. 

Send help. And when the aid agencies and the U.S. 

government assured us that help was on the way, the 

journalists showed that it might be on the way, but 

it wasn’t getting to the squalid tent camps where it 

was desperately needed. The aid distribution was 

paralyzed by disorganization, violent crowds, lack 

of security and inadequate supplies. So I guess I feel 

like we did our job.” 

The images on Tv were especially ceaseless and 

grinding, and millions of Americans sent money to 

help. But could the media have done more to affix 

blame for the conditions in pre-earthquake Haiti? 

“What’s largely missing…has been the analysis,” 

says veteran Texas journalist and author R.A. “Jake” 

Dyer, who has reported extensively in Haiti. 

“The public has a voracious appetite for constant 

Web updates, and so the pressure on reporters to produce 

fresh copy has been enormous. Making the call to 

remove a reporter from the daily action … and instead 

allow that reporter to spend several days or a week on 

analysis—that’s a very difficult call for an editor.” 

Now the story has moved on. In Houston, the 

erudite Gabrielle Cosgriff—who has written many 

crusading editorials in the Houston Chronicle—had 

a stinging indictment. She perused her regular 

daily newspapers on the first Friday in February— 

and found that they had confined almost all their 

coverage to the American missionaries accused of 

child trafficking. 

“So, apart from the American connection,” she 

wrote to me, “we’re done with Haiti, knowing little 

more than that a terrible natural disaster occurred, 

God knows how many people died, and a poor country 

is now even poorer.” 


cUlTURE 

CRiTiC’s NOTEBOOk 

blood and noodles 

by Josh rosenblatt 

yan Ni, xiao shenyang in 

A Simple Noodle Story 

phoTo CoURTESy bERLIN 

FILM FESTIvAL 

A Simple 

noodle Story 

is another 

product of 

topsy-turvy 

cinematic 

globalization. 

WAtch a trailer of A 

Simple Noodle Story 

at txlo.com/noodle 

back in 1984, t w o unknown ironists 

from Minnesota made one of the 

quintessential Texas movies. In Blood 

Simple, the Coen brothers captured 

the spirit of our state by showing that 

its wide-open spaces weren’t merely 

excuses for great cinematography, but 

symbols of a pervasive existential vacancy. Blood Simple 

is a study in isolation that uses the vastness of the West 

Texas flatlands to show just how small and alone we are. 

This week, legendary Chinese director Zhang 

yimou is screening his remake of Blood Simple at the 

Berlin Film Festival. To Western audiences, Zhang is 

most famous for directing the colossal opening ceremony 

at the 2008 Beijing olympics and opulent, 

color-coordinated martial-arts epics like Curse of the 

Golden Flower. He’s most in his element when shooting 

elaborately choreographed fight scenes involving 

thousands of extras flying through chrysanthemum 

fields. So it’s a little strange that his latest, A Simple 

Noodle Story, is a remake of a stark, ink-black film 

noir about a West Texas bar owner who hires a private 

investigator to kill his wife and her lover. 

Such is the nature of our incredible shrinking 

world of international film, where the cross-pollination 

of ideas and cultures leads moviemakers to 

reinvent stories from other continents. For years, 

American studios have been tempting Asian filmmakers 

like Ang Lee and John Woo to Hollywood 

while stealing shamelessly from other Asian directors 

like Hideo Nakata and Wai-keung Lau. Before 

that, John Sturges stole from Akira Kurosawa, who 

himself transformed John Ford’s Westerns into 

something unmistakably Japanese. A Simple Noodle 

Story is another product of this topsy-turvy cinematic 

globalization: a Chinese filmmaker famous for 

his humorless ancient soap operas filming an absurd 

slapstick remake of a dead-serious Texas film noir 

made by two Jewish absurdists from Minnesota. 

To put his stamp on Blood Simple, Zhang has moved 

the action from a saloon in 1980s West Texas to a noodle 

shop in the desert of China. The movie’s themes are still 

there—jealousy, greed, lust, self-delusion, self-destruction—but 

now they’re set against the backdrop of a culture 

in which the communal is more important than 

the individual. Gone is the original’s tone of suffocating 


cosmic isolation, replaced by a frenetic slapstick sense 

of humor that explodes into choreographed hip-hop 

dance numbers on a whim, as if the film’s heroes are 

hoping that clanging noise and elaborate group spectacle 

might keep despair away. The transformation, I 

think, boils down to the difference between American 

and Chinese culture: Where the Coen brothers view 

tragedy as a likely consequence of detached individualism 

run amok, Zhang sees it as the price we pay for wandering 

through the world together. 

Ironically, the result is a movie less likely to appeal 

to American audiences than Zhang’s other Chinese 

epics. But Zhang knows the best way to pay homage 

to a movie as steeped in cultural and geographical 

idiosyncrasy as Blood Simple is by replacing the culture, 

changing the geography and running off madly 

in the opposite direction. That’s how you turn something 

you love into something your own. 

BOOk REViEw 

star power 

by steven G. Kellman 

th o u g h h e r h u s b a n d, me lv y n dou glas, 

appeared in more than a hundred movies, 

earning two oscars, and though 

she was one of the most popular 

stage actresses of her time during the 

golden age of American theater, Helen 

Gahagan Douglas loathed performing 

before a camera. “I knew on the first day that motion 

pictures were not for me,” she recalls. Her only film 

was the 1935 camp classic She, and Douglas’s performance 

in the title role served as inspiration for the 

Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

Helen Gahagan Douglas found a more meaningful 

role as a plucky politician who defied McCarthyism 

and broke the gender barrier. A celebrity Democrat, 

she cleared the path to Washington for Republicans 

Ronald Reagan, George Murphy, Shirley Temple Black 

and Sonny Bono. “To be the first Hollywood personality 

making a foray into national politics was daring,” writes 

Sally Denton. “To be the first female movie star to do so 

was audacious.” Audacious and vivacious, Douglas was 

one of nine women in Congress when she took her oath 

of office in 1945, almost 40 years before Barbara Boxer, 

Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Dianne Feinstein. In 

1950, she became the first woman in California history 

to run for the U.S. Senate. She was defeated by a hungry 

young congressman named Richard Nixon in a smear 

campaign that provided lessons in toxicology to Lee 

Atwater and Karl Rove. Exploiting Cold War hysteria, 

Nixon branded Douglas, an anti-Communist liberal, “the 

Pink Lady.” Douglas was “pink right down to her underwear,” 

declared Nixon, who in turn earned the enduring 

epithet “Tricky Dick” that she bestowed on him. 

Denton borrows generously from Douglas’ posthumously 

published autobiography, A Full Life (1982). 

In it, Douglas attempts to dispel rumors that, because 

of long separations caused by her work in Washington 

and her husband’s in Hollywood, their marriage had 

become a fiction. “That was untrue,” she insists. “In fact, 

the reality was exactly the opposite ... . When you truly 

the pinK lADy: 

the mAny liVes oF helen 

GAhAGAn DouGlAs 

By Sally Denton 

NEW yoRK, bLooMSbURy 

2009, 256 pp., $26 

BEcOmE aN 

OBSERVER PaRTNER 

INVEST IN ThE NEw 

TExaS OBSERVER 

why should you become an Observer partner? 

Aside from the benefits you receive when you join, 

you will help found a new era of journalism 

and discourse from The Texas Observer and 

be part of a new progressive dialogue on 

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pick your level 

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Give what you can and enjoy the benefits. 

And we’ll list your name on our Web site as an 

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For more information on Observer partner levels 

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email Julia austin at austin@texasobserver.org, 

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WAtch An interVieW 

with author Sally Denton 

at txlo.com/pink 

Supporting The Texas Observer 

with every transaction. 

You Know Me 

(with a few degrees of separation) 

Get real estate help 

from someone you know. 

Call me today! 

YZ 

The Kinney Company, 

Real Estate Services, Austin, TX 

www.thekinneycompany.com 

love someone, you’re bound to that person whether you 

are with him or not.” Denton takes pains to show that, 

though the Douglases remained married and amicable 

for almost 50 years, for most of that time, after Helen 

discovered Melvyn’s infidelity with a co-star, “their 

marriage was platonic.” Denton reports that Helen 

became romantically involved with Lyndon Johnson 

and British diplomat Philip Noel-Baker. Despite its 

author’s reticence about her erotic attachments, A Full 

Life offers a fuller life than Denton’s chatty profile. 

Subtitled The Many Lives of Helen Gahagan 

Douglas, Denton’s book traces its subject’s avatars 

through acting, singing and politics. The Pink Lady 

begins with Helen Gahagan’s privileged childhood as 

the pampered daughter of a wealthy New york engineer. 

Though a Broadway debut at 22 transformed 

her into a star, she abandoned a successful acting 

career to pursue opera. She did not vote in the decisive 

election of 1932, but the plight of migrant workers 

in California shocked her into crusading against 

conditions described in The Grapes of Wrath. Despite 

a Republican pedigree, she became a member of the 

Democratic National Committee and a friend of 

Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, on whose behalf 

she delivered more than 250 speeches. After three 

terms in Congress, during which she sponsored legislation 

on employment, housing, collective bargaining, 

cancer research, education, the minimum wage, 

health insurance and Social Security, Douglas made 

her failed bid for the Senate. Her appointment by 

Harry Truman as an alternate delegate to the nascent 

United Nations resulted in what Denton describes as 

“the most rewarding personal and political experience 

of her lifetime.” Until her death, in 1980 at 79, 

Larry Hurlbert, Realtor © 

512.431.5370 

LarryHurlbert@gmail.com 

The Kinney Company 

she was active in nuclear disarmament, environmental 

protection and women’s rights. 

Denton deplores the fact that marriage to a Jew 

made Douglas the target of anti-Semitic attacks. yet, 

without explanation or documentation, Denton hints 

at an alleged cabal of West Coast Jews, “the Kosher 

Nostra,” that she claims “would ultimately demolish” 

Douglas. Attentive to the 1950 Senate campaign, 

covered in detail by Greg Mitchell’s Tricky Dick and 

the Pink Lady (1998), Denton skimps on other contests. 

She notes that in her first race to represent 

California’s 14th Congressional District, Douglas 

“narrowly defeated her opponent by less than four 

thousand votes,” but neglects mentioning who that 

opponent was. Like Jerry voorhis, whom Tricky Dick 

defamed to gain a seat in the House, Helen Gahagan 

Douglas was an early entry on Nixon’s victims list. She 

deserves to be remembered for more. 

Contributing writer Steven G. Kellman teaches at the 

University of Texas at San Antonio. 

Where Do you 

DrAW the line? 

olupero r. Aiyenimelo 

At what point did you draw the line? 

Was it before or after you crossed over it? 

Was it on the way to Gerry Mander’s place, 

the texAs obserVer (ISSN 0040-4519/USPS 541300), entire contents copyrighted © 2010, is published biweekly except during April, July, October and December, when 

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or before grandfather’s clause dug into your conscience? 

Like two kids on the playground, 

did you redraw it every time they got closer to you 

or did you draw it underneath words 

used to force them back? 

Did you curve it and put a dot underneath 

to question the credentials of those 

who had the “nerve” to cross over? 

or did you just ram the line down their throats 

and use the point at the end to deny them access? 

Did you make the line disappear when 

they had something you wanted, 

or was it their minds that were playing tricks 

when you handed them a line 

and they sneezed away their land? 

Olupero R. Aiyenimelo is a writer, poet, activist 

and researcher living in San Antonio. 


All texans 

need to 

impress 

new Yorkers 

is a little 

subject-verb 

agreement, 

a smattering 

of knowledge 

about culture 

and current 

events, a 

wardrobe with 

lots of black, 

and most of 

your teeth. 

RUTH PENNEBakER 

urbAn coWGirl 

still Dancing With Who brung me 

i 

n 

new york, i often g et “t h e look” w h e n i talk to people i don’t know 

well. “oh!” they say. “you’re from ... Texas.” Their eyes sweep over me, 

as if they’re examining the contents of my mind and heart. “Texas,” they 

repeat and nod. “Well. Texas.” yes, I’m from Texas. Being a Southern 

female of a certain age, I’m polite and tactful. I can’t shake those qualities. 

Truth is, I don’t want to shake them. So I don’t say what I’m thinking. 

Which is: Isn’t it odd that the last acceptable prejudice in this country is 

toward white Southerners? Isn’t prejudice of any kind unacceptable in 

the 21st century? Precisely how much time have you spent among us, 

the ones who talk slow, can’t drive on ice, threaten to secede, and keep our white 

sheets clean for late-night cross-burnings? 

But wait. Now I’m sounding defensive. Nothing’s 

worse than being defensive. It shows how insecure you 

are. God forbid. 

The fact is, if you’re a Texan, New yorkers are easy 

to impress. All you need is a little subject-verb agreement, 

a smattering of knowledge about culture and 

current events, a wardrobe with lots of black, and 

most of your teeth. They’re enchanted and dazzled. 

They hint that you, too, could become one of them. 

you could, as I’ve been assured, “escape from Texas.” 

How do I convince them I don’t want to escape? 

How do I explain my stubbornly rooted love for the 

place and the people—the broad horizons; the scraggly 

mesquite trees; the flat, familiar drawls; the sense 

of identity; the insanity of the politics; the color; 

the food; the music; the friendliness, the ridiculous 

pageantry of football games; even the swell of organ 

music playing Amazing Grace in churches when I’m 

a certifiable agnostic? I can’t explain it. I can only 

think of George Patton musing about war: “God help 

me, I love it so.” 

you can’t choose who you are or what you love. Let’s 

say you’re an irreverent, educated liberal who likes to 

read books. For some reason, you’re in love with a conservative, 

religious state where people believe in Adam 

and Eve, original sin and bad apples. And where people 

tend to be born more than once and vote Republican. 

If so, you and your beloved are in for a life of conflicts. 

Love, hate, anger, amusement, outrage, yin and yang— 

everything but boredom and indifference. If you want 

tranquility and a love object that mirrors you, you can 

always move to Massachusetts or the Bay Area. Good 

lord, that sounds dull. 

Recently my husband and I went to see part-time 

Austinite Sandra Bullock’s movie, The Blind Side. The 

plot is the true story of a rich, white Memphis family 

that takes in a young, poor black kid and changes his 

life. He succeeds in school and becomes a sports phenomenon 

and professional football player. 

It’s a nice, feel-good story that left the two of us 

talking about our lives and values and how we needed 

to be doing more work for the community we live in. 

Maybe it’s a little simplistic, but so what? 

Then I read some of the movie’s criticisms by the 

New york and national media. “The Blind Side the 

movie peddles the most insidious kind of racism, one 

in which whiteys are virtuous saviors, coming to the 

rescue of African Americans who become superfluous 

in narratives that are supposed to be about them,” said 

the Village Voice, adding that “Bullock’s facile Good 

Christian Materialist Southern Woman is part of The 

Blind Side’s desperate cynicism ...” 

Typical, I thought. The South and Southerners 

and their religion can never catch a break in the 

national media. 

Then my husband and I watched the tragic BCS 

Bowl, Colt McCoy’s injury and UT’s defeat. McCoy, 

who speaks about Jesus Christ like he was on a 

Longhorn scholarship too, raised his eyes to the stadium 

lights and said it (The game! The injury! The 

defeat!) was all part of God’s plan. 

oh, great. Just another good old Texas boy handdelivering 

the rest of the world another reason to 

laugh at us, to give us “the look,” since we all seem to 

think God spends his days and nights planning the 

outcome of college football games. 

I mean, doesn’t Colt know? God, in his infinite wisdom, 

is a college basketball guy. 


“When 

Washington 

came calling,” 

Palin fibbed, 

“he told ‘em 

thanks but 

no thanks.” 

BOB mOSER 

purple stAte 

Wolves in populist clothing 

they emerged from the back of the arena, the h a n d s o m e beaming 

couple, air-handshaking their way along barricades erected 

to allow easy passage for the dignitaries. “Realtors for Perry” 

signs bobbed joyfully in front of the stage. other audience 

members whooped and stomped and waved signs, made to 

look “homemade” and scattered around the arena by Gov. Rick 

Perry’s campaign: “Texas is Succeeding,” “Texas values/Proven 

Leadership,” “Woman for Perry,” “Homescholers for Perry” 

(yes, the second “o” was missing). 

Perry was brimming with vigor, flashing back to 

those yell-leader days at A&M, looking like he might 

commence a “P-A-L-I-N” cheer at any time. Former 

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, fresh off her palm-reading 

episode at the national Tea Party Convention, was 

smirkingly aloof and resplendent in a lush blackvelvet 

coat, reddish suede boots and a bodacious turquoise 

necklace from which dangled a cross. 

Ladies and gentlemen, here are your populists! 

Sigh. I still can’t help thinking, when I hear that 

good old “populist” word, that it still ought to mean 

what it once did in Texas and the rest of the South. 

The sort of thing that Lawrence Goodwyn quotes in 

his classic book, The Populist Moment, when a member 

of Texas’ seminal populist uprising, the Farmers’ 

Alliance of the 1880s, says this: “we have an overproduction 

of poverty, barefooted women, political 

thieves and many liars. There is no difference 

between legalized robbery and highway robbery. ... If 

you listen to other classes, you will have only three 

rights ... to work, to starve, and to die.” 

Now, that sounds like populism to me. But there are 

two sides to what passes for populism in Texas today, 

and neither one bears the slightest resemblance to 

the anti-corporate, progressive, biracial roots of 

that word. So much so, in fact, that even a corporate 

shill like Rick Perry or a one-person corporation like 

Sarah Palin gets to claim the populist mantle. 

you’ll recall how Perry lit out for the Tax Day tea 

parties last April and proceeded to wind back the 

clock to 1963 with his cries for states’ rights and his 

tantalizing hints about secession. But since then, the 

governor’s tea-party credentials have suffered, as 

he’s been avoiding rallies, dodging questions about 

nullification and secession, defending his corporate 

giveaways and his Trans-Texas Corridor “land grab.” 

He’s mostly dropped his 2009 talk about state sovereignty, 

too, replacing it with a Reaganesque message: 

“Washington is awful, and Texas is dandy!” 

“Who thinks the answer is less Washington and 

more Texas?” Perry asked the crowd at Cypress’ 

Berry Center, going about as deep as he was willing 

to go. 

Whoooo! they answered, on cue. 

Palin, with a nod to her own most famously dishonest 

claim, said of Perry: “When Washington came 

calling, he told ‘em thanks but no thanks.” It was a 

reference to the federal stimulus money that Perry 

protested but, for the most part, accepted and used to 

balance the state budget. It had about as much “truthiness” 

to it as Palin’s claim about her opposition to 

Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere.” 

The latest outburst of populist fervor in Texas was 

on display the Saturday before the Palin-Perry show 

in a car lot in Cleburne. Folks there supporting Debra 

Medina’s insurgent campaign have rejected Perry and 

Palin’s populist posturing. (See my profile of Medina, 

“The People’s Republican,” on p. 6.) Unfortunately, 

Medina’s platform revolves around eliminating the 

property tax and replacing it with a sales tax—a fundamentally 

regressive idea that surely has the original 

populists tossing in their graves. 

“Debra, I believe she wins the people’s hearts 

because she is nearest to the people,” Antoinette 

Walker, a native of Spain and right-wing blogger. “She 

is honest, she is bold, and she says what she needs to 

say, and that’s what people want to hear. Because we 

are tired of listening to—to—” 

Her friend, Deborah Teselle of the Fort Worth 912 

group, jumped in: “—to the normal rhetoric. They 

think they can get away with—” 

Walker: “—it’s the slickness. They think they can 

say one thing and mean something else. you want to 

tell us we are doing bad and we have to work hard to 

make things good, just tell us. We are looking for honesty. 

Don’t tell us everything is roses. If somebody 

says it’s all nice, and this is the best state, and this and 

that—it’s a lie. It’s a lie.” 


eye on texAs brandon thibodeaux 

FreAK shoW San Antonio, Texas 

“Freak is a relative term. By definition 

it denotes something or 

someone that is unusual or markedly 

different. I guess I’m a freak in 

a way, as we all are. Documenting 

the tour of the Dallas-based freak 

show Hellzapoppin, I’ve seen an 

openness to being oneself, free 

from the restraints of societal normal. 

It’s healthy, like a vitamin; we 

should all have our daily dose.” 

See more of Brandon Thibodeaux’s 

work at www.texasobserver.org/ 

eyeontexas. CALL FOR ENTRIES: 

Seeking Texas-based documentary 

photography that captures the 

strangest state. Please send inquiries 

to may@texasobserver.org. 


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