[Chris Bell is a former Democratic Congressman from Houston who filed the ethics complaint against Tom DeLay in 2004. He is currently exploring the race for Governor of Texas]
The 79th Session of the Texas Legislature that concluded last week will long be remembered for its failures – the Republican majority’s failure to govern, Rick Perry’s failure to lead, and a collective failure of vision on the part of the partisans and ideologues in Austin. Rick Perry came into this session with a GOP-dominated Legislature and a mandate – from both the voters and from the courts – to revitalize a public education system that has been declared unconstitutional. Moreover, he came into this session with a golden opportunity to capitalize on the statewide focus on public education by proposing real, substantive reforms and making the investments necessary to support them.
He of course failed to achieve a school finance solution. But as the Dallas Morning News pointed out, the real failure occurred long before the last-minute negotiations broke down; it occurred when Rick Perry decided that no real investment in education was necessary and that this whole debate should be reduced to a discussion of property tax reform.
All of the education experts I’ve been talking to in the past few months have said that for all the shortcomings of our public schools, one major push from Austin could still put our schools back on track to being among the best in the country. Rick Perry’s inability to piece together even a bare minimum fix was an embarrassing failure of leadership, but his unwillingness to even consider bold new solutions was an equally unforgivable failure of vision.
The fruits of these failures are all too visible as we look around the state. We see it in the thousands of kids who have been kicked off the CHIP rolls, in the hundreds of kids who have died of abuse and neglect because Child Protective Services is too underfunded to protect them, in graduation rates and SAT scores that continue to lag well behind national averages.
This isn’t the Texas that I had the privilege of growing up in, nor is it the Texas I want my two young boys to grow up in. And if there’s anything that we can take from this past legislative session, it’s that Rick Perry is simply not up to the task of getting things moving back in the right direction.
Those of you who visit my website regularly are probably aware that we’ve launched a fundraising drive to raise $30,000 online by midnight on June 15. The deadline coincides with the first anniversary of the ethics complaint I filed against Tom DeLay last year, but the focus of this fundraising drive is looking forward, not backwards. The purpose of this drive is not only to raise funds. Certainly every dollar makes a big difference this early in the game, but just as importantly, this fundraising drive will also be an early indicator of whether Texas is ready for the type of campaign I want to run.
I want to run a campaign that captures the energy and the vision of the true grassroots, the mainstream Texans who aren’t content to sit idly by while Rick Perry’s failed leadership erodes decades of progress and growth. I want to run a campaign that draws all Texans into a true conversation about what direction we want for our state. And I want to run a campaign that firmly rejects the closed door, smoke-filled room politics of the old Democratic Party and fully realizes the potential of the new Democratic grassroots.
I launched this exploratory campaign because I needed to answer some fundamental questions before deciding whether to commit fully to this race, a decision I plan to announce in July. The first of these questions concerns Democratic viability in a statewide election, and that question has been answered resoundingly as everyone from Texas Monthly to former Republican Governor Bill Clements has started talking openly about the prospects of a Democratic revival in 2006. But the question I now need to answer is whether this growing Democratic grassroots has the numbers, the strength, and the commitment necessary to sustain a campaign through the fight ahead.
That’s why I need to make a hard ask right now for you to help us reach our goal. The house parties that are being organized around the state to take place on June 12th are the heart of this online fundraising drive, but for those of you unable to attend or host a house party this Sunday, I still need your help today. I have every confidence that the progressive netroots is going to be the heart and soul of this campaign to give Texas a new direction. For this to happen, we need to send a clear signal around the state that you’re engaged and committed for the fight ahead.
This is rather uncharted territory for Democratic statewide campaigns in Texas. Netroots progressives have begun to notch a few victories in local and legislative races around the state, but no statewide campaign has yet won by fully engaging this emerging community. With your help, we can change that in 2006.
I will look forward to visiting with you during the house parties this Sunday.
