David Van Os Conference Call

“There is no reason for pessimism and defeatism among Democrats in this state. We can win this state.  Give up that belief that we can’t win and give yourself permission to believe that we can do it. The time is ripe for an underdog ticket to turn things upside-down.”

—David Van Os

Texas bloggers just completed a great conference call with David Van Os, Democratic candidate for Texas Attorney General.

David is an attorney and long-time progressive activist who has done a great deal over the past decade to get out our party’s message as a candidate and as an actiist—much of which he doesn’t get nearly enough credit for.

On the call, David discussed his priorities as Attorney General and his campaign strategy, and took questions from bloggers.

He noted that his campaign and his grassroots “Whistle Stop” tour are going well and getting out his message.

“Things are just really going fantastic. People are so hungry for change. They are hungry for the political process to open back up,” Van Os said.

He also commented extensively on strategies for Democrats to recapture Texas’ immense rural vote.

“I believe the key to taking back Texas for Democrats is repenetrating the rural vote. If we go back out to it and talk to people in a way that shows that we are there to fight for them and that makes it obvious to them that the Democratic party is not some elitist [organization] in a Massachusetts ivory tower, they’re going to come back big,” he noted.
“I am absoultley convinced that Hank Gilbert and I are going to win and I think the whole ticket can win. People in the countryside are talking about us,” he continued.

“Rural Texas is vast; there is more small-town Texas than ’small-town’ any other state in the country. When you spend 15 years telling people “we don’t think we need your votes,” or telling people, “we don’t expect you to vote for us,” what do you expect them to do? But, they will vote for us.”

“In one election cycle, it can’t be turned around completely, nor can a mathematical majority of it be turned around. We don’t need all their votes, we need about an 8-10 percent cross over of people who have been voting Republican to vote Democrat, that gives you 16 to 20 percent swing. I believe that some of us ae absolutley going to win and we can all win.”

David also commented on the immense backlash against the Bush/Perry Republican machine among many in rural areas:

“In the Bush/Perry rural political base, a huge portion of the people are very frustrated and unhappy. A considerable portion of [those people] are just plain mad—they’re madder than hell. First of all, they see the Bush drive to extinguish checks and balances between the separate branches of government, this drive to create the Executive power that’s above the other branches of government. People do see that and it makes them real uncomfortable.”

“There’s also the Trans Texas Corridor which, by itself, is a huge wedge right through the Republican political base because it has a big mass of what I call grassroots Republicans (or at least they think they are Republicans) really angry at the Austin Republican political establishment— really angry. So angry, there is no way they are going to vote for them.”

“Both parties include planks that oppose the Trans Texas Corridor, but the top-level GOP establishment is pushing the Corridor. It’s a huge wedge, a huge disconnect.”

Van Os also noted that the Trans Texas Corridor has become a new “wedge issue” that Democrats can take advantage of, in contrast to less concrete, ‘moral’ wedge issues used by Republicans.

“The time is here for Democrats to have wedge issues that will, if we go on the attack, our wedge issues will trump the emptionally charged, religious symbol issues that the Republicans have been using. I’m convinced of it,” Van Os said.
Turning to his race, Van Os commented on Attorney General Greg Abbott’s recent entry into the Texas Democratic Party v. Benkiser case currently before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in which Republicans are fighting to have former U.S. Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land), removed from the ballot in Congressional District 22.

Abbott has filed an amicus brief on behalf of Secretary of State Roger Williams (a Republican contributor appointed to the post by Governor Rick Perry) which has been lambasted across the state, including by the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. In the brief, Abbott alleges that U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks improperly declared parts of the Texas Election Code unconstitutional.  Van Os noted that this was typical behavior of Abbott.

“Greg Abbott has always been a partisan hack, and it goes back to 1996, when he wrote the opinion for as a Texas Supreme Court Judge that said the Log Cabin Republicans had no right to a booth at the state Republican convention,” Van Os said.

“Abbott is a very ambitious politician and an ambutious political opportunist; he uses the AG’s office to promote himself and has always used political office to promote political opportunities for himself and to carry water for the Republican establishment,” he continued.

Van Os noted that Abbott’s justification for intervening in the case, and thus putting the power and authority of the state into the battle, was the erronious claim that Judge Sparks declared part of the Texas Election Code unconstitutional.

“That’s a fat lie,” Van Os said. “What sparks said was that [rules of] eligibility for running for U.S. Congress is governed by the U.S. Constitution and that the Constitution trumps anything in the state election law because federal Constitution is the supreme law of the land is when it comes to running for Congress.”

With regard to what Van Os will do when elected Texas Attorney General, he said his first action after being sworn in would be to appoint task forces of assistant attorneys general to go to work on anti-trust and consumer issues.

Van Os said he’d issue investigative subpoenas to major oil companies and insurance carriers “to get the anti-trust investigations underway over gasoline prices and insurance premiums.”

He said he would also reorganize the AG’s office and establish the “People’s Watchdog Division” which will concentrate on anti-trust and consumer protection issues. The division would also concentrate on enforcement of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Van Os said he’d also take immediate action to end the “child support scandal,” that he said sends hundreds of thousands of Texas parents into a daily panic because of mismanagement. Van Os said he would appoint an ombudsman section to handle incoming calls of parents concerned about child support issues.

In Texas, the Attorney General’s Office is charged with many tasks related to enforcement and collection of child support.

Van Os noted that the system in place now routes callers from one voice mail greeting and menu to another until callers finally get discouraged and give up.
Van Os said the mismanagement of the child support division affects both custodial parents due child support and non-custodial parents. He noted that, in many cases, custodial parents aren’t receiving child support they should because the state’s systems list them as not due any. On the other hand, Van Os noted, many non-custodial parents are at risk of arrest or having their credit ratings destroyed because the state fails to appropriately process, account for, and distribute payments they make.
Van Os also addressed a major issue in this year’s election cycle, the Texas Residential Construction Commission. The TRCC was established by the 78th Legislature in 2003 as part of its “tort reform” agenda. The Commission has been criticized by numerous Democrats.

Van Os noted that the Commission serves as more of a protection agency for errant home builders than for consumers and that he would “be utilizing the direct constitutional authority given the Attorney General in the state constitution” to make sure home builders are held accountable for their actions.

Van Os also addressed how his campaign is working to make sure that it attracts more than just Democratic voters in a year where two independent candidates (Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn and humorist Kinky Friedman) are opposing Democrat Chris Bell and incumbent Republican Rick Perry:

The economic populus themes that are the centerpiece of my campaign, those are the messages to get those voters. What I am doing is what needs to be done.”

Van Os also discussed the responsibility of the Attorney General to handle matters related to the enforcement of the Texas Public Information Act (commonly referred to as the Texas Open Records Act), and noted the propensity of the current administration to do everything possible to make sure government bodies can keep information out of the public eye.

“Abbott is a silk stocking, country club, big government Republican. He loves to support government secrecy. Some of the parts of the open records act are just too explicit in making records public to allow him to do what he wants to do. But, whenever he gets an opportunity on a close call where the statute is a bit ambiguous, he siezes on every one of those opportunities that enable government to keep records secret from public disclosure.”

Van Os noted that, because of the legal intricacies of Texas’ public information laws and the process of review the AG’s office goes through when issuing open records decisions and opinions, it is not always an easy issue to discuss on the campaign trail, but that his message has resonated with those in the media.

“The high cost of gas and homeowners insurance and Texans getting screwed by defective homebiulders are more easy to understand than this issue. But, with newspaper reporters and editors, this is something they do understand and I do talk with them about this a lot. They do understand it and know it is a serious problem,” Van Os said.

“I just have a completely different philosophy than Greg Abbott does—I believe that government belongs to the people and I am going to follow the admonition of secion one of [the Texas Public Information Act]. which says that this statute is supposed to be liberally construed in favor of disclosure. That’s the philosophy i’m going to bring to it. I know of some particular open records decisions that i have on my hit list where I intend to reverse Abbott just like Abbott reversed Attorney Generals before him—sometimes he reversed [Jim] Maddox or Dan Morales, And on some he even reversed [former Texas Attorney General and current U.S. Senator John] Cornyn.”

Van Os also addressed the issue of verified paper trails for electronic voting machines, and said that he believed that voting machine technology that does not provide a verifiable paper record is unconstitutional under Article VI of the Texas Constitution that gurantees that the purity of the ballot box will be protected.

“Election technology that does not give the voter or anybody else the ability to know for sure if that is the vote that the voter indicated on the touch screen is unconstitutional. The touch screen is not the ballot, it’s like the pencil; the ballot is a collection of electronic impluses in cyber space,” he noted.
Without a paper trail, no one has any way of knowing of what the voter indicated at the touch screen is the same vote the electronic impulses recorded for that voter.
“99.9 percent accuracy is not good enough; every voter must be secure in knowing that the vote is going to be counted in the way the voter intended to cast it.”

Van Os, along with the NAACP in Austin and individual voters, was a planintiff in a lawsuit that sought to enjoin the state and county clerks from using electronic voting technology without verified paper trails. In a hearing earlier this month before former Texas Supreme Court Judge Rose Spector (sitting as a visiting judge), an injunction that would affect this year’s election cycle was denied, but the lawsuit will be heard in March.

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