I just got off the phone with newly-filed Texas Democratic senate candidate Jason A. Gibson. (I called when his law firm’s email bounced for some reason.) He says his website, www.jasongibson2012.com, will be up live in a day or two.
I asked him why he was running. He said he was “tired of Washington being dysfunctional” and “tired of being on the sidelines.” He also said “I get things done.”
He says his family has a long history in the Democratic Party, and that his grandfather a union organizer. However, when I noted that my blog was on the conservative side of the spectrum, he mentioned support for two policies not often voiced among modern Democratic candidates: lower taxes and the right to bear arms. Indeed, he said he was a Texas CHL holder, which must surely be an uncommon thing among Democrats these days.
There was a time, of course, when the Texas Democratic Party had numerous conservative politicians among their ranks. But by the 1980s, the party that had once been home to Allan Shivers and John Connally found itself to be captive to the ideological likes of Jim Hightower and Lloyd Doggett, causing the exodus of conservative Democrats like Phil Gramm, Kent Hance and Rick Perry to the Republican Party, which goes a long way toward explaining why it’s been over a decade since the Democrats held a single statewide office in Texas. The majority of Democratic partisans at both the state and national level have nothing but contempt for “Blue Dog Democrats,” and I doubt Gibson can buck the trend.
But we’ll see.