Sen. Leticia Van de Putte
Long rumored to be a contender, state Sen. Leticia Van De Putte has now made it official: She is running for lieutenant governor.
“I want to be your lieutenant governor because Mama ain’t happy — because Texas, we can do better,” Van de Putte said Saturday in a fiery announcement speech in front of about 200 supporters at the San Antonio college gymnasium.
She said the state’s Republican leadership had forgotten about mainstream Texas families, mentioning social issues like equal pay and access to health care for women, and the right to work without facing discrimination just because of “who you love.”
“For years the governor’s been too busy trying to president, and for years the lieutenant governor’s been trying to be in the U.S. Senate — nobody’s been minding the store,” Van de Putte said. “We cannot afford to keep kicking the can down the road because some Republicans are afraid of their primary voters.”
[…]
In an interview ahead of Saturday’s announcement, Van de Putte said her decision to run followed a summer in which she was consumed by tragedy — first her infant grandson’s sudden death, then her father’s fatal car accident, then her mother-in-law’s passing. She left her father’s burial on the day of the now-famous filibuster to get back to Austin to help Davis.
“I had nothing,” Van de Putte said of that day. “I was at the bottom of an emotional well.”
As Davis was deciding whether to enter the governor’s race, her own father’s health declined, and Van de Putte said the two women, both suffering, consoled each other.
“The last thing in our minds was what we were both going to do politically,” she said. “It was, how do you fill the hole in your heart?”
As the weeks passed, Van de Putte’s friends and colleagues kept suggesting that she run for lieutenant governor. She considered the other options, she said, wondering, “Who else is there?”
But inspired by her family’s resilience — and bolstered by polling that she said showed her name recognition was far better statewide than she’d known — she decided to make a run.
“My question to a lot of people was … is it doable, is it winnable? I’m just a really competitive person,” she said. “Yes, I want to help out the Democratic Party, but I’m not that good of a soldier. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it to win.”
It’ll be a tough race, but Sen. Van de Putte is a tough lady, and I’m delighted to see her take the plunge. She and Wendy Davis combine to be the most dynamic Governor/Lt Governor pairing in many years. She’ll need to raise some money, but I see no reason why she wouldn’t be able to do that. Lord knows, she’ll have no trouble looking like the most sensible, most reasonable, and just overall the best candidate against whoever survives the howling monsoon of insanity on the Republican side. Her webpage and Facebook page are up, the hashtag #TeamLVP is at the ready, and you can see a photo gallery from the announcement event here. Texpatriate, Concerned Citizens, and the Observer have more.
I’m no fan of Dewhurst, but if this is the platform:
” equal pay and access to health care for women, and the right to work without facing discrimination just because of “who you love.””
then she has nothing to offer Texas.
Pay is negotiated between the employer and the employee. I’m a contractor. I negotiate my pay every time I sell a job. If I’m not receiving pay equal to the next contractor for doing the same type of work, maybe I should look at myself and my bidding/negotiating skillset rather than complain about “it’s not equal and it’s not fair.”
Access to health care? There’s a doctor’s office or emergency clinic seemingly on every corner. Who is stopping women from going to one of these offices or clinics? If a woman (or man, for that matter) wants a TV, there are no shortage of TV sellers in the area. We expect to pay for a TV when we want one, why do so many folks feel like seeing a doctor isn’t something they should just be able to do for “free?” Do the folks expecting “free” health care give away their labor for free, assuming they have a job, or do they expect to get paid when they provide their labor?
And finally, the right to work while being gay (yeah, I read through the lines): Who exactly is being kept from employment because they are gay? Anybody seen Houston’s mayor lately? She got hired because she had a track record as a competent comptroller, and because the majority of Houstonians DON’T CARE who she sleeps with, only that the trash gets picked up and the potholes get filled…..as it should be.
Now, if the platform was, “Texas government should extend spousal benefits for gays”, then I would have agreed, although that isn’t really fair to single Texans, who won’t get the benefit.
Comparing women’s healthcare access to TV stores is exactly why LVP is running.
Did I not read through the lines on this platform plank: access to health care for women? Is that code for access to abortion? I’m sorry, I took that part at face value….access to health care for women. If your party plank is, “stop harassing abortionists”, then just say that.
If we are speaking about abortion, then I think what took place was wrong. The laws passed against abortionists WERE harassment….of those in the abortion trade. Like it or not, those are (well, were, anyway) legal businesses that employ people and pay taxes, just like payday lending companies. There’s a certain ick factor there, but I’d rather have those folks on the job, making money, paying taxes, and not filing for unemployment and welfare because the state put them out of work via overregulation.
I feel the same way about the people that work for coal plants, by the way. Regulate those folks out of a job, and guess what….you just swelled the welfare ranks.