Meet Phil Gramm's challenger: a Mexican-American schoolteacher comes out of nowhere - Victor Morales - Interview

Progressive, The, June, 1996 by John Nichols

Porque no? That's the unofficial slogan of Victor Morales's campaign in Texas for the U.S. Senate, a campaign that began as the longest of long shots but now has turned into one of the most inspired political insurgencies of 1996.

Morales elaborates on his slogan:

"Why not a Mexican American?"

"Why not a schoolteacher?"

"Why not a guy who doesn't have a million bucks?"

A year ago, when the forty-six-year-old high-school civics teacher began to recite this chorus of questions to Texas voters, few took him seriously. But the dismissals subsided when Morales--with no television ads, no campaign staff, no headquarters, and a budget of less than $50,000--defeated two U.S. Congressmen and the entire Democratic establishment of Texas in a primary campaign and runoff.

Morales now faces Phil Gramm--the meanest, most strident, and best-financed rightwing Republican in the Senate.

Despite a miserable failure in his bid for the GOP Presidential nod, Gramm had been pegged as a sure bet to win reelection. He outspent his last opponent by a twelve-to-one margin--pumping more than $10 million into television ads--and no one expects anything less of the Senator this year.

But the Morales campaign echoes the populist themes sounded in the 1990 and 1992 Senate campaigns of Minnesota's Paul Wellstone and Wisconsin's Russ Feingold--the only Democrats to displace incumbent Republican Senators since the close of the Reagan Administration.

Just as Wellstone traveled Minnesota in an old school bus, Morales has relied on his pickup truck--putting 62,000 miles on the vehicle since last summer.

"Victor Morales is going to give Phil Gramm fits," says former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower. "Victor's campaign is not a miracle. It's really the product of old-fashioned gumption combined with mad-as-hellism and going deadhead against the establishment--and that's exactly the challenge Gramm has needed."

Hightower admits he is "just getting to know Victor"--a circumstance not uncommon among Democratic activists in Texas, almost all of whom lined up behind Morales's runoff opponent, U.S. Representative John Bryant. Many progressive Texans worried that Morales lacked the depth and the political skills needed to mount a serious challenge to Gramm. With no real history as an activist, and no political experience outside a single term on the city council of Crandall (population 1,800), Morales doesn't exactly come off as a threat to a man who until a few months ago was a serious contender for the Presidency.

What Morales brings to the race, however, are gut instincts about right and wrong that led him to stake out bold positions--particularly by Texas standards--in support of gun control, abortion rights, and family leave; to oppose school-prayer amendments and attacks on public education; to call for cuts in NASA spending; and to attack corporate welfare.

But Morales was criticized during the runoff campaign for frequently answering "I don't know" when asked about the specifics of issues. This criticism hit a peak after a debate in which he said he didn't know enough about the federal Department of Education to comment on its future. Compounding the sense that he's a novice, Morales chronically arrives late for events and until recently resisted fax machines and other tools of modern campaigning.

State Senator Carlos Truan, a Corpus Christi Democrat, says Morales won the nomination on the strength of a common Hispanic name that he happened to share with the state's popular attorney general. When asked about Morales's prospects in November, Truan replied: "You mean, after Gramm eats him up and spits him out."

But Hightower, who had to defy equally harsh expectations before he went on to win his own statewide campaigns in the 1980s, thinks Morales's perceived weaknesses may prove strengths. "This guy has a genuineness that is compelling, and as long as he doesn't dilute it, as long as he doesn't surround himself with too many bigwigs, it's going to be even more compelling when you contrast it with Phil Gramm's self-serving meanness."

Gramm positioned himself as the rightest of the rightwingers in this year's Republican Presidential campaign. Exit polls showed that he was rejected by primary voters who actually found Pat Buchanan warmer and cuddlier.

Gramm's effort to stamp his far-right credentials with gratuitous jabs at affirmative action and immigration persuaded Victor Morales to run for the Senate. He was dismayed that few other Texas Democrats would stand up and defend affirmative action and immigration, and so he threw his hat into the ring.

"The last straw for me was when Phil Gramm--as a Presidential candidate--referred to affirmative action as quotas," recalls Morales. "It was ridiculous. Here was a guy with the power of his position, with access to the media, with a podium and a crowd wherever he goes, using all that prestige to inflame people. All he's doing is trying to inflame the so-called `angry white males' in order to advance his own career. I found that irresponsible and offensive."