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

Progressive, The, June, 1996 by John Nichols

Morales took it personally when he saw Gramm scoring political points by attacking minorities, immigrants, and the poor.

One of four children raised by a single mother in Pleasanton, Texas, Morales has a personal grasp of issues like welfare reform, racial discrimination, child labor, and poverty.

"We grew up less than working class. We were poor," recalls the candidate's younger brother Joey. "We know what it means to work for your next meal. Before we were ten, we were doing fieldwork--picking cotton, beans, and watermelons. When's the last time we had a U.S. Senator who knew what it meant to pick cotton at age nine?"

"We had patches on our clothes," says the candidate. "I know what living on food stamps is like. I know what it means to have to walk everywhere because you don't have a car," he explains. "A lot of our Senators today grew up as millionaires. Just about all of them grew up middle-class or better. I've known something else: I've known poverty, I've known low-income, and even though I'm better off now, I haven't forgotten."

Morales is the first Mexican American to win a major party nomination for U.S. Senate in Texas. Mexican-American women lit candles in churches for Morales on the eve of the runoff vote, and landslide victories in predominantly Hispanic regions of Texas were vital to Morales's triumph. His success was a top news story not only in Texas but on Hispanic radio and TV programs around the country and in Central and Latin America.

At a time when racism frequently takes the form of English-only laws and anti-immigrant legislation, Morales could add a much-needed perspective to the Senate:

"I would bring the perspective of a minority. I still have the scars that come from being turned away from a public establishment because I was a `messkin'--not a `Mexican,' a `messkin,' that's how they say it. I know what it means to receive death threats because I was a Mexican who didn't know my place. I've kept these memories, these experiences, very near to my heart. But I don't go around with a chip on my shoulder, and I don't go around with a whiney-butt attitude."

Morales has great confidence in the power of ideas to transform rigid attitudes and shift the political tide. "He really is a Mr. Smith goes to Washington--or a Senor Smith goes to Washington, as someone down here described it," says Hightower. "He is a teacher of government as it's described in the civics books, and he believes it ought to work."

Morales has never been one to avoid controversy. As a teacher, he challenged students in ways that are not common. Minh Huynh--a Vietnamese immigrant who now is a full-time volunteer for the Morales campaign--will never forget his first encounter with Morales at Poteet High School in Mesquite.

"On the first day of class, Mr. Morales said, `OK, let's all bow our heads for the school prayer.' So most of the students dutifully bowed their heads," says Huynh. "Then Mr. Morales said, `Don't you know that it's unconstitutional to pray in school?' And he led us into this incredibly thoughtful discussion of church-state separation."