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Fred Head at Texas Democratic Party convention
Fred Head
Democratic nominee, state comptroller
Texas Democratic Party convention
Fort Worth
June 10, 2006
You can clearly see why Marsha speaks for me and our family.
Now, I’m as serious as a funeral about what I’m doing and I don’t smile very much so you’ll excuse me for that. Maybe I’ll get to where I’ll learn how to do that before long. I’ve been accused of being a little bit too serious. But this is all very serious to me.
I wanna talk to you about a couple of things today. I wanna talk to you about telling the truth! An I wanna talk to you about winning an election. I’m planning on winning an election in November.
Now…we don’t…we don’t have much time to get up here and talk. In fact, they told us they were going to turn the mike off if we went over ten minutes and I’m, I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, but uh what I wanna do, I wanna tell all of you how much I appreciate what you’re doing. Every one of you that are here today are a vital part of what’s gonna happen in the fall and if you’ll do your job at the local level, it’ll work.
But this business about trickling down from the top does not work. It’s got to start at the local level.
People have lost hope! Lots of people have lost hope! We’ve gotta giv‘em hope again, ladies and gentlemen to get ‘em back to the polls. This is the time we can do it! You’re the ones that are gonna do it!
Now, in my speeches across Texas I’ve been saying, “Texans love a good fight! Especially if there’s an underdog who’s standing up for what’s right!� That’s what we’ve got! We’ve got a buncha underdogs, but, but it’s time for a change in Austin! What we’ve got down there is a buncha lapdogs, ladies and gentlemen…lapdogs for the influence peddlers, lapdogs for the special interests…lapdogs for the influence peddlers and lobbyists. And we’ve gotta get rid of these people! And the only way we are gonna do it is take our campaign across Texas.
Now, the little bus you saw out there is, I think, gonna be a real good symbol of what’s wrong now and how we are gonna get it changed.
They’ve gone down and spent a Special Session and said, “Okay, we’ve got it all fixed.� That’s not true! You know it’s not true. Education’s not fixed. The tax system is not fixed…
When I’m Comptroller of Public Accounts, we’re gonna wind up having a working relationship with the Appraisal Districts where we can make sure everybody’s taxes are fair. We’re gonna reinstitute performance auditing where we can see what schools and agencies are doing. We’re gonna cut out all the waste.
Now, talking about what the Comptroller’s Office does is not very sexy, so I’m not gonna spend much time on that, but I wanna tell ya about this. I wanna tell ya that I have an opponent…and I wanna be sure nobody under..misunderstands this…I don’t intend to be mean or unkind to my opponent, but I believe my opponent’s life experiences and actions are a fair subject for you folks in this room and all the people of Texas to consider when you’re deciding whether or not to vote for me or to vote for her.
Now, I believe it’s unprecedented, ladies and gentlemen, to have a candidate for a state wide office in the state of Texas who has written and sold a trashy romance novel that glorifies premarital sex and arouses sexual desires.
I’m for the First Amendment. I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in you being able to write what you want to. But, I don’t think that’s a qualification for serving as a state wide officer in Texas.
This woman, Susan Combs, has been a hypocrite and two-faced, and a major flip flopper to use the Republican language. So I want you to know that, and I want you to tell that story all across Texas. Cause I’m gonna tell it, ladies and gentlemen. That’s part of the truth about her.
Now, you would think that your governor, your Republican governor, would know about that. In fact here’s this little book right here called “The Perfect Match.� (Book entitled “A Perfect Match� by Susan Combs held up and shown to the crowd by Fred Head). And, and Mrs. Susan Combs in 1990, my opponent wrote this book. Now, she was only forty-five years old at the time, so I’m not sure that she was mature enough to know that she was really making a serious mistake by doing it. But there’s some other interesting questions. Uh, I think it would be nice to know how many more she wrote. Whether she wrote any more in assumed names. Whether or not she’s got some that were published in other areas that we don’t know about. I think this sort of thing is what we need to find out about these people that are on the other side. And I think you’ve gotta tell that story.
Now, I told you I wanted to talk to you about truth. The truth is, as I’m telling you about her, she’s been in a public office now for a long time, eight years as Agriculture Commissioner. She hasn’t tended to her job there, but she’s had time in her previous life to write this trashy novel. We need to get rid of this lady! We need to get rid of all those kind of folks!
And this is the kind of hypocrisy, ladies and gentlemen, that you’re seeing in the Republican Party. On all of the issues, they tell the public what they want the public to hear because they think it’s popular and then they go and do what helps the special interests, the influence peddlers, and their big money friends. And that’s why we’ve got to prevail…to change the situation in Austin.
Now, I invite all of you candidates who have a Republican opponent to confront this candidate and say, “Susan Combs is running on your ticket. Are you for Susan Combs?� You need to do that. You need to pin the candidate down. If they’re for Susan Combs, you got a lot of ammo, ladies and gentlemen. A lot of ammo. And you need to use it because this is the kind of stuff that they’ve used against us for years and we’ve let ‘em get away with it. Let’s stop that. Let’s don’t let them do that anymore.
Now, I’m sure that…if we had more time to do this, we could talk about some other things that are really important.
Thank you very much. I want you to go out and help us win this election in November. And let’s tell the truth about all of these Republican candidates. If we’ll do that, we’ll bring home the victory.
Thank you! God bless you! And God bless Texas! Thank you!
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