Rich Flowers
The Athens Review
Athens — Hank Gilbert dropped into Henderson County Democratic headquarters Friday to tell why he thinks Texas needs a change at Agriculture Commissioner, and, by the way, some other offices as well.
“We’ve got people who are by anointment or appointment consider themselves leaders in this state and they don’t have any concept as to what works,” Gilbert said.
The former LaPoynor Ag teacher , who now owns a ranch in Whitehouse, has his sights set on incumbent Republican Todd Staples in November. First he must get past Kinky Friedman in the Democratic Primary. Staples beat Gilbert in 2006, but the Democrat polled 1,760,402, almost 42 percent of the total. That’s more than any other statewide Democrat that year.
“We need leadership in this position — somebody who’s not a politician but has a solid background in agriculture, that wants to increase the viability of the industry and make sure we have consumer protections in place and make sure they’re enforced,” Gilbert says.
Gilbert is tired of seeing agricultural producers, such as cattle ranchers seeing so little of the profits, and the big money going out of state to businesses in places like Omaha and Kansas CIty, where their wrappers are slapped on Texas grown beef.
Gilbert said he will also fight to protect private property rights. He has been a vocal opponent of the Trans-Texas Corridor and says Staples played a big part in creating a system of toll roads that have not helped the state.
“They came up with this “innovative financing,” which my general election opponent Todd Staples helped create in the Senate. He was one of co-authors of that bill. He was head of the transportation committee at that time that passed it through.”
Gilbert questions how the state made a swing from a $9 to $14 billion surplus in January 2007 , then had to use $12.5 billion of the federal stimulus money to balance the budget for the next biennium and is looking at needing billions more during the next session.
“You can’t blame that on Washington, you can’t blame that on the recession. You have to blame that on fiscal malfeasance by people who call themselves fiscal conservatives,” Gilbert said.
