Q. You’re somewhat of a political journeyman. What makes you think this will be the time you are elected to a major political office?

A. Well, that’s a good question, I’ve been asked that before. But I think, that one of the things that is important to take note of is the tremendous Democrats’ involvement this year because of the Hillary-Barack race. For example, in Kaufman County at the Kaufman County Convention, we had almost 400 Democrats there and my understanding is the Republicans had about 60.

My name is known somewhat now, still in spite of it being years since I ran for the (U.S.) Senate and received a lot of media, my name is still out there, so I knew that would be in effect.

Three, this race is only two counties, Kaufman and Henderson. That’s small for someone who had to deal with 254 counties. I told my wife, “Honey I will be home every night.” The furthest place I have to go is maybe LaPoynor or Trinidad, so that would help tremendously in the short time I’ll have available to me as a full-time working teacher. Also let me add one more, there were several Republicans, unsolicited by me, who said, “Victor, we are so tired of Betty being there. We want you to run.” So if that holds true, then I feel this could be the time.

Q. Your opponent has made a lot of public statements regarding support of a voter ID bill. At a recent forum held in Athens, you essentially said there’s no need for a voter ID law. What’s the source of your opposition to such a law?

A. Well, because basically I think it is all about politics. In other words, illegal aliens is an easy target, easy to be condemned and tied into voting — that should make it a slam dunk. The problem is, the Dallas Morning News, which is by no means a liberal paper — all you have to do is see who they endorse in every presidential election and the number of articles that are pro-Republican versus pro-Democrat — said this is much ado about nothing. They have not found a real problem, in fact the editorial board did an editorial talking about Greg Abbott’s failure to find a real problem with illegal aliens voting. ... And as I said repeatedly, if I found this to be a real problem, then I would be right there with those people who would want to perhaps come up with an ID. But, at this point in time, this has not been a problem and we don’t need to legislate bills for things that are not necessary.

Q. A 2005 constitutional amendment in Texas barred gay marriage here. But there are still issues regarding other points of concern for same-sex couples, including health and death benefits and the ability to serve as a power of attorney. Do you believe same-sex couples in Texas should be granted such benefits to some extent? Please explain why you feel the way you do.

A. I feel that the civil union situations that I think are held in Connecticut, or at least up in the North, or where they try to get some basic rights to same-sex couples, is something to be looked at. I’m not in favor of same-sex marriage, in the sense of the sacrament of churches. I think that’s not where I’m at. I do believe that these people, who I believe are born gay, should have the rights with their partners in dealing with wills, and visits in hospitals and things of that nature.

As far as the fear by many people that same-sex marriage is a danger to become reality in Texas, I think they should read Article IV of the Constitution that I think is coming into play in terms of states honoring each other’s contracts, wills and marriage clauses. And what we’ve seen recently in California and Massachusetts, and now my understanding Connecticut, is the Supreme Court ruling that these people do have basic rights. But if you ask me if I’m for same-sex marriage, myself, no.

Q. The next session of the Texas Legislature will convene in January, just two months after the election. If elected, what pieces of legislation do you plan to file based on issues you feel are significant to your constituents?

A. The primary reason why I’m running is education. As a 26-year teacher, who has been in the trenches, in the classroom, I’m very aware of various problems. It’s incredible to me that someone like Mrs. Brown, people of her party, always rail against big government, who are always talking about the importance of local control, and yet it was her leader that gave us the No Child Left Behind Act.

Now, no one argues against accountability, but we test our kids, I test them every six weeks, I test them after a chapter, I test them on semester exams. The idea that the federal government or even the state should come and tell me how I need to test my kids, to see what they know, is ridiculous. Especially when they themselves have not done what they are supposed to do. Congress was supposed to fully fund that No Child Left Behind, but has not. They’ve been sued for it.

The state of Texas should do a better job of making an enticement for math and science teachers. Here we are teaching kids all to pass the same model test and yet we are extremely short on qualified math and science teachers. As a matter of fact, let me bring it home. Next door to me is the math room, where I teach at the Alternative Learning Center in Kaufman. We have two teachers right now. We have a retired teacher who became a fireman who comes two or three days a week and a retired teacher who is coming back because we couldn’t get a math teacher. Now how in the world can we expect the kids to all be able to answer to a certain test when we are not giving them the expertise that they should have?

Our Kaufman superintendent and principal are very upset that Betty Brown and the rest of the legislature did not fully fund in dealing with formulas, did not have the formulas to keep up with inflation. So you are having school districts now that are having rollback elections. They are running short, needless to say, because of the gas and energy prices.

Another thing in education which I would push for, and I have heard this from a superintendent as well, is that we have a lot of children who are never going to go to college, who have no interest in college. I don’t have a problem with that as a teacher because I know there are a lot of fields like being a plumber, being an electrician, being a carpenter that they could look to that we all need.

We should be stronger in developing vocational programs to help these kind of kids that are not academically oriented. But what did we do in the legislature? They added another math and science requirement.

Now I remember when I was in school, in the 60s, 64-68, high school, the kids in vocational programs, would build a home. Can you imagine in that experience (for) these kids? This is what we are supposed to do about an education, real education. These kids would learn how to concrete, sheet rock, carpenter, plumbing, electrician, by the time they left. They would build a home, take the money and start again. Now even if these kids did not turn out to be carpenters or electricians and so on, this tremendous educational experience would serve them so well when they would have their own home.

They would know what was needed so they wouldn’t be able to be ripped off and could possibly build on their own. One person told me about a problem yesterday. She said, “Victor, it’s not so much that I mind taxes, it’s how it’s spent. It’s the wastefulness, the good ol’ boy taking care of good ol’ boy.”

By wastefulness, she’s talking about things like Governor Perry having a private state plane to pay triple the cost of what we pay commercial. Unnecessary, it’s unnecessary to have it. We’ve got experts in our government that could go argue for our situation in Washington. Why do we have to shell out a million dollars?

Finally, I’m also very interested in dealing with the energy and transportation. Here’s Texas with this huge amount of sunshine, huge volume of people, why don’t we have these solar panels on every house in Texas? With that kind of volume it shouldn’t be that expensive. We wouldn’t have to pay like we are having to pay and people wouldn’t have to worry about freezing or (being) too hot.

Massachusetts helps their people with tax credits. They have an income tax I believe, a state income tax and we don’t, but they help their people with that. So there are some people that they don’t pay for any electricity because they have solar panels.

Right now, it is prohibitive, it’s too expensive. What can we do to spread that to the people of Texas who have so much sunlight?

Interstate 35, as we know, is a mess. This is not new, where have they been? So why did we abandon the idea a long time ago that was brought up, and that I found very interesting, of having a fast rail from Dallas to Houston? Europe does it, Japan does it. It saves money and it’s safer. I mean, if one semi turns over on 35, traffic is stalled for hours and hours. People say, “Texans are so independent, they want to go where they want to when they get there. Well, why shouldn’t it be worked out with all these rental car agencies for them to have a better price. We are saying, “If this works, you will have a lot of customers who will want to rent cars. Keep your prices low, and then they will ride the rail cars because they know they are going to have a car to ride around in when they need to.” That is the kind of things I had in my mind that I think will help not only those in Kaufman and Henderson, but the people of Texas.