Valdez says the Texas Governor's race in 2018 "will not be bought, but fought door-to-door, person to person." The former Sheriff of Dallas County, Valdez did not declare for Governor until after she retired from the Dallas Sheriff's department in December 2017. Even if she had taken a year to raise money in preparation for the race, anything any candidate could raise would be dwarfed by Abbott's multi-million dollar campaign war chest. It took someone like Lupe Valdez to be brave enough to face his political machine.
Valdez is accustomed to running (and winning) when everyone says she doesn't have a chance. She has never lost an election and she has always been a candidate that most people said wouldn't win. Fourteen years ago when she declared for Sheriff, Dallas was still a Republican stronghold. She only had one person working on her campaign who had worked on a campaign before. She laughs when she relates the story. She said: "The only person who had campaign experience had only worked on a City Council race in Austin. We made her our campaign expert. When we realized that I was winning, I went asked her "What do we do now?" She told Valdez: "I don't know. I've never worked on a winning campaign before." Valdez won that race and was re-elected three times.
Winning was the least of the challenges she faced in Dallas. As Sheriff, she inherited a jail system which was out of compliance in most areas. Too little funds had been dedicated to staffing and maintenance for years. It was overcrowded, understaffed, inmates were dying in the jail without getting medical care, and the facility was grossly unsanitary. Major investments in staffing and facility expansion and updates were necessary to bring the jail into compliance. That meant that Valdez had to persuade those who had refused to appropriate funds in the past to up their game. She also went looking for grants. She tackled structural problems and concentrated on better health treatment for mental ill inmates. Her goal was for every person who touched the criminal justice system in Dallas County to be treated with respect and dignity.
Her approach was to bring together a team to attack the highest priority problems (those that cannot be solved without outside help) and to set to work taking care of the "low hanging fruit" (easier to solve improvements) while working on the harder ones.
Dallas County had never had a woman Sheriff before. They had never had a minority in that role either. It was noted for discrimination against minorities. Valadez was determined to change that. She implemented community enforcing and made an upward path for minorities into management. Staffing changes were implemented. The all-white male management team changed. She placed people of color into majority minority neighborhoods. She told her officers: "I do not want the first time a person meets you to be when you arrest them!" She insisted in officers getting involved in community service and community events in the neighborhoods of their beat.
Valdez is accustomed to being underestimated. Shes grew up in the poorest zip code in San Antonio. Her family traveled working the crops as migrant farmworkers. She was the eight child in a large family. There were not many opportunities for children in the neighborhood where she grew up. When she was in Junior High, a substitute teacher changed her life by taking an interest in her. She credits this teacher with setting her on the path she is on today by believing in her and encouraging her to believe in herself. This teacher encouraged her transfer to a High School across town because the school in her neighborhood did not have a college preparatory program. She worked two, and sometimes three, jobs to pay her way through college to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. She enlisted in the Army and rose to the rank of Captain in a tank battalion. She worked and used her VA benefits to go to graduate school to earn a Masters in Criminology at the University of Texas at Arlington. Lupe Valdez knows that for her education was her elevator. Because others have helped her, she is paying it forward by opening doors for others, mentoring, and finding ways to give people opportunities to get "a leg up." She says: "I don't have problems with people doing well. I do have a problem with those who do well and slam others. We have too many people whose attitude is 'Now that I've got mine, too bad about yours!" She is running for Governor to change things for the better for everybody.
It was not easy to get her foot in the door with law enforcement. Her first job after getting out of the military was as jailer in a county jail. Then she was hired by the General Service Administration as an Inspector. She transferred to Homeland Security and became a Federal Agent. When she retired from Federal Service she was a Senior Agent and had worked under cover in Central America on drug interdiction and money laundering and in the USA investigating fraud.
As Sheriff of Dallas County, she has headed the 7th largest law Sheriff's Department in the Nation, supervising over 2,500 employees, and was responsible for a jail population larger than the population of most cities. She demonstrated skill at managing a multi-million dollar budget and persuading elected officials to appropriate necessary funds for critical services.
Valdez says that people say her race against Abbot is "an uphill battle." She asks: "What in life isn't an up hill battle!" She says it was"an uphill battle to get the education I needed. It was an uphill battle to get into college. It was an uphill battle to work three jobs to work my way through college. It was an up hill battle in the military in a battalion with about 50 women and thousands of men." She says: "I'm getting really good at fighting uphill battles."
She says it is an uphill battle for parents to support their families, secure healthcare, help their children get an education. "It is an uphill battle for people when they become ill and cannot get insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Being a woman is a pre-existing condition!" Valdez says: "I don't have a problem with people working and doing well. I do have a problem when the slam the rest of us."
On gun violence: "I have no problem with people having guns. For 40 years I have been in professions where getting dressed was wearing my firearm. I still wear my gun. I do have a problem with stupidity. Anyone who cannot settle their daily affairs without violence has no business having a weapon."
Education is one her highest priorities. She knows that education was her path out of poverty. She lives by the mantra "Educate to educate." Valdez is a person who opens doors for others, mentors, encourages, gives people a chance. She talks about a "New Texas where there are opportunities for everyone."
If she is elected Governor, she will be the first Democrat to hold state wide office in Texas since Garry Mauro retired from the Texas Land Commission three decades ago. She will be the third woman to be governor, the only person who is not white to be elected Governor and the first openly LGBT statewide elected official. Several news articles include her gender and sexual orientation in the headline as though it is news. She was Hispanic, female and openly LGBT fourteen years ago when she first ran and was elected Sheriff. She was not elected to office or re-elected based on race, gender or sexual orientation. She was elected because she had proven that she could do the job.
That is what she is running on this time as she travels the state in her pickup truck. She transformed the Dallas Sheriff's department for the better. There are many things in the government of Texas which are dysfunctional or broken. Too many of the resources go toward the interest of the big donors of the Governor, Lt. Governor and members of the Legislature and too little attention is paid to solving serious problems for the people of Texas. Funding for public education, teacher pay and retirement, healthcare, and public infrastructure has been diverted. The Governor and State Legislature create non-problems and ignore the hard issues/ Valdez is a person who focuses on the most important hard priorities first. She does not duck and run away from difficulty when the lives of people depend on better outcomes. She does not waste time "trying to get even" with opponents or colleagues or opponents who unfairly criticize her. Instead, she works to get the best possible job done for the people with as little fan fair or drama possible. Lupe Valdez is a different kind of candidate. She is short on BS. She says: "I like to deal in reality." She is running for Governor because she knows there are things that need doing and she is all about getting the job done!
When she started this race, her 2012 pick-up truck had 101,000 miles on it. After seven months of making 5 to 7 campaign events a day, the more miles she puts on that truck, the higher she climbs in the polls. Her pleasant, confident down-to-earth, ease with people wins folks over. She is genuinely interested in people. She is very comfortable in her own skin. She does not waste energy attempting to manufacture a personae; instead she concentrates of being more precise and clear as she says what she truly feels. Her sincerity resonates with people. The more that people get to know her, the more people trust her. As more people meet her, she climbs higher in the polls. Since May she has closed 9 points and now is only 10 points away from him. During the last hundred days of the campaign with persistent hard work, it will be interesting to watch and see if that trend continues.
Everyone acknowledges that Greg Abbott is a difficult governor to unseat. However, those who know Lupe Valdez are learning not to underestimate her. She is a person who is persistent, who does her best, who improves as she goes along, who is always opening the door to others, helping them to benefit from some of the opportunities she has had. She is running for Governor of Texas in 2018. This is three-hundred year anniversary of her hometown, San Antonio and 2018 the the 100th year anniversary of suffrage for women in Texas. This may be the year when the third woman and the first minority becomes Governor.
To donate to her campaign: http://bit.ly/LupeTXGov
