A I write this on December 5, 2023, we sit 3 months (91 days) away from March 5, 2024, Republican primary election day where not only my race for Texas House will be decided, but the nominations for US Senate, Texas choice for President, justices for both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Supreme Court, appellate justices, and multiple local judges, as well as multiple county races for sheriff, constable, district attorney, county commissioner, justice of peace.
Early voting starts on Tuesday, February 20, 2024, the day after President’s Day. February 20, the real start of the election, is only 77 days and 11 weekends away. One of those weekends, of course, includes Christmas Eve and cannot be used for campaigning.
We find out for sure Monday evening, December 11, but it looks like this will be a two-way race between the Paxton-impeaching freshman incumbent who I faced in 2022 and the grassroots challenger, me, Tom Glass.
At this moment in the campaign, volunteers and I have knocked over 1,000 doors, we have built a lot of infrastructure for the campaign like signs, flyers, door hangers, websites, social media, etc., and we slogging our way in raising the money that every campaign needs to get the message out.
What is this campaign’s message? It is that everything Texans hold dear, from our oil and gas livelihoods, our agricultural livelihoods, our economy, our children, our guns, our medical freedom, the value of our dollar, liberty, and our Constitutions is under assault from a stolen, corrupt federal government, globalists, and Marxists. It is NOT business as usual time in Texas or America!
Texas can withstand this war on us if our state legislature, our governor, our attorney general, and our counties will unite to fight it. The problem is that to resist the DC swamp attacking us, we have to clean up the Austin swamp. The current Texas House and its leadership acts like it is business as usual time when it is not.
I am running against a young freshman incumbent who was installed by the establishment to follow that complacent, clueless House leadership. There are multiple proofs of that statement. The most substantive of which is that he followed the establishment attack on our most effective champion defending Texas from the DC war on us, our Attorney General Ken Paxton. You read that right, Stan Gerdes voted to impeach Ken Paxton.
When I deliver that message at the door in HD 17, it is overwhelmingly well received. By that I mean that 98% react positively. You call that a winning message.
The challenge of my campaign is to deliver that message to the GOP primary voters in HD 17 who are conservative, but do not hear or pay attention to news about what happens at the Texas legislature.
Business as usual for the establishment is to use big establishment money to build name ID with repetitive, comprehensive advertising. The incumbent’s campaign at this early stage has already sent 2 glossy mailers and has had paid block walkers deliver flyers and knock doors all over the district. The embattled establishment-backed Speaker Phelan that my incumbent follows has sent a mailer for him. And using Texas tax dollars and the power of the incumbency, he has sent a legislative report using the standard franking privileges of the office.
In short, I am going to be way outspent in this campaign. But all we need to do together to go the distance is get the winning message above to the voters via boots on the ground block walking, word of mouth networking, and a smaller-but-sufficient amount of advertising using funds raised.
You can take independent action to spread the word to your networks. Let me know via tomglass.org website or [email protected] if you are ready to help in that effort with volunteer effort or with a donation no matter how large or small. (We are currently in the middle of a match of $25 donations to the campaign, so please make that small donation, today at tomglass.org/donate.)
When I thought of “running” for office, I figured this picture of me running for Texas A&M at age 20 would capture the spirit of my campaign. Will you go the distance with me?
After all, we have a state, a country, and the liberty of our posterity to save!