Ex-teacher visits El Paso in bid to be governor

By Michael D. Hernandez | El Paso Times | September 22, 2009

Hank Gilbert launched his gubernatorial campaign, a 13-city "Road To Prosperity" tour of Texas, with a stop in El Paso on Monday. (Ruben R. Ramirez / El Paso Times)

EL PASO — Hank Gilbert, a 49-year-old rancher and former high-school teacher from East Texas, rolled into El Paso on Monday to formally announce his bid for governor and to offer a quick blueprint for improving the state.

“Whether you are talking about the economy, or the environment, or alternative energy or any of these other issues that we need to fix in this state, it all begins and ends with a quality education,” Gilbert, a Democrat, said.

El Paso was Gilbert’s fourth stop on a 13-city tour that will continue through Wednesday. He met with El Pasoans at Democratic Party headquarters and at Forti’s Mexican restaurant.

He ran as the Democratic nominee for Texas commissioner of agriculture in 2006, losing to Republican Todd Staples. He picked up 32,068 votes in El Paso County in that 2006 general election.

Gilbert, of Whitehouse, Texas, joins a field of four other Democratic candidates competing for the party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2010.

The other candidates are attorney and former U.S. ambassador Tom Schieffer; schoolteacher Felix Alvarado; Mark Thompson, a therapist for blind people; and Kinky Friedman, a musician and humorist.

For the Republicans, Gov. Rick Perry is facing a challenge from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and from Debra Medina, the GOP chair of Wharton County.

Wearing a white Stetson cowboy hat, the former agriculture teacher told the El Paso Times on Monday that revamping K-12 education should be Texas’ priority.

Gilbert is proposing an expansion of pre-kindergarten to all children by 2013, increasing teachers’ pay by $5,000, and he wants to enact programs to reduce dropout rates among Hispanic and black students. He also wants to offer free, online tutoring to public-school students.

Gilbert said Texas must create a vocational and technical track for its high schools to provide students important skills through apprenticeships.

He slammed Perry for what he described as nine years of neglect of Texas schools.

Though Texas ranks third in the nation for money spent on public education, it ranks 45th for dollars spent for each student, he said.

Meanwhile, Gilbert said, the state’s prison population continues to explode and many of those inmates are high-school dropouts.

“Something about that isn’t right. Something about that is backwards,” he said. “We’re spending money to house, feed and clothe them rather than spending money to educate them.”

A graduate of Texas A&M University, Gilbert said the state needs to increase its number of elite universities.

He wants the University of Texas at El Paso to be among seven new tier-one universities. Tier-one universities are considered to be schools that receive at least $100 million in research grants annually, have selective admissions and low student-faculty ratios.