Gilbert stops in Amarillo

Hank Gilbert visits Amarillo to help launch his Texas gubernatorial campaign

By Billy Loftin Monday, September 21, 2009 at 6:33 p.m.

AMARILLO, TEXAS — Hank Gilbert, a democratic candidate for the Texas governors race stopped by Amarillo College on Monday to help launch his campaign and 13 city tour of Texas.

Gilbert focused his message on education reform and his ideas in that area. Pay increases for teachers and faculty, a universal pre-k program, more vocational and entrepreneurial courses in high school, and the creation of 7 new tier one universities over the course of 10 years are a few of Gilbert’s ideas for education reform here in Texas.

“Instead of building our prison population, we’re going to be building an educated skilled workforce that’s going to stimulate the economy, and it’s more importantly going to stimulate and re-build the middle class in this state that we’ve lost during this administration,” said Hank Gilbert, Democratic candidate for Texas Governor.

A little background information, Gilbert graduated from Texas A&M and taught Ag at the high school level for 13 years, he’s a rancher and works his cattle operation, but has entered the political arena.

“Other than putting out our education plan across the state, we want to let people know in this state that there are alternatives in this race to entrenched politicians, there’s alternatives to politics as usual in this governors race,” said Gilbert.

Gilbert was headed on to Lubbock and El Paso after visiting Amarillo on his tour of Texas.