Editor’s Note: The interview took place via Zoom on 11/15/21.
Garrit: Can you introduce yourself?
David: Yeah, sure. My name is David Lowe, and I am running for state representative district 91— Haltom City, Watauga, Richland Hills, North Richland Hills, and a small part of Fort Worth. I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. I spent 12 years in the military. I graduated from the police academy and worked in adult and juvenile corrections. I’ve been a volunteer for the Republican Party ever since I got out of the military—so I’ve knocked on thousands of doors. I have a wife and a two-year-old child.
Garrit: What has been the reaction to your campaign?
David: I’m glad you asked this question. I’m going up against a five-term incumbent, and, you know, I’ve been a volunteer for the party for years. So, the grassroots activists that I asked told me, “hell yeah, go for it.” As soon as precinct chairs in my party, Steve Munisteri, the policy director for Abbott, and even people that I knew when I worked briefly at the Republican Party in Texas, they all tried to talk me out of it. They were like, “Oh, you’re going up against such a great public servant. How dare you? You’re going to get your butt kicked,” and some real hateful messages from people in my party. So, if you can piss off that many people, I feel like you’re doing the right thing.
Garrit: Can you speak more on your military service and how that experience will play into your tenure as a state representative?
David: Absolutely. So, in the military, most of my time was military police. We were doing law enforcement while deployed—we did raids and stuff like that. So, I feel like my leadership development in my experience from the military… leading as little as a team to as much as a platoon, gave me the skills to lead a team in Austin. My time in the military taught me a lot about policymaking and the direct consequences of poor policy and decision-making. I am grateful for the experience that the military gave me. I wanted to do 20 years, but it didn’t quite work out that way. So, I want to continue my public service by helping my community.
Garrit: Absolutely, and thank you for your service. So, I saw that you went to the Conservative Partnership Institute in Washington, DC, a few weeks ago or so on public policy. How was that?
David: It was a fantastic experience, not just getting to sit in a room with some Senators and US Representatives hearing things you would never hear about on the news. Two things… first, it showed me that Washington is way more corrupt than I thought it was. Secondly, as much as we bash US Representatives for not standing up for us, they have a 24/7 job, and there are so many different things coming at them simultaneously. It was an eye-opening experience about what they do and who they’re up against. So, CPI is one of the most conservative groups in Washington, DC. The establishment often looks down upon many representatives or Senators that CPI helps. They are the freedom fighters, as I would call, in the Republican Party—on the federal level.
Garrit: So, going back a little bit, on your website, you stated that you were “a special needs child born into the foster care system.” How has that experience shaped your views and your values?
David: You know, I will tell you this, when I was young and dumb, I was pro-choice. I didn’t know what it was or what it meant to be pro-choice. Abortion is murder. I could have been murdered, but my mother chose not to. Without much detail, she had an option to keep me or not to keep me, and she chose life. I feel like my experience going into foster care, being adopted by a beautiful family, and getting the services I needed because I was a special needs child proved to me that everybody has a life, and they all have worth. So, I am extremely pro-life. If elected, I will probably be the most pro-life person in the Texas House—because abortion is murder. I went from almost being aborted to being in the United States Armed Forces, and now I’m running for state representative. God is good. He’s blessed me 1000 times over. So, that has shaped me and my policy towards abortion and life in general.
Garrit: Absolutely. So, you’re running against an incumbent state representative—Representative Stephanie Klick. So, first off, why have you decided to challenge Representative Klick?
David: First thing, everybody’s a conservative until you look at their voting record. So, the legislative priorities are a relatively new thing. Still, Stephanie Klick has killed three legislative priorities—the election integrity bill, SB 9 in the 86th Legislature, the child gender modification bills in the 87th Legislature, and the abolish abortion bill in the 87th Legislature. However, what put me in this race was the child gender modification bill. HB 68, which is one of the three bills that I’m focused on, was the House bill that would have labeled child gender modification as child abuse—it is. I’m sure you’ve heard of Jeff Younger. I’ve met Jeff many times, and Jeff has endorsed me. He told me about how Stephanie Klick turned her back on him. When you do the research, you follow the money. You figure out why none of these politicians do anything because they want to follow the money. So, that pissed me off enough that I was like, “God has blessed me with this opportunity, I’m going to run, and I am going to win.” So, that was what pushed me over the edge. Nobody is conservative if they choose politics over children.
Garrit: Absolutely. So, many of these candidates say they’re conservative, they say they’ll be conservative when they get to Austin or DC, but sometimes that doesn’t work out. Sometimes people’s voting records tend to moderate or swing to the left as time goes on. Many people say they’ll go and fight the establishment, but some have a hard time doing it. How do you plan to take on the establishment?
David: Well, number one, just like everybody says, I don’t want to be a career politician. I am working on a press release and a pledge that I will only run for three terms—no more than three terms. I’m the only candidate in the race that supports term limits and campaign finance reform. There’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that I don’t know about—a lot of trading and so forth—but you get in there so long, and you enjoy the power and the recognition. I’m not going there for friends. I will make friends and “wheel and deal” with the Democrats and Republicans as needed, but I have a list of conservative priorities that I want to get through. If I were to get gender modification and the abolish abortion bill around. Then I had a primary opponent, and they’re a rock-solid conservative; well, then I would probably consider not running again because I will have gotten done what I wanted to get done. I’m going there on a mission. I am blessed to be 38 years old and retired—that’s almost a crime in itself. I want to do good for my community. At CPI, I learned how dark money, consulting, and corruption works at a legislative level—it’s disgusting. We can change it. Let’s not lie to ourselves—the Democrats, eventually, will take control of the Texas House. It’s just a mathematical probability. So, it’s time to change the rules and protect against the establishment before we look from the outside in. I commend Representative Bryan Slaton—he stood up against the hornet’s nest, against the Speaker, and everybody in his party because he believed in what he was doing. That’s the type of person I want to be.
Garrit: With that being said, if you do get elected, would you support Dade Phelan for Speaker?
David: Hell no. I need to learn Robert’s Rules of Order, but I would run for Speaker before he does. If Dade Phelan is the only one, I will run for Speaker against him—I’m telling you right now. I would need a lot of help, but there’s no way I would ever vote for him or any one of these other sellouts. I mean, you can look at Dade Phelan’s voting record, and you can look at his fiscal scorecard. He shouldn’t have even been considered to run for Speaker. Every one of the people who voted for him knew he would put Democrats as committee chairs. These people call us racist, bigots, and all this garbage, and then we want to just bow down to them—absolutely not. They should be trying to hold our pockets. We shouldn’t be trying to keep theirs.
Garrit: Well, you have my support in your effort to become Speaker. Moving on, though, you seem to have made many cultural issues a focus of your campaign—with gender modification on children and abortion. So, what are your thoughts on the James Younger case, and what exactly do you plan to do about gender modification on children?
David: Well, one thing I plan to do, of course, I would need to talk to some lawyers about it, is I want to impeach Judge Mary Brown. The Texas Constitution says that the Legislature can impeach a district judge—so that’s one thing. Secondly, I want to pass HB 68, just as it is written. I took that before I even ran a bill to a professional and had them look it over because I wanted to ensure I was not missing anything here. Why would Stephanie Klick put a stop to that bill—it had nothing to do with medical reasons. I would also be willing to hold up critical pieces of the Republican Legislature until I get that through the Texas House. Keep this in mind, in the 87th Legislature, there were 9966 bills submitted, and we couldn’t even get our 10 Republican priorities through, but we sure did pass protection for exotic animals and a bunch of garbage like that. I will do everything I can—I gave Jeff Younger my word to do my best to protect his child. Now, I don’t want anybody reading this to think I have any personal animosity against LGBT or trans—I don’t. Just keep your hands off our children. Once they’re adults, they can make consenting choices—the same thing with abortion, right? “My body my choice” is garbage because there are two bodies—once that child becomes a consenting adult, sure they can do what they want. Jeff Younger has so much patience. I had lunch with him once when he endorsed me. We met up, we had lunch, and he had to step away from the table. About 10 minutes later, he got off the phone and said, “they’re not letting me see my kids now.” I was like, “how are you not flipping the table?” I would be cursing up a storm and going crazy. That man has so much patience. He’s being screwed over by the judges, legislators, and doctors, so I want to call those people out. I don’t care. I will call Republicans cowards on the House floor if they block that bill. If you don’t stand up for children, you don’t stand up for anything.
Garrit: Yeah, absolutely. What do you plan on doing regarding abortion if you were elected state representative?
David: Well, I plan to do some revisions to the bill that was killed… I think it was HB 3326. I’ll have to double-check the bill number, but my main priority is abortion. Look… Mostly Republican-appointed justices created Roe v. Wade. I don’t have faith in the Supreme Court to uphold the Heartbeat Act. I believe children of any development period deserve equal protection under the law. The Fourteenth Amendment is equivalent protection for everyone. Unborn children should be protected under the 14th amendment. So, I will work with specific groups to make sure that happens. I’m willing to hold up other pieces of Legislature to make sure that passes. If you’re pro-life, then there is no reason for you not to say that unborn children deserve the same equal rights and protections as everyone else.
Garrit: Another issue you touched on earlier is term limits. Do you plan on creating legislation to have term limits for every elected position in the state of Texas?
David: Yes. Of course, everything is negotiable, and there’s no way we would ever get current elected officials to term themselves out. So, I’m okay with creating a grandfather thing—if you’ve ever been in the Legislature before, sure, you can get grandfathered, but future legislators should abide by a three-term limit. I want to make it simple—three terms. The Texas House is two years, so three terms are six years. I want 12 years for the Texas Senate. On a side note, I also want to abolish the legislator pension. I don’t think any taxpayer should ever owe a dime to a legislator once they’re out of office. This is a commitment to your community. This isn’t some sort of 401k or retirement thing. We don’t need that. What we need is people that are going into the office to serve their community.
Garrit: You’ve also voiced support for campaign finance reform. What precisely would you like to see done?
David: That’s a great question. I knocked on doors today, and somebody asked me the same question. I’ve raised $20,000. When I entered this race, my opponent had $268,000 on hand. That almost makes some incumbents unbeatable. So, what I would like to see is, you have to go back to zero after each election—you have… maybe four or six weeks after the election is finished to use the rest of your money, and then you go back to zero until six months before it’s election time. My opponent can spend a bunch of money and doesn’t have to do anything. She doesn’t have to knock on doors. I’m out there knocking doors every day, making phone calls, and recruiting volunteers. All she has to do is pick up the phone, buy some Facebook ads, and do a couple of mailers—she already has a name ID, so it’s almost not even fair. That is a straightforward way to create campaign finance reform. It doesn’t violate any first amendment rights as far as donations go. I think that would be a significant first step. Even though I don’t want to, I’d be willing to grandfather that, so it doesn’t apply to races where… I don’t know we’ll see, but I’m eager to work with it because I am very committed to making this happen. People will not get into a race because their opponent has half-million dollars in campaign contributions.
Garrit: Moving on from campaign finance reform, what are your thoughts on vaccine mandates and mask mandates?
David: I’m so glad you brought that up. You know it is disgusting. I tag my opponent so many times on so many threads, saying, “I’m the only one that will call out and ask for a ban for vaccine mandates.” I tag my opponent and say, “Hey, why aren’t you calling out vaccine mandates?” She won’t do it. It’s almost like if she would just say, “Yes, I support banning vaccine mandates,” then I would leave it alone. Even the state party has asked her and all the other representatives to ban vaccine mandates. She won’t do it. She took money from Pfizer. She took money from CVS. She took money from Johnson and Johnson. A majority of the money that she has raised has been from the medical field, and, get this, they donated to her last campaign right before she was appointed chair of the Public Health Committee. She was appointed to the vaccine allocation distribution panel… or whatever it is. She is on the take. I am the only candidate in this race that has the guts to say ban vaccine mandates, and every voter that I talk to is like, “yeah.” They ask me if I’m anti-Vax. I’m not anti-Vax—I’m anti-government-forced vaccines. If they can start putting things in your body… think about China; they had an abortion policy. You could only have one child. If we allow them to do this, God knows what we’re going to end up allowing the government to do to us.
Garrit: Yeah, absolutely. You’ve also made education an issue of this race. On your website, you’ve stated that “you’re in favor of a school choice, eliminating the STAAR test, and a forensic audit of public schools.” Can you talk about what you would like to see done about education in the state of Texas? Also, what are your thoughts on CRT in education?
David: First, I want to apologize to you, and whoever reads this, they’re not public schools. They’re government schools. Let’s make that clear. I will go on my website later and change that. Number one, CRT is trash. So is the TEA (Texas Education Agency). The TEA is a bunch of appointed bureaucrats, and it’s time the State Board of Education steps up. They need to up their game. CRT is trash, and we can take it away right now. What worries me about this whole issue about education is, on the one hand, I don’t want Austin always telling the schools what to do. They have school boards; they have superintendents; they have principals, educators, etc. I don’t want schools being regulated by Austin, but the school boards aren’t doing anything. They’re not taking a leadership role. Therefore, the state must step in. Now, the STAAR test… I’ve met so many teachers who are like, “look, it teaches them how to take this one particular test, it teaches them that you can’t make a mistake, and it takes away my time from educating.” Look, I want locally controlled schools and locally controlled testing. I’m willing to work with anybody, regardless of party, to make severe changes to the STAAR test possibly, but it has to benefit the kids. If I were elected, I’d have more of a platform to get into the schools and talk to the people who write the STAAR test. I only want to talk about the costs of STAAR tests. Keep this in mind. In 2017, 54.1% of property taxes went to government schools, and I support teachers getting pay raises, but I don’t support wasteful spending. There’s not a single government organization out there that doesn’t waste “butt-loads” of money. So, I want a forensic audit—from a third-party source—of the big five biggest school districts in Texas that received the most amount of property taxes. I want to see how and where the money is going. If it’s going to the right areas, that’s great, but we don’t know. I want to know how many students are in the schools. I want to know how many undocumented Americans are students in these schools. Out of the billions of dollars that go to government schools, why are we still needing federal grants? I don’t want us owning anything to the federal government when it comes to education. I don’t even like the US Department of Education. They’re screwing it up everywhere else. We need to fix it here in Texas.
Garrit: Whenever we talk about education, we always have talked about funding for education. You hear from the mainstream media and establishment politicians that you can’t abolish property taxes because you won’t have any money to fund schools. You’re just going to hurt these communities. So, what are your thoughts on abolishing property taxes, and what do you plan to do about property taxes?
David: Number one, property taxes are probably the most neglected issue that people ask or demand of their legislators. They want to talk about renaming bridges, but they don’t want to talk about property taxes. I would love to abolish property taxes. I like Don Huffines’s plan, but I have to see the math behind it. Until then, I plan to freeze the appraisal system. For example, here in Tarrant County, roughly 6,000 houses are appraised at once. I have knocked on so many doors as a volunteer. I’ve been invited into people’s homes, and they have holes in their ceiling, or flooding, etc. You can’t tell me that all those properties go up the same value. It’s a broken and unfair system. So, the first step to property tax reform is stopping appraisals. Secondly, I would like a constitutional cap on property taxes. I want a constitutional amendment saying that there will be no property tax beyond X percent of the home’s value. Third, people will say, “Well, what about roads, bridges, and schools?” If you give the government less money, you’ll be amazed at what they can do with it. When they get a pay cut, families find a way to manage. If you keep allowing the government to get more money, they’re just going to continue to waste it.
Garrit: So, the governor’s race is shaping up to be very interesting. What are your thoughts on the governor’s race?
David: Chad Prather is a guy I want to have a beer with. That dude is super smart. People think… they see his cowboy hat, and they’re like, “Oh, that’s a cool guy.” He’s really nice and super smart. I have mad respect for him. I know Allen West personally. I knew him before I entered politics. He’s a great stand-up guy. Then there’s Don Huffines. They all bring something different. Allen brings his leadership abilities from the military. Don Huffines brings his business skills—he’s one of the largest developers, with Huffines Communities, in the state. Chad Prather brings a whole different dynamic to leadership. We’ll have to see what happens. Of the houses I’ve knocked so far, it’s been a mixed reaction when it comes to Abbott. I never bring up Abbott because I always want to talk about my race. Some people make a point to say, “oh, I hate Abbott,” but others make a point to say, “oh, I love Abbott.” So, it’ll be interesting to see. I’m sure it will go into a runoff, but I don’t know who’s going to come out ahead.
Garrit: Do you have anything else to say as we end the interview?
David: I would like to say three things. First, thank you for allowing me to do this interview. Anybody who chooses politics over children is a coward, and my opponent will outraise me, but she will not outwork me. Lastly, if you want to change, you’re going to have to invest in it, you’re going to have to take a risk, you’re going to have to vote for it, and you’re going to have to put some of your money behind the candidate possibly. The status quo is broken, and I will do my part to ensure Texas is prosperous for another few decades.
Garrit: Excellent. Well, David, thank you so much for having this interview with me. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. Check out David Lowe’s Website at davidlowefortexas.com.
