Jesse and Austin interview Attorney General Candidate Joe Jaworski. The trio discuss community government in Texas, voting issues, DSHS handling of delta-8, and Joe Jaworski’s background among other items. You can find more information about his candidacy at https://jaworskifortexas.com/.
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TRANSCRIPT for Episode 11: Joe Jaworski for TX Attorney General
Joe Jaworski Jaworski for AG podcast transcript
Jesse: Welcome to the Lonestar collective podcast. I’m your host, Jesse Williams. This is episode 11. I’m here with co-host Austin Zamhariri. This week is a candidate for attorney general, Joe Jaworski. How are you doing Joe Jaworski?
Joe Jaworski: Hey Jesse. I’m great, Austin. Thanks for having me.
Jesse: Quite the discussion we had of the close miss(convo before show started), I guess, or almost miss at the Texas OU game.
Joe Jaworski: Well, I mean, it was obviously a heavy high scoring game. So in that regard it was a lot of entertainment, but Texas is having a habit of coming out strong and then getting gassed near the end. But, you know, being in the Cotton Bowl is always excellent.
Jesse: Well, we’re glad to have you here this week. We’ll hit the ground running. We’ll start talking about some of the priorities you have here. The state of Texas, as you run for attorney general, you’re talking about creating a general civil rights division, protecting the civil rights of all Texans. I’ll let you expand on that.
Joe Jaworski: Oh yeah. Be my pleasure. Well, it’s remarkable to consider. That presently, the Texas attorney General’s office. I mean, forget what party anyone’s in. They don’t have a civil rights division and we understand civil rights are always under attack. It’s part of American existence that people have complaints regarding their civil rights, whether it’s gender or race.
And, you know, equality is something we strive for in America. And we often come up short, but you know, that’s the whole nature of, you know, making it a more perfect union. And, it’d be one thing, Jesse, if Texas were like sort of simpatico with the United States department of justice, but as we know, they are not. And so it would even be more important, I think, for there to be a local version of that. So one of my pledges as you refer to is when I’m elected and I take the oath of office, there will be on day one, a civil rights division. The last time we had one was the last time we had a Democrat. So, you know, I don’t know why the GOP doesn’t consider that important, but it will be under my administration.
Jesse: There seems to be, and it just came to my mind because. I was watching Dave Chappelle’s The Closer the other day. And a big discussion has become about trans rights and our Supreme Court has even said it’s like LGBTQ rights are the same as everybody else’s rights. But it seems to be in Texas, Texas is still one of those states that when it comes to that civil rights defense of you can’t hit me. You can’t, you can’t beat on me for that reason. We’re one of those states that ignores that.
Joe Jaworski: Yeah. I mean, fortunately there are, you know, all sorts of nonprofit, legal aid groups that will assert a cause of action, but you know, why should it be that way? I mean, why should it be that we’re always fighting our government to do the right thing? Why can’t the government with the great weight of moral authority that a government has, be on the right side of these things? Be the good guy for once. Why can’t you be able to call your government to say, Hey, my civil rights are being trod upon. Well in Texas, unfortunately it’s usually the government doing it in this case, the legislature is very painful. So that’s just something we need to work on and we can do a lot better.
Jesse: I would definitely agree. That was something, something that I had seen during the legislature. I had went to a criminal justice hearing committee and spoke on the death penalty and it was primarily, we had a bill in front of us, it’s like, we have people who are, intelligence disabled that we’re facing death penalty charges. And our state’s had to be told multiple times, you can’t do that. And it’s like, why is our legislature ignoring this? Why do we have an office, a legal office that ignores this? So I’m glad that that’s something you, you bring to the forefront to, to bring attention to because those are serious issues.
Joe Jaworski: Well, oftentimes, you know, I, I am concerned that the Texas attorney General’s office seems to be. You know, the side of someone other than the people, you know, it seems to be more about protecting a bias or protecting, a position that will appeal to a certain electorate rather than doing the job, which is to serve the people, to, to be a consumer protection agency, to be a civil rights division, and to simply serve the people of Texas and look for opportunities.
As an attorney general to be nonpartisan or bipartisan. In other words, a consumer protection issue might be presenting the position of the people against private health insurance. Well, we like private health insurance, but we don’t like it when they decline coverage. After accepting our premises, you know, I mean, I’m all for businesses making a profit in America.
You know, we are a capitalist society. You work hard, make more money, and live better. It is the ideal. But when these health insurance companies are making billions and billions in profits while telling licensed Texas physicians, sorry, doc, we’re not going to cover that. Even though you’ve gone to medical school and done a residency and an internship and practiced for 30 years, and you’re an expert at what you do, we’re going to decline your request.
To treat your patient the way you propose, find another way, because we don’t want to pay for it. Well, there needs to be an attorney general that pushes back against that.
Jesse: And we were, we had a discussion. We were getting ready for this and you were, and then it kind of leads with cannabis to. That’s what our focus is, is that speaking of the government telling doctors in Texas, it’s like, yeah, You may have gone to school. You may know the studies and you’ve read through them, but we’re going to tell you, you know, we’re not really fond of you telling your patients, they could use this substance, despite you’ve shown us all this evidence.
Joe Jaworski: You know, to me, people are fluid, where they like to live. And, you know, we all know people are moving to Texas, often from states where cannabis has been legal. So, you know, it’s not a wild proposition, that people in Texas have seen the other side. You know what I do for a living, Jesse, when I’m not, you know, putting on the candidate case and campaigning? I’m a mediator, a 31 year licensed Texas attorney.
I’ve been a trial lawyer, my entire career, and have put those skills learned in the courtroom and, you know, in litigation to helping people settle their personal injury law. Specifically, I mediate what’s called defense space act cases. These are the injury claims brought by former veterans. Well, I guess they’re veterans, the former military now veterans who are working as military contract.
And they’re not necessarily people that carry guns. I mean, they could be Afghan interpreters. They could be diesel mechanics working on machines and Afghanistan. Well, anyway, they get PTSD, they get hurt. They have chronic pain. They come home, they live in all 50 states and I’ve been all around. And especially in the states where cannabis is legal, they speak glowingly about the benefits of cannabis.
From a medicinal standpoint, from a PTSD standpoint. And how about cancer patients and how about, you know, chronic pain patients and what we’re leaving them with here in Texas is just taking more pills. That’s legal, just don’t kill yourself, you know? And so if a doctor thinks it’s better to use cannabis while I side with the doctor and, and that’s the case in Oklahoma, That’s the case in New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana, just all these states that border us, but not us, you know?
And we’re so lucky just to get, what is it now? Point five.
Austin Zamhariri: 1%, yeah.
Joe Jaworski Jaworski: 1% up, up from 0.5 and, and yet everyone knows that the proper dose is 5.0. And, you know, so we’re still way behind on that. And it would be nice if Texas, you know, the second largest in population and, you know, just a great influence or it would be great if we got with, with the program.
Austin Zamhariri: What do you think, if you were elected attorney general, how would you, how would you lead on this issue to progress this, this moving forward?
Joe Jaworski Jaworski: Well, I’ve already started as a campaigner. So let’s harken back to 1972 when John Hill was running for Texas attorney general. Now, you know, we can’t be legislative.
We’re candidates for the statewide constitutional executive office of attorney general, but going around statewide, you have a bully pulpit. You have a platform. And when you win as John Hill did, he had a right to say, well, it must have been something I said. And one of the things he advocated for was a consumer protection law that didn’t.
At the time where you could sue someone who defrauded you or ripped you off. And if you win, you get attorney’s fees, believe it or not, there was not a law like that. Well, he advocated for it. And so to specifically answer your question advocate for legalized cannabis, and then when you win the election, you say, well, it must have been something I said, you’ll be invited as the first witness, before the appropriate Senate committee, when the bill gets filed and you can lead by example, John Hill did the same thing.
He testified before. Business commerce committee and LA in 73 was born the deceptive trade practices act because he advocated for it. and he was the number one witness. So, you know, that’s political. Wanted to take a little turn, we got right to ask another question. Before we go into our first sponsor break.
Jesse: You’ve mentioned supporting cities, counties, and school districts in their local decision-making authority that, in your view, the Republican party’s declared war on cities and counties because that’s outrageous, because every Texan that lives in Texas lives in a city or county. And I want you to expand on that.
Joe Jaworski: Oh, Jesse, how well said, I mean, it’s like, they’re hating on. Our most basic sense of identity, our hometown. What I’m telling people is this used to be a GOP point, and it is conservative. You know, it’s the conservative end of federalism, which is that local government is the best government. And that’s just not me saying it local.
Government’s the best because it’s the most responsive. I think a very visceral way of examining it is you can have coffee with your mayor, but good luck getting coffee with Greg. And then we talked about that.
Jesse: I’m a journalism major. I went from doing engineering to graphic design, to journalism. And the big thing that we talked about in one of my ethics and media law classes was about community, about community setting the standard and the tone for things rather than the overarching federal government doing so. And that’s how we treat speech. And it’s like, why aren’t we treating a lot of other things with this same community state?
Joe Jaworski: Oh, I like that, community is, American value, you know, and I mean, it’s probably a global value honestly, but you know, we think of community as a good word, you know, you know, it’s like an embrace of a common value system and, and it is easier to. Benefit from that on a more local level. and, and as long as it’s not hurting people or clearly illegal, you know, it’s okay.
If there’s a little difference in Abilene, Texas, you know, versus Houston, Texas, or Tyler in Brownsville, let them be themselves.
Jesse: I try to explain to my wife, she’s from Puerto Rico. We lived in Virginia before I got out of the military. Coming back to Texas, I was like, Texas is one of the few places where you can run into almost every type of geographic scenario that we have mountains.
We’ve got deserts, we’ve got swamps, we’ve got planes. We’ve got hills, we’ve got beaches. You name it. We’ve probably got it. We’ve got all these different geographical climate things going on. And that results in there being different policies needed for those areas. So, yeah, it’s obvious Austin needs something different from Dallas and El Paso needs something greatly different from Houston.
Joe Jaworski: And, and the great thing is it’s almost like an American thing. It’s almost like an American value, which is, Hey, you know, if the city happens to be liberal and you like living there, good. If somehow your value system changes and you want to move well, you can do that. And Texas is big enough for there to be some transportation like that.
And, you know, such as the case where people live in the cities and then they go to the suburbs and sometimes they then go to the country. It is a big state and I like it that way. We’re going to go into our first sponsor, bright care at the lone star collective. This is episode 11, our guest is attorney general candidate Jojo.
Jesse: I’m Jesse Williams with co-host Austin Zam. Horary we’ll be right back after this sponsor break. And we’re going to be talking about the Delta eight situation in Texas.
BREAK
Jesse: I noticed you’re enjoying the little music selection we’ve got going on.
Joe Jaworski: Yeah. Yeah. I know it brings me back. I mean, I think Chicago was one of the first concerts I ever saw, like when I was 12.
Austin: Real quick, before we, j p into some serious, more serious conversation. Joe Jaworski, can you tell us a little bit about your background and where you’re from specifically within Texas? Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Joe Jaworski: So I was born in Houston, Texas, and. I lived most of my young life there, finishing school in England, at a wonderful American school there. And then, came back and did a freshman year of college living with my grandfather, Leon Jaworski. So that was great. And my grandmother, Jeannette Jaworski went to Davidson college, got my college degree in Spanish literature, was accepted to university of Texas law school, but said now I got a better idea.
During college we met REM right when they were getting started. And since I’m a drummer, I went and got into a rock band for four years. And toured the country and put out a record or two, one of which is now on iTunes. So y’all check out Other Bright Colors. Yeah. I mean, you know, we broke up before CDs were even commercially available, but in a masterpiece of resuscitation, this band now is alive on iTunes and Amazon, and Spotify.
So, I became an attorney in 91. met my wife at UT law school, Austin, Texas. And, I’ve been trying to move back ever since. Right. practiced trial law ever since, and served as a city Councilman mayor pro tem, and then mayor of Galveston, Texas. And have been serving the state as a lawyer, and the people within it, as a trial lawyer and immediate or ever since, but now I’m back in the game because things are getting bad in Texas.
And before I age out Austin and Jesse, I intend to have a say about it,
Austin: Real quick Galveston, that’s a pretty conservative area. Well, it is now, Galveston county, but Galveston Island’s always been, you know, like where the pirates live, you know, and now it’s like John, the feats and, you know, it was, it was always, you know, the where the down at the Balinese, you know, as easy top would saying, I mean, you know, it was, they call it the free state of Galveston.
So it was always very low. Now Galveston counties, pretty conservative now thanks to league city and friends would, but you know, give it 10 years, we’ll say. But, yeah, I ran for state Senate out of the Galveston district, Senate district 11. And you know, that that is a graveyard for Democrats right now in terms of that gerrymander, but there is a growing movement in Galveston and the Democrats are ascending.
Jesse: So we’re going to, we’re going to start moving forward with what we talked about right before we hit the brake. And I had talked with you shortly on the phone beforehand about the Delta eight situation in this state. And as a refresher, our state during the legislative session had a bill put forward where several bills where this what’s called an isomer, which means that it’s.
In a different form, I guess, as an easier way to say it of Delta nine, what Delta eight is they tried putting this on several bills to completely eliminate this and the language itself. Long story short guts got so messy that nobody wanted to accept it anymore. From my understanding the representative, King, was pretty much what he said at Lucky Leaf.
We had a good bill. Everybody agreed on it and they kept trying to change it. And I just wasn’t going to go for that. Why would we kill a bill that the entire industry is very happy with, but they tried doing this Delta eight item. During the legislative session, the committee hearing in the Senate DSHS testified that it was their belief that this substance Delta eight, according to them, was illegally instilled in the controlled substances.
Here about a week or so ago, a group posted up online saying, we understand DSHS has said, this is illegal. it’s for our members sake. You don’t want to get in trouble for this. And it seemed to prompt a full response because DSHS told a business journal the same thing. They reiterated the same quote.
They (DSHS) then put up on their own website on their frequently asked questions that this substance to them was illegal and that they had no regulatory authority over controlled substances in Texas. So running for attorney general, my understanding is that you would be one to say, if you did take office, it would be your group that would represent DSHS and a possible lawsuit.
If groups came up with this, we wanted to gather your thoughts on that.
Joe Jaworski: Yeah, no, I mean, this, this. Certainly part of the attorney general offices job, which is to represent the state when sued, you know, let me say that I’m obviously an advocate for legalization of recreational cannabis, which would moot this entire question, you know, should the legislature see the light?
I think that what is happening here is business. Had been relying upon a very clear bill, is now being told something different and, and there should be a lawsuit about it, or at least the request for an attorney general opinion. Now it would be interesting if the attorney general were asked to question, you know, unless it is specifically outlawed, can, you know, division, you know, interpret, or, or set forth of regulation, you know, that they’ve not been asked to set up.
Because apparently it is this statement on the website, which has now alarmed everybody and sent everyone into a fervor. And I understand, you know, why the industry can’t accept this because people have made a lot of business decisions, based on one understanding only to find out now that it’s illegal.
It would be interesting to have to defend this now, remember any position that the Attorney General’s office is asked to defend. It is the office’s responsibility first to be a candid attorney, you know, and sometimes lawsuits are good lawsuits. In other words, you know, sometimes the right defense.
Positioned to take is you’re right. We’ll fix this. You know, I mean, for example, Texas has been sued, left and right over, the horrible abuse and now contempt of court involving foster children. You know, what’s the right answer? Well, that’s okay. You know, we didn’t do anything wrong or should inappropriate general counsel do something to settle the matter.
You know, so, you know, I would say that if there’s a misunderstanding of the law, you know, perhaps the attorney general ought to tell the governor to call a special session, for example, and fix it, or, you know, have a word with DSHS and say, you need to be a little more specific in your findings here.
Jesse: And perhaps an attorney general opinion, if requested could settle the matter from my understanding, and perhaps and has been that we pass this bill in 2019 for Texas, that it was saying hemp, any of its derivatives. And this derivative that’s being converted, from our listeners, now from CBD to Delta eight.
But basically they’ve put it through a chemical process that they’ve extracted out to change it into another chemical. And it’s considered a derivative and some are people arguing. Well, no, that’s a synthetic and synthetics have their own legal language. But the state said anything that comes from hemp. We’re fine with that. And synthetic language gets weird because CBD isolate would technically be synthetic. Making hemp wood would be synthetic and people are pointing to that and going well, you told us that’s okay. Like you said, they’re they’re they were under the assumption. This was legal. And I imagine there’s hundreds of millions of dollars in personal revenue and probably millions of dollars in tax revenue the state’s getting from this, that’s just going to vanish. If the state just goes well, it owns how we want to do things. It’s just on a whim.
Joe Jaworski: Well, that’s right, Jesse and that is exactly right. And so it’s not, it’s not about, you know, it’s not about good government anymore.
It’s about sort of keeping their position, an overly conservative position that is completely out of the mainstream. And, you know, it sounds like it’s almost one or two people that are forcing this position. I mean, you’ll recall Dan Patrick is the sort of guy who can call and have a speaker yanked from the Bob Bullock museum .
You remember the forget the Alamo book? Yes. I heard about that. Apparently he’s, you know, an ex officio on the board of the bullet muse or something. And, you know, he just because it offended his sensibilities made sure that that event was canceled. and you know, he, he might be the kind of guy that, or someone like him, you know, if, if not exactly Dan Patrick, who would simply call the leadership at DHS, a D DSHS and say, you know, you’re gonna fix this and here’s how you’re going to do. That’s no way to run a government that’s authoritarian.
Jesse: I can personally attest. I can personally attest that when I was a Texas state student working for the wonderful Katie SW radio station there that we were advised is like, watch your mouth. When you talk about the government officials in this state, specifically your governor, because the governor has line-item, veto power.
And if you do something that steps on that person’s toes. They could line-item veto this college’s budget, just say, Hey, well, we’ll give them your budget. We’ll give you the budget. When you decide to reprimand this student for exercising, their free speech rights on campus.
Joe Jaworski: That is not freedom. You know, that is tyranny. That is tyranny and it’s bullying. And we see that. no, I was going to just reiterate that we, in the cannabis space from a legislative standpoint, we were all too familiar with the Lieutenant governor’s tactics and the way he likes to play politics, you know, for two legislative sessions in a row, we’ve had very solid legislation make it to the Senate with overwhelming.
Austin: A super majority support from the house only to either get stalled or outright shut down by our current Lieutenant governor. And, I’ll be honest. I, I’m not quite sure if I really want to hear from our current attorney general on any of this, considering his legal troubles in the past, to be honest.
Joe Jaworski: I know that Austin you’re you’re so right.He’s a team player if there ever was one for the uber conservative movement. And, I don’t know that he exercises a whole lot of independent thought. He kind of follows the leader, you know, for example, the frivolous lawsuit that got laughed out of the Supreme court. He didn’t write that. But he had the lack of integrity to adopt it. after several Southern state attorneys general had declined to do that. it was kind of a gadfly think tank, production that to please Trump. And they finally found a willing participant. I mean, Ken Paxton, didn’t ask my permission to file. Did he ask yours?
I don’t think he asked for anyone’s permission. He did it just because he wanted to raise some money. I outraised him actually, between July 1st, 2020 and December 31st, 2020. And you would think a guy like him, who’s incumbent, knowing that he’s got a competitor hot on his heels with the legislative deadline looming would have raised more money, but he didn’t.
And the only way he got close with. During the four day existence of that frivolous lawsuit, he filed, Trump and him sent out one of those emails, you know, all hands to the wheel, you know, shoulder to the people, you know, save our democracy emails and he raised $150,000. From small dollar donations because “he was saving democracy.”
So yeah, I don’t want to hear what he has to say on this. he, he just today announced a voter integrity unit to police the local elections this November. And you know, I, I’m not going to have Ken Paxton instruct us on integrity.
Jesse: Well, we’re going to take a quick sponsor break here at the Lone Star Collective.
I’m your host, Jesse Williams. Our guest today is attorney general candidate Joe Jaworski Jaworski. We’ll be right back after this break.
BREAK
Jesse: So we were, we left off, we were discussing election integrity, which to me is the concern that I started realizing this last week.
This type of thing. And it goes with what you’re saying is that if we have people who start messing with the vote on a government level, and you have people who are wanting to vote for candidates that want to change these laws, how do we be sure that, like you mentioned with somebody like Ken Paxton, who’s running that these people are their voices going to get heard and decided, just give me the same old, same old ensuring that, that the same people get put back in.
Joe Jaworski: Yeah. I mean, I just, I just think the government needs to get back into the business of serving the public good rather than enforcing an ideology. and you know, if you don’t like it, you can leave. That’s kind of the way it feels. Right. Know, if you don’t like it, why don’t you move? You know, and, and Texas has never been that way.
It’s a friendship state and it’s a state of possibilities and opportunity, and it’s always been very business friendly land. You know, here we have, a federal act that, you know, defined him a certain way and created an opportunity for rural Texas of all of, you know, traditional values. And, you know, maybe that’s the answer, Jesse is that, you know, a lawsuit brought.
You know, claim that, you know, the federal understanding takes precedence here, you know, that hemp and its derivatives are legal, you know?
Jesse: And I’m of the position that, because the federal law says it as well, that if the state wants to legally go through the legislature and adopt a position where they say, Hey, we’re going to get rid of this substance, or we’re going to get rid of this other item that the federal government said we could do, (they can do so) our hemp bill said, has said, the states could come up with their own plans and they could run these as they see fit. As long as it didn’t interfere with how much you could change the framework of what they had put up. And it’s like, okay, they gave us the permission to do so. And if the state wants to go ahead and legislatively ban delta eight, the legislature can do that. I doubt that people as a whole want that though.
Joe Jaworski: And again, you know, it’s, I’ve spoken to police chiefs around the state and you know, where most of the population lives. In the cities, the practice has been essentially to decriminalize possession of recreational amounts. And by that, I mean, two ounces or less.
Which, you know, to my way of thinking is a lot, but, you know, it’s like maybe you go to the grocery store and buy a whole bunch of food, you know, for two weeks. Okay. Well, you know, you don’t want to just have to keep going out and buying something. If you can buy, you know, a tidy sum of it. So I think that’s where two ounces comes from, I guess.
And, my point is if that’s the way the majority of the population is living under a regime like that the Texas government needs to catch up. And these laws appear to be more written, and the enforcement in this case by DSHS is more like, appealing to some sort of base ideology, you know?
And, I doubt very much that anyone who subscribes to that. Is the majority it’s like, it’s like a really vociferously Memorial. And again, the Texas government needs to catch up and get with the program. You know, I’m real
Austin: Curious because, you may have heard that the new statistics show that the greatest amount of growth happening in the state of Texas comes from minority communities.
And yet when we see these new redistricting lines, we see that it has actually decreased the access, the vote access of eligible voters of those in the minority community and actually increased, Anglo-Americans in Texas, their vote. When we see there’s actually kind of a dichotomy when it comes to the statistics out there. And how would you approach this whole redistricting mess? That’s decades old. This is not anything new to this particular redistricting map.
Joe Jaworski: Well, you know, let me say that, I’m disappointed that the House is so partisan. The Senate is so partisan and apparently, you know, it’s legal to consider partisanship and its end goal in redistricting.
And, you know, they’re, they’re shamelessly, picking their voters. So they sustain or have better chances of sustaining a Republican majority. Versus the way it really ought to be, which is the voters pick their servants. So I know what’s going on. You know, there’s laws they’ve become less helpful, you know, Shelby, the United States Supreme court case from 2013 gets rid of section five of the voting rights act.
And, you know, Supreme court finds that you can actually gerrymander and, you know, it’s okay to do it with a partisan goal, but here’s, here’s what we know, that in the last 10 years, The decennial census 4 million, people came to Texas or were born here. That’s the population growth in the last 10 years and remarkably 95% of that 4 million growth are people of color and remarkably in this redistricting people of color achieve less representation.
There will be less districts than there were yesterday, you know, or a year ago that have percentages. People of color, that would be compared to a 95% increase. My God, you know, what is going on here? It’s so transparent. So to answer your question, Austin, that redistricting, litigation’s probably gonna last through the election and you know, if it’s still going on and you know, let’s say it’s in the United States Supreme court and I take the oath of office.
Well, you know, there’s a new sheriff. And, you know, I will not prejudge it. Although I’ll be able to read the pleadings just like you and anyone else. So I probably will have an opinion as we get closer to election day. Cause you know, it’s about a year away. The primaries are less than four months away.
And, what I would say is, is that, if it’s illegal, if it is a racial gerrymander, well, that’s, that’s unconstitutional and it’s against the law. And, you know, you’ll have a duty of candor as the top attorney in the state to say, so if that’s the case, so As we start.
Jesse: And our last segment of the show. I want to ask you the most open-ended thing a host could ever ask. And if there is anything that you think we haven’t discussed that you would like to discuss and for our listeners to know about you?
Joe Jaworski: Well, you know, certainly I can direct you to my website and you can see a lot about me. I’d like to seize upon a story from my time as mayor of Galveston that I think goes beyond partisanship and goes beyond any specific platform issue. I was the first mayor, elected after hurricane Ike. And, you know, that was a very damaging storm and it cost Galveston about 10,000 in population. And we’ve been working our way back ever since. I mean, that was what, 13 years ago. You’re a little over 13. Well, one thing that happened is, you know, the low income population takes it on the chin a lot more than people with insurance.
A lot of people live in their old family homes in Galveston, you know, homes that have been paid. You know, before the concept of mortgages were common speak. So these are homes that people have lived in for decades. If not maybe a hundred years, you know, their families have grown up there. Well, my point to you is when you don’t have a mortgage in Texas, you know, there’s no obligation that the bank puts on you to have any kind of property.
Well, when you’re living close to the bone and you know you’re worrying about food and medicine, you’re probably not going to purchase flood insurance. Well, in that instance, a lot of people didn’t have flood insurance when hurricane Ike flooded the island. The point of my story is that when I was elected mayor housing and urban development had given Galveston a generous grant.
I mean, it’s beyond a grant. It’s $900 million, Jesse and Austin. It paid for fire stations and wastewater treatment plants, hardening of the infrastructure. So that things were raised up, it even paid close to half a billion dollars. To private homeowners. Yeah. Housing and urban development gave that because people, what are we going to do?
Just die on the vine. They gave money. So Galveston could be revived. And the only condition was that housing and urban development insisted that the public housing be restored because the storm basically destroyed it and they bulldozed it. so it was my job to rebuild it. And, and I want you to know this about me, that I didn’t want to just rebuild apartments because you know, that.
Became slums and projects. We did something else. We did mixed income developments, which means you’re going to have doctors and lawyers, nurses, environment, and income eligible people living in beautiful, public private properties. And it doesn’t look at all like projects. Well, the requirement is you got to triple the number though, because that’s the only way it was.
And when people found out about that, there were some racist overtones, and then there were just economic overtones of people that were making a lot of money, using old properties for section eight. Didn’t like the idea that some new kid on the block, mixed income housing was going to be built.
Well, they came after me, and they ran candidates against me, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I made it to a runoff. They came to me in the middle of the night and said, look, you know, you back off on this plan and we’ll take this candidate. That deal was actually offered to me. I said, no way, man, we’re doing this and it costs me my election, but it was the right thing to do.
And now, I’m proud to tell you that after three years of federal litigation, I was there at the groundbreaking. I was there at the ribbon. And it was a hundred percent occupancy. There’s Christmas wreaths on the doors at Christmas, there’s children trick-or-treating at Halloween, there’s potlucks, there’s neighborhoods, there’s community to use that word.
So, you know, sometimes you gotta re do right and risk the consequences and that’s the kind of thing.
Jesse: As an officeholder I thank you for that. Personally, I myself have been through a flood living here in Austin. I used to live in a part of town that was right next to what’s called Onion Creek. And in 2015, I got hit in the flood and had almost three feet of water come into my home.
And I had to fight with the city. I’d been fighting with them for almost a year. And I told them I wasn’t going to settle because they were trying to put me in a rental from a home that I was mortgaging out. I had flood insurance and they were telling me, well, we’re not going to treat you the same way we treat everybody else on the block about this.
I said, well, that sounds like invidious discrimination to me. I’m not going for that. I got to have a home for my family and it was a tough fight. And when the flood happened, I managed to get them pretty much that day to go. We’ll buy out your home. We’ll pay the difference between it in a similar home.
And they want to move me to a home in San Marcos, Texas in a home that was roughly like $35,000 more, and they paid the difference between it. But I had to fight for them for a solid year. So. I thank you for putting that fight up for people.
Joe Jaworski: Amen, brother, get up, stand up, stand up for your rights and don’t give up the fight.
Austin: Exactly.
Jesse: Well, we thank you Joe Jaworski for spending your time with us and you, you gave us this time today, it’s very much appreciated.
Joe Jaworski: Thank you guys. I appreciate it again. I want everyone to connect with me on social media. All our lengths are on the website, Jaworskifortexas.com. Thanks