John Courage interview with Kathi Gori

Gori: What made you decide to run for Congress?

Courage: I am concerned about the direction of this country. As a teacher I was aggravated that we didn't get consistent support for public education. I found out my Congressman wasn't supporting education and he didn't support health care, and he didn't support Social Security. When I couldn't find anyone else to run against him, I stepped up.

Gori: Well, you know, Lamar Smith seems to know only the word "no." His position, of course, on the Iraq War, which I think is going to be a very important factor this year ... Texas has sent, as California has, too, a lot of their people to this war, and ...

Courage: Absolutely. A lot of people I know.

Gori: And so many people have ...our soldiers, the people that are over there, are not properly supplied. It's one thing to send people, but then take care of them when they come back also.

Courage: I think that was probably the greatest problem that we had. Now I didn't agree with the war in Iraq at the beginning. I certainly supported our efforts to fight the terrorists in Afghanistan. But the war in Iraq was a whole different ballgame. It seems we sent our troops over there unprepared, unsupported, unsupplied. As a result now, we're in the middle of a war that seems endless and hopeless. And the American people do not support this war.

And you know I'm a veteran, as you said. I wore a uniform. I carried a weapon. I stood at posts defending my country. So I understand what it means to be and serve in the military. I also understand what it means to expect your government to be there for you, to support your effort. ...We just didn't have a plan to not only to win the battle, we didn't have a plan to win the peace.

Gori: Texas in the past has always been a very Democratic state, and then it went through changes, ... the No Child Left Behind thing, all the crazy experiments with education, a lot of the environmental depredations that went on in Texas. We're all living in Texas now.

Courage: Well, you know, Texas is really sorry that we gave the country George Bush. We've got to get him and all the Republican leadership out of Washington just as quickly as we can. That's what my campaign is about. I'm running to bring change to the Congress. I'm running because we've got such a corrupt culture of incumbency. And that culture is costing us. The cost of corruption is so great that it's really putting us in a very dangerous situation with our civil liberties as well as our economic condition, especially for future generations.

Gori: One thing I don't understand, why are they so angry? When you see them on television ... if I were running everything, I'd be the nicest person in the world. Now I'm not running everything, they are, why are they screaming all the time?

Courage: Oh, it's fear. They're fear-mongers. They're chickenhawks and fear-mongers, and their goal is to keep America frightened and talk about how strong we need to be in our fight against terrorism. But we're being weakened in the very foundations of our society. The Republican Administration has done everything it can to cut back on programs that Americans need, that undermine the very foundation of the American society that provides a quality education and good health care and civil liberties protection. And they do that by frightening a lot of the American public.

Gori: How are you dealing with voter registration there in your area? How's it coming?

Courage: We have a lot of colleges and universities in and around our district and we work a lot with those students. We've got many, many people who are registered who simply don't vote. And so a lot of our effort is to just help educate, inform and motivate people to exercise that right to vote. For too long people said, well, my vote doesn't count and all these politicians are the same. Well, I'm showing them a different kind of a politician. I don't come from some well-to-do, elite family. I'm a teacher. I'm a working man. That's what the people in our district want to represent them in Congress. They're waking up to get involved.

Gori: I come from a blue-collar family and people, I mean, my family, thank goodness, are liberal Democrats, but we have a couple of relatives that are on the other side. And it's almost like they've had lobotomies, you know? These are not people with money. These are not people ... getting any advantage from any of the things that this group in Washington has passed, and yet they still cling to it.

Courage: Well, for too many years, the Republicans sold a bill of goods to middle America, saying that you, too, can become a Republican. All you need to do is vote like we do and you'll gain all the riches and wealth and power that we have. And so they bought in, they drank the Kool-Aid. And before it kills them, we're trying to give them the cure.

Editor's Note: The interview has been edited for space.