SocraticGadfly: Learning more about Delilah Barrios

April 27, 2022

Learning more about Delilah Barrios

Texas' Green Party gubernatorial candidate was on Ryan Knight's podcast recently.

A few thoughts.

First, the Lege is who passes constitutional amendments to send to the public, and they need a 2/3 vote of both houses. You didn't mention that; if you think it would be hard as a GP candidate to get along with the Lege in general, on constitutional amendments, it would be climbing Mount Everest.

About two-thirds in, Barrios notes she reached out to Sema Hernandez, via friends, but never really heard back from her. She added that Hernandez is focused on helping "Democrats like her" or words to that effect.

Barrios sounded disappointed, but also mildly surprised.

Given the way Sema sucked up to Beto after losing the 2018 primary, to the point of claiming O'Rourke supported single-payer, or at least implying he did, when he did not, this surprises me not at all. It doesn't surprise me that Barrios was surprised, either, I think. But, it is something else to note. Namely, that she was kind of naive.

I mean, I noted almost three full years ago that Hernandez seemed well on her way to becoming Just.Another.Politician.™. And, I ventured into other territory, like the issue of being a Hispanic Dem and running for office in Texas. But I then ventured back to just how much she air-kissed Bob the Knob, either being clueless about just how much a ConservaDem he is, or else not caring. Also, between there and here, I noted that Sema didn't have much pull among 2020 Texas Dems in a much more crowded Senate race. So Barrios was barking up the wrong tree.

Related to that? Barrios "marveling" at the number of people of color who voted for Trump. On Blacks, it's surprising to me, too. On Hispanics, it's not at all surprising. If Barrios doesn't grasp that a lot of Hispanics want tighter border controls, it's another bit of cluelessness. That doesn't mean it's right (or that it's wrong) to have this desire, but the desire is real.

Interestingly, one thing she did NOT mention to Ryan Knight was how she dislikes Bob on a Knob's stance on gun control, which I blogged about not too long after she announced her candidacy. Maybe she figures that one doesn't poll well with Greenie types? And, if so, then she's potentially following Hernandez into non-New York JAP territory.

Also, from then versus now, her concern about COVID on that podcast, and her talk about being a "health care professional," was ... uh ... INNNteresting given that on that first blog of mine, I note that she is at minimum a fellow traveler of COVID antivaxxers and at max a full-on antivaxxer on all vaxxes herself. (That's not a total surprise; Greenies and Libertarians, and especially eco-libertarians, are high on antivaxxerism in general. Also, via Orac, a full 10 percent of medical doctors are antivax or the loverly "vax hesitant," so surely, among surgical nurses or whatever Barrios does [she said she works in surgery, but I'm guessing not a gas-passer], the percentage is much higher. Hospital nurses in general have shown this.) Anyway, she was asked nothing, and volunteered nothing, about her COVID stance. (At my previous blog post link, she not only stridently called out the Green Party for supporting vax mandates, but linked to a website that claimed COINTELPRO type infiltration of the GP's Steering Committee. And that favorably cites conspiracy theorist Jimmy Dore.)

Beyond that, she did little if anything on the podcast to convince me that she's resolved some hugely, BIGly self-inconsistent political positions.

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Update, May 16: Big "marketing" fail by Barrios has now come to my attention. The Student Vote Empowerment Coalition of DFW is holding an event tomorrow at Dallas' Skyline High. Strangeabbott is skipping, shock me. But? Beto is going to be there, as is Libertarian nominee Mark Tippetts. Via an independent PR consultant, I saw about this event, organized by SMU law prof Eric Cerillo. 

Saw that Barrios wasn't listed. I asked him why.

Cedillo said "we" (he and others involved with the event, I guess) tried:

(W)e attempted to reach out to the Green candidate on a number of occasions to invite them to the forum but they were unresponsive.

There you go.

If she couldn't come due to work or something, I understand. But, not responding? Bad marketing for her AND bad marketing for the party.

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