Unfair Park from p6 first. “I am the true conservative running in this race,” he told the audience. He then tore into Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, whom he described as a “Democrat who’s running under the Republican ticket” and the main reason why “all of the conservative legislation never even got out of committee this [past] year.” Worse still? Phelan was backing David Spiller. The speech ran short, a little more than two minutes, and when Middleton wrapped up, he handed off the mic. (After everyone spoke, West’s turn came. He launched his speech with an unusual campaign pitch, too: He retired from the military after an incident in which he fired a 9mm handgun next to an Iraqi policeman’s head several times and threatened to kill the man. “If you’re a true soldier, a true leader,” he said, “you do what’s right.” The crowd applauded him.) Later, Middleton explained that he nor- mally tries not to miss church on Sundays, but he made an exception for someone like West. In fact, he would “do everything I can to be there” whether it was West, Don Huff- ines or Chad Prather, another candidate run- ning far to the right of of Abbott. “One thing is they draw a big crowd,” he said later by telephone. “Most people don’t get that riled up about their state representative or a local election.” (Middleton was also scheduled to share a stage with U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert the following day, but a last-second obliga- tion forced Gohmert to reschedule.) Despite the way he presents himself, Mid- dleton’s platform looks a lot like those put out by most mainstream Republican candidates around Texas. He supports ramping up bor- der control. He wants to put an end to human trafficking. He loathes additional restrictions on gun ownership. He stands against vaccine mandates. He’s worried about critical race theory supposedly being taught in schools (although it isn’t). He wants to scale back fed- eral control of states. “As a Christian, you can probably guess what my stance is on abortion,” he said. (Spiller, for instance, shares most of these positions.) But even if he doesn’t make it to the state House, he hopes like- minded people will. “I’m hop- ing for a sea change down in Austin,” he said. “As well as all of them that are running for U.S. Congress, we need to be able to get the RI- NOs out of office so that Texas can get on with being Texas.” 8 itinerary was held in the small town of No- cona, known for winery and brewery tour- ism and its eponymous lake. It was less than a half hour from Middleton’s hometown, A ** round 7 p.m. on Feb. 17, a few miles from the Red River, one of the final campaign stops on Middleton’s Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images Protesters gather at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. one of the closer stops on his tour. More than 50 people had turned up for “I’m hoping for a sea change down in Austin.” - Mark Middleton the candidate’s forum hosted by Montague County Republicans at the H.J. Justin Build- ing downtown, but state Rep. Spiller couldn’t make it. He had undergone a sud- den surgery the week prior after suffering a detached retina, and his son Reid had been sent to speak in his stead. (Craig Carter, who’d been charged with felony aggravated assault two months earlier, hadn’t shown up to any debates or forums for weeks, the other candidates said.) Attendees took their seats at ta- bles set out for them. Some picked at food that had been provided by orga- nizers. Crumpled Fri- tos and Lays bags were scattered on the tables. Mid- dleton’s cam- paign table sat first on the right, followed by fel- low primary challenger Gary Franklin’s and then Spiller’s. Ear- lier that afternoon, Middleton had his first yard signs printed up: “Re- publican. Conservative. Pa- triot,” they read. Altogether, around a dozen candidates had shown up to try to win over voters. When state Sen. Drew Springer, who had previously served as the state representative for District 68, stepped up to speak first, he threw his weight behind Spiller, calling him a “huge help” during what he described as the most conservative legislative session in the state’s history the year before. Waiting his turn, Middleton sat with his hands folded in his lap next to Franklin, a plainspoken Army veteran who had spent more than two decades in the military. Reid Spiller read a statement his father had pre- pared in advance, a rundown of his resume, his record in District 68 and his promises to crack down on migration on the southern border, to fight vaccine mandates, to protect “the right to life” and other requisite conser- vative talking points. When Middleton delivered his opening remarks, he said much of the same he’d said before, insisting that politicians in both Aus- tin and D.C. were corrupt and that he was “sick and tired of being sick and tired” of politics as usual in Texas. He said he had al- ways been the kind of person to “stand up and go to bat for those who can’t speak for themselves, for those who can’t stand up for themselves.” The lawmakers already in of- fice, those sitting on committees, were a “big cabal” who “do nothing down there.” Later, when asked what the biggest chal- lenge District 68 faced was, Middleton again channeled talking points shared by Gov. Ab- bott and other Republican politicians he de- spised: the supposed “invasion” of migrants in the Texas borderlands, which sat nearly 250 miles from the district’s southernmost tip. “Up here in Montague County, we’re hundreds of miles from the border,” Middle- ton admitted, “but this is still the border.” He gave a nod to the gun-toting vigilantes patrolling the border, who, he argued, were fighting sex and drug trafficking. “This is an invasion we have going on over there,” he added. “Gov. Abbott will not declare a state of emergency on the border.” (An invasion, of course, implies that armed combatants were streaming across the frontier to con- quer the U.S. – not that people, including many fleeing conflict and humanitarian cri- ses, had shown up on the border. In any case, Abbott had issued a disaster declaration over the uptick in migrant apprehensions on the border in July.) Later, during the audience question por- tion, one man asked Middleton how exactly his proposal to abolish property tax would work. Middleton fumbled his answer, then urged him to visit the website for a group called Eliminate Property Tax – he’d in- cluded the link on his campaign website. “It’s hard to explain here in the few minutes that I have and answer all the questions,” he offered. “That’s why that link’s there.” During his closing remarks, he returned to where his campaign started: the U.S. Cap- itol riot. “Me and my wife are J6ers,” he said. “If you’re unfamiliar with that term, that means that we went to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, and then subsequently later were raided by the feds in a SWAT assault. That is why I’m running; that is one of the big rea- sons. It’s because I know what government overreach is doing. I know what the federal government is doing.” After all, what else did he have to offer that truly distinguished him from his primary opponents? He didn’t mention why he’d gone to D.C. He didn’t address the felony charge he faced for allegedly assaulting police officers. Rather, he only urged potential voters to help send “true Christian conservatives” to Austin to “stop the grifting operation” in the Legislature. Once the event was over, he chatted with an attendee here and there while his wife manned his campaign table. She, too, talked to those who came over with questions. Speaking to a man who had walked over to get campaign materials, she complained that other Christians had questioned why she FEBRUARY 24-MARCH 2, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com
