It wasn’t that long ago I was reading the newspaper and noticed that Barton had given a statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, saying “[his] work is not yet done". This came as a slight surprise to me, as after 30 years of doing barely anything I found it hard to believe he wanted to work at all. I wanted to take a deeper look at the work he’s done and the work his opponent has done, and what I found demonstrates just how badly we need to work to support Democrats in red territory. This race is about as lopsided as it can get when it comes to the resumes presented by the candidates, and it’s proof that Hillary Clinton isn’t the only woman in a race against a man she should, by all rights, be burying by record-setting margins. It only gets worse when you compare what both these candidates have spent the past four decades doing.
Let’s start at the beginning of two promising careers, way back in 1976. A young Ruby Woolridge had just earned her Master’s Degree in Guidance and Counseling from Northeastern State University, and Joe Barton was hard at work at Ennis Business Forms, having finished earning his Master’s in Industrial Administration from Purdue in 1973. From the get-go we have a candidate whose career was starting with a focus on helping others, and another whose career was focused on helping businesses thrive. This in itself was neither good nor bad, because what mattered is how he would help them thrive: morally and ethically, or at the expense of workers and communities?
Fast forward a few years, and let’s check in on how our two young graduates have laid the foundation for their careers. By 1981, both had achieved a major milestone: Ruby was now putting her counseling skills to work with the Oklahoma City Public Schools and Barton had become a White House Fellow under Secretary of Energy James Edwards. A counselor and educator, and an energy-policy focused politician-to-be. So far, so good. Let’s jump ahead again, see what these two promising 30-somethings were doing with careers now firmly begun.
By 1985, we really see the picture that would be painted for the next 30 years coming into focus: Ruby was in the TX 6th, working as a counselor and educator with Arlington Independent Schools. Joe, meanwhile, had gone from working as a consultant with ARCO to becoming a congressman as one of the freshmen Texas Six Pack. Woolridge was continuing her work with children and molding the future generations while Barton had gone from private industry to politics. Would he resist the urge to let his previous career cloud his new responsibilities as a public servant? Let’s find out.
By 1996 Ruby had formally joined the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats, ran for office on the Arlington Independent Schools Board, had served as President of the Arlington Area Democratic Coalition and had become a State Democratic Executive Committee Member for the Texas Democratic Party. Her transition from educator and counselor to political activist and politician was in full swing. During that same time period, Joe Barton had co-sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act which formally defined marriage as between one man and one woman. He had, to date, only sponsored 4 bills of his own which became law: a minor Medicaid billing and reimbursement adjustment; a bill selling 45 acres of land to Whitney, Texas (not part of his district) for a water treatment plant; a bill allowing contracts for offshore natural gas to not have a specified duration; and a bill allowing the President's Commission on White House Fellows to accept donations of money, property, and personal services. While Ruby was working for the schools and volunteering to help her fellow African-Americans and local voters, Barton was discriminating against the LGBT community, helping out offshore natural gas drillers, and helping White House Fellows like he had once been collect donations.
Jumping ahead to 2006, this was the time when Barton really stepped his game up. His game, unfortunately, was being the most egregious example of a hard-line, Tea Party Republican. His co-sponsored bills alone during this time include the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq (which you may recall as the decision so toxic even Trump won’t support it) and the truly frightening “Born Alive Infants Protection Act” which, in a nutshell, states that every Act of Congress or ANY ruling, regulation or interpretation of the bureaus and agencies of the United States using the terms “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” includes every member of our species who is considered “born alive”, and the bill declares any member of homo sapiens removed from the womb and has a heartbeat, regardless of whether the removal was a birth or an abortion, is “born alive”. Of course, when he wasn’t busy trying to legislate when life begins he also co-sponsored the renaming of 16 different buildings (mostly post offices) and the minting of 4 commemorative coins (time and tax dollars well spent, clearly). This time period also included the creation of Yucca Mountain and the Energy Policy Act of 2005, two of Barton’s biggest and most consequential creations. It should come as no surprise both are highly controversial pieces of legislation that were hugely favorable to the nuclear and fossil fuel industry. The Energy Policy Act included a call for grants to establish “Clean Coal” centers, filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its 1 billion barrel capacity, removing Clean Air and Water restrictions on fracking wastewater, and urging increased exploitation of tar sands and similar resources on Federal land. Despite the few bones tossed towards renewable energy, this act was a boon for the fossil fuel industry (though is it really any surprise coming from Smokey Joe?). He also launched investigations into two climate-change studies in what was called a “witch-hunt” by the Washington Post and told Al Gore that with respect to Global Warming, “you’re not just off a little, you’re totally wrong”. As long as this paragraph is, it’s barely scratching the surface. I could honestly fill a book detailing Barton’s failures and ethical missteps as a congressman.
The last ten years have been the most telling. During this time Barton has gone a bridge too far even for his fellow conservatives: from arguing that the story of the Biblical Flood proves Climate Change isn’t real, arguing wind turbines could make global warming worse, apologizing to the CEO of BP for their facing fines for the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster, being named by CREW on their 2011 Most Corrupt Report, missing over twice as many roll-call votes as his peers over the course of his career, and making time from his busy schedule of helping the fossil fuel industry to rail against the BCS in college football, he’s been practically a caricature of a Texas Tea Partier.
During this same time Ruby became a minister and attended SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, ran for the Texas State House, served as an Election Judge, a Precinct Chair for the Tarrant County Democratic Party, a State Delegate for the Texas Democratic Party, and retired from teaching while expanding her civil servant work.
While you can (and should) donate at www.voteforruby.org, what is really needed is to make people aware of the differences here. This isn’t even about partisanship or politics, it’s about what kind of person do North Texans want representing them: A man with a track record of helping lobbyists and the polluting fossil fuel industry that is literally killing our planet? Or a woman who has spent her entire career helping children and families as an educator, counselor, and spiritual leader?