Andrew White is a successful businessman from the Houston area.
Houston businessman Andrew White, who faces a runoff in the Democrat Party’s primary for the Texas governor’s race, recommended the expansion of gambling in Texas to meet the state’s “education emergency”. Mr. White said expanding legal gambling on casino games and horse races would increase Texas state revenues by $3 billion a year.
Andrew White, the son of former Texas Gov. Mark White, said at a Wednesday press conference that would he expand gambling in order to fund public schools and provide additional scholarships for high school students. Like his father before him, Andrew White wants to bolster the Texas education system in fundamental ways.
The plan is to help conscientious students afford postsecondary education, especially those who go into the education field. Any Texas high school student with a 3.0 GPA would receive $5000 to go to any Texas university. If that same student studied to become a teacher, their scholarship would increase to $10,000.
In his Wednesday press conference, Andrew White explained his strategy. White said, “I believe in 2019 there’s going to be a new Legislature to work with. We’ll build a consensus across the aisle to make this work. But if the Legislature doesn’t want to lead, we’ll take it to the people and have a referendum.”
Texas Expanded Gambling Bill 2019
To pass such a bill, White would have to convince a significant number of Republican legislators to sign off on a gambling bill. In a socially conservative state like Texas, one might think that is impossible, but Texans love to gamble.
Houston-area gamblers drive 2 & 1/2 hours to Lake Charles, Louisiana for gambling excursions. Dallas-area gamblers drive an hour north to Thackerville and Durant, Oklahoma to play at the WinStar World Casino and Chocktaw Casino, respectively. Before those Oklahoma tribal casinos existed, they drove 2 & 1/2 hours or more to Shreveport and Bossier City, Louisiana to gamble.
The 45-year old Andrew White, who is the owner of Sweat Equity Partners LP, made that very point during his press conference. Taking the common sense approach that Texas gamblers are subsidizing other states’ education systems, White said, “Texans are driving hours out of state to gamble in Louisiana and invest in Louisiana schools, and Oklahoma’s health care and New Mexico’s highways. Let’s keep that money in Texas and invest in our own schools.”
Texans Love to Gamble
While expanded gambling might seem a longshot, many Texans would prefer to see gaming venues closer. The poker clubs in the DFW Metroplex and Houston metropolitan area are an indication of Texans’ love of gambling, while the many 8-liner operations in convenience stores in East Texas and South Texas are another indication of gambling’s popularity in Texas.
Andrew White comes by his educational reform agenda honestly. During his father’s time as Texas governor in the 1980s, Mark White focused on improving the Texas education system. At the time, Texas was one of the worst performing states on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and had some of the lowest average teachers’ salaries in the United States.
White created a Committee on Public Education and passed the Educational Opportunity Act (EOA), which funded teachers’ salaries and focused on improving student performance through educational reform. The EOA is given credit for raising Texans’ scores on standardized testing and raising the state into the middle ranks of the US states in terms of education systems. Among southern states in the year 2018, Texas is behind only Virginia and North Carolina on quality rankings and ranked on the same level with Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Florida.
Andrew White’s Educational Reforms
For Andrew White and many Texans, a middle rank is not enough. The massive resources of Texas should be used to vault the state into the top ranks. Texas is a red state and Andrew White knows raising the sales tax or property taxes is a non-starter, so he proposes increased revenues from gambling.
In justifying his education initiative, Andrew White said Texans want its lawmakers to focus on issues that help their lives, instead of a series of distractions. He said, “Education is a state requirement. Texans know if you can’t take care of your own business, you shouldn’t jump into others’. We have an education emergency in Texas that’s being completely ignored because of these fake emergencies [like bathroom bills and sanctuary cities]. Let’s focus on the things that matter in Texas to Texans.”
It is a tall order. For one, Andrew White faces a tough battle to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor. In the first round of the gubernatorial primary, White received 27.4% of the vote. Lupe Valdez, the former Sheriff of Dallas County, won 42.9% of the vote. A candidate needed 50% of the vote to win outright, so the two highest-polling candidates are facing off in a June runoff. To beat Valdez, Andrew White needs to collect most of the support that went to Cedric Davis, Grady Yarbough, Jeffrey Payne, Adrian Ocegueda, Tom Wakely, and others in the original primary. That requires bold thinking and probably a bit of luck.
Andrew White’s Electoral Future
More moderate Democratic candidates have performed well in red states in 2017 and 2018, as they have draw support from Independents and moderate Republicans. In a state like Texas, Andrew White’s role as a businessman is likely to compare favorably to Lupe Valdez’s alternative lifestyle, though her role as a strong law enforcement leader should stand her well with Texans who do not always vote for a Democrat. Most likely, the Democrat primary is a race to see who loses to Greg Abbott in the November 2018 election.
Even so, Andrew White has a chance to stake out a reputation in Texas politics which might stand him well in future years. White is young at age 45 and many believe Texas is becoming bluer by the year. Some predict the Democrats will have their best chance to win in the 2020s that they have since the 1990s, when George W. Bush and Karl Rove flipped Texas from a solid blue state (for over 100 years) to a red state. If so, then Andrew White might position himself (and expanded Texas gambling) for a more realistic run for office in 2022. In that way, being second in the primary in 2018 might be a better career move than receiving the nomination.
About Sweat Equity
Andrew White’s Sweat Equity Partners LP states on its bio page that the company is active in a number of fields, including “storage tank cleaning, high-tech perimeter security, cloud-based scheduling platform, compressed natural gas filling stations and a cloud-based IT vendor deal registration platform.”
