White has solid runoff plan — 4 big cities equal a win
Candidate says Texas moving in ‘wrong direction’
AUSTIN — Late one night in February, while returning from a San Antonio political forum, Andrew White stopped at an iconic Buc-ee’s to gas up.
“Early in this process, as a new statewide candidate, you start thinking, ‘I wonder if people will recognize me as the guy running for governor,’ ” White explains. “We were in Buc-ee’s having dinner for the umpteenth time and someone recognized me. It wasn’t for running for governor. It was for being the guy who’s been in Buc-ee’s so many times. It was like: I’m here again.”
For a 45-year-old guy running to capture the Democratic nomination for governor in a May 22 runoff, getting recognized is a key to success — even at a gas-and-cleanest-bathrooms mecca in the small town of Luling.
The son of late Democratic Gov. Mark White, White laughs as he tells
the story, a tale that in some ways highlights the essence of his longshot campaign to succeed popular Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
To make it into the victory circle in next November’s general election campaign, he must first become well-known across the Lone Star State, an uphill battle considering that he and rival Lupe Valdez have little campaign cash. To win, one of them also would have to break the 24year drought for Democrats getting elected to statewide office.
“This is clearly the most important thing I’ve done in my life — running for governor,” White says, scooting up to the edge of his chair for effect at his two-story brick storybook home in Houston’s tony River Oaks neighborhood. “I feel a deep obligation to pull this off in November. I feel like I am the best candidate to win this and turn this around because our state is really headed in the wrong direction.”
With his campaign pledge to “return sanity and reason to state government,” White thinks he can get the attention of enough disillusioned Texas voters to win the May 22 runoff, an election that historically draws only the most fervent party activists.
While most political scientists expect those voters will go for Valdez, the red-haired White predicts he will prove them wrong. He’ll find out soon enough. Early voting begins Monday.
“I think I have the right message,” he says. “A poll shows we’re just 7 percent behind Abbott. Seventy-two percent of the people in Texas don’t know who I am. If I can fix that problem, I can win this thing.”
As for that late-night Buc-ee’s stop, it was the night before Valentine’s Day, so White said he bought gifts for his family, including a lovely $14 box of Bucee’s fudge for his wife, Stacey.
Growing up
As a fourth-grader growing up in the white-columned Governor’s Mansion in Austin, where the famous Texas Gen. Sam Houston once lived, White said he was struck by what he calls the “vicious process” of politics — “you lose friends that you thought you had, and get beat up for doing what’s right” — as his father battled fellow Democrats to reform public education and pass other reforms.
“I grew up around politics. I never wanted to be in politics,” he said. “That’s why I went into business.”
Even so, after suffering a bout of severe migraines, followed by the death of his father last August from an unexpected heart attack, White came to reassess his life.
In delivering a eulogy at the funeral, Andrew, the middle son, spoke of a Sam Houston quotation that guided his dad: “Do right and risk the consequences.”
As he said that, he looked at two state officials sitting in the pews that day, Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, two Republicans who he believed were polarizing Texas by trying to pass a controversial bathroom bill during a special legislative session.
A month later, as he used his fishing boat to help rescue more than 100 people from flooding after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, he continued to ponder what was important in life. “I was 45, had sold my business and there were articles saying how there was no Democrats running for governor against the Republicans in Austin who are ruining this state,” White recalled. “I said, ‘You know what?
I can do this.’ ”
And he did. On Dec. 7, four days before the filing deadline, White announced his candidacy, just ahead of Valdez and even after Democratic Party officials discouraged him from doing so. “That’s one of those things you think about for a long time, but there’s a point where you have to make the decision to just do it,” he explained shortly after announcing.
For White, who as a fourthgrader once flubbed a test by misspelling the word “govorner,” just weeks after his dad was elected governor, the decision seemed right.
“I can do it,” he said.
Entrepreneurial start
Oddly enough, White’s start in the business world began with an interest in God.
At the University of Virginia, he majored in religious studies, a choice he said reflected his interest in philosophy, history and English, not a desire to become a pastor. “I took a lot of economics, accounting and finance — sort of my own mini-business degree,” he said.
After graduating in 1994, he headed to New York where he worked for two years as an analyst for Credit Suisse. Then he moved to Dallas for a vice president’s job with Market City USA, an early version of Amazon that sold groceries. It soon closed, and he worked briefly for another venture-capital firm that also went belly up.
In Dallas, at a Presbyterian church, he met a fourth-grade teacher who a year later would become his wife. White was out of work on his wedding day.
After a short stint at business consulting in Dallas, the Whites moved back to Houston, where he went to work for a fire- and water-damage restoration company he would later head it as president. He got an MBA at the University of Texas in Austin in 2003.
Two years later, itching to start a new company, White sold his family’s three-bedroom, two-bath starter home for $60,000 — “we had just brought home our second child” — and founded Allied Warranty and Lone Star Repair, home warranty and residential repair companies, two successful firms that he sold in 2012.
He then began growing Sweat Equity Partners LP, a Houston investment firm he formed two years earlier. By 2017, it held controlling interests in four companies: a firm selling oilfield water treatment equipment, an industrial tank-cleaning company, an online home-repair and remodeling scheduler, and a firm that sells heartbeat detectors that help first responders locate victims in collapsed buildings and can detect human trafficking victims and undocumented immigrants crossing borders inside trucks.
“I’m an entrepreneur first,” White said when asked what his qualification is to be governor, other than the fact his father held that job. “(Entrepreneurs) fix big problems. They’re not afraid of risk. They’re not afraid of losing. And they’re certainly not afraid of someone who has a lot more money than they do.
“When I look at Texas … we have a lot of big problems that need to be fixed.”
Path to victory
For now, White’s biggest challenge is surviving the May 22 runoff.
He approaches the race like starting a new business, spending hours poring over data — Democratic voting patterns and turnout in the March 6 primary, fundraising and scheduling updates, daily reports about Valdez’s campaign, even her social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook. White says he has more followers now on both.
“The path to victory for us is in the four big cities in Texas,” he says, immediately offering a rapid-fire summation of the next few weeks in his campaign.
“TV doesn’t work in a runoff. Not using TV. That’s like using a bazooka when a sharpshooter will do. Congressional races will help us with turnout. Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. Nine names on the ballot in Houston. We’re not going to cede Dallas to Lupe.”
Those who know him say the brief outline is classic Andrew White: Review the data, come up with a plan, then move ahead — a likely hint of his leadership style as governor.
His hands-on style is evident in his online campaign videos: Fast-paced, edgy, designed to appeal to younger voters, decidedly not those of a traditional politician.
Despite White’s acknowledged long odds to win the runoff, some longtime Democrats like Austinite Don Browne are not counting him out. “His daddy beat the odds and won over Bill Clements, the Republican, in 1982. It could happen again,” Browne said.
While White insists he is running on his own, his father is everywhere, it seems. After his father died, Andrew inherited his ties that he sometimes wears to campaign events. He wears a Lone Star lapel pin given to his father by the Texas Rangers.
“Not for luck,” Andrew White says when asked about it. “I don’t believe in luck.”