Kilgore native to seek AG ballot slot

David Van Os A Kilgore native recently filed to run for Texas Attorney General on the Democratic Ballot.

Thus far, Van Os is incumbent Attorney General Gregg Abbott’s only Democratic opponent.

David Van Os was born in Kilgore in 1950 and graduated from Kilgore High School in 1968 where he was active in sports and other extracurricular activities.

“My doubles partner Tim Propes and I won the District 8-AAA boys doubles championship in tennis for Kilgore in our senior year, 1968,” he said. “That same year I was in the oneact play that was a State UIL finalist in one-act play competition, under the direction of at-that-time Kilgore High School drama director Raymond Caldwell.”

Van Os was also a member of the Bulldog Marching Band, a member of the National Honor Society and was a National Merit Finalist.

“My connections to East Texas are a major part of my life,” Van Os said. “My mother was in the Rangerettes in the early years of their existence, in the 1940s. My parents still live in East Texas, now making their residence in Tyler, and I visit East Texas often.”

Van Os is a labor lawyer in San Antonio.

“I have represented Kilgore residents who work for GTE as the lawyer for their union, the Communications Workers of America, in labor arbitrations in Kilgore,” he said.

“Grassroots Texans have always believed that government belongs to the people. All over Texas today people from all walks of life are fed up with the rip-off of their democracy and they want it back,” Van OS said when filing. “The Texas Constitution directs the Attorney General of Texas to protect democracy from corporate special-interest government and gives him the tools of office with which to do it.

“I've received all my education and lived all my life in Texas; I love this state; and I've vowed to honor the education and training Texas gave me by using them to answer the moral imperative of our time, to restore government to the people. Those coming before us who founded self-governing democracy intended that it last forever. For my part I will not let it go down, and my part is clear to me. This state belongs to all the people, and they are entitled to a people's lawyer as Attorney General who’ll fight to restore it to them.”

Van Os said the “Democratic Party is historically the party that raises its strong arm on behalf of the people against the powerful, fighting to ensure that the vision of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 lives always as the goal and the promise of this great society.”

Van Os believes that, “ Those who are professional cynics need to open their eyes and understand that ordinary people everywhere are fed up with power-grabbing Bushite government in both the United States and Texas.”

He said he will carry the Democratic Party banner “with great pride in my fight to restore government to the people of Texas as their Attorney General, and will open that banner to all the good people of this state, regardless of current party affiliation, who are sick and tired of government by one-party corporate mouthpieces, and who want their democracy back.”

Van Os said that “fighting to restore government to the people” means defending the people against the predatory exercise of monopoly power by big corporations, defending democracy from being ripped off by the buying and selling of public votes for private gain; defending the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the people of Texas, fighting to preserve the ownership of government by we the people, using the tools of office that the founders of Texas wisely provided to the people’s lawyer, the Attorney General.

“This is my State, I love my State, I’m fighting mad over what is being done to it, and now I’m going to do something about it,” Van Os said.