You don't mess with them S A women...

Here is a link to a Texas Tribune interview with video.

http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2012/05/qa-an-interview-with-rachel-barrios-van-os-candidate-for-texas-democratic-party-chair/
Q&A: An interview with Rachel Barrios-Van Os, candidate for Texas Democratic Party chair

Texas on the Potomac is pleased to share some of the best content from the Texas Tribune. Today we offer a newsmaker interview conducted by our old friend Ross Ramsey.

Rachel Barrios-Van Os is familiar to voters in Bexar County, where she ran unsuccessfully for county clerk in 2010, and to Democrats who know her as the manager of three statewide campaigns where her husband, David Van Os, was the candidate (twice for Texas Supreme Court, once for attorney general). In private life, she runs the family law firm.

Now she’s running to be chairwoman of the Texas Democratic Party, an election that will take place at the party’s state convention in Houston next month. In her campaign materials, Barrios-Van Os says she’s “tired of defeatism … low goals and low expectations.” She and her family have moved to Austin, where the party is headquartered, and has started campaigning in earnest.

http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2012/05/qa-an-interview-with-rachel-barrios-van-os-candidate-for-texas-democratic-party-chair/

I believe in this tough Latina from the San Antonio Southside. That's why I married her.

When Rachel and I went to see her papa 16 1/2 years ago to inform him we were getting married, he asked me if I knew what terca meant. I said sure, it means stubborn. He said good I'm glad you understand. He continued: "Rachel is muy terca. When she makes up her mind about something, you will not change it no matter how hard you try. She is the only one who can change her mind. You better remember this, and don't come back and say I didn't warn you."

When Rachel came up with the idea in 2006 that I needed to go to every county in Texas and speak to the public on the steps of every county courthouse because somebody had to show that everybody matters and no voters should be left out, at first I was a little skeptical of the ability to complete such a daunting project. 254 counties, thousands of miles of travel, and only 6 months till the election to do it in! But Rachel was positive that it could be done and absolutely determined that it was the right thing to do. She convinced me. Not only that, but she insisted that we invite all other Democratic candidates to join the tour whenever they wanted to. After all, she said, we are part of a Democratic ticket and it has to be all of us together.

With her monumental stubbornness Rachel has made up her mind that the Democratic Party will win the state of Texas again if we: change our attitudes of leadership, if we insist on a winner's attitude that we CAN and WILL carry the state, if strong leadership brings the candidates together to do coordinated statewide campaigns again like they used to, if we recruit candidates to make sure there is a Democrat running in every spot on the ballot, if we open things up and show people that everybody's ideas are welcome, if we get rid of buddy-system politics and respect everybody's input and dignity, if we tell the consultants who peddle the targeting that excludes most Democratic candidates that it's time for them to get lost because every Democrat who runs for office will be treated with respect and our target is the whole state of Texas, and show the voters that they can believe in the Democratic Party again because the Democratic Party is the party of the people again and believes in itself again.

Rachel is determined to invigorate the party with a winner's attitude again and a new spirit of openness and democracy, she believes in her ability to pull this off if she is elected party chair, and she utterly believes it is the right thing to do because it is the only way to take Texas back from the corporate elites and return it to the people.

I know what she is capable of, I believe she is right, and I believe she can do it.