Pistol-Toting Strawberry Blonde Stumps For Legislature

Waco Representative Jim Dunnam's Republican rival for re-
election to his House of Representatives seat hit town
Sunday afternoon in her trademark yellow and black Mini-
Cooper.

Marva Beck is a cattle rancher from Centerville who supports
Second Amendment rights, carries a concealed licensed
automatic and another pistol in her car, and prefers the
.270 caliber to the .243 her late husband supplied her for
hunting red deer.

A fiscally responsible Republican business woman who co-
founded a construction company with her husband in 1969, she
sums up her sense of family values this way.

Their area of specialization: water treatment plants.

"I love Willie Nelson...Ray Price recorded song after song
after song that old boy wrote and that was all just years
and years and years ago."

She was seated at a table in the smoking and dart room at
Crickett's Bar & Grill in downtown Waco, a tiny and trim
strawberry blonde dressed in a black business suit, talking
about the impact of the Obama Care health reform bill on the
American economy and small business.

"I'm for not making it harder. I want to return Texas to a
right to work state. Don't tell me who I have to hire.
Don't tell me I have to provide insurance unless I want to
provide it."

People can afford health care if they will spend their money
on it and not on the frills, she insists.

"I know this entrepreneurial couple in my district and they
say they don't have the money to get elective surgery. Now,
I know what they make and I know better. He's an businessman.
She works for a public agency. They've got everything they
want. They spend their money for it. All she has to do is
spend her money on her surgery and she'll be just fine."

Her son asked her why he can't have all the Disney movies,
just as the children in a neighboring family had.

She straightened him out quickly.

"It's about choices. What do you want? Do you want to sit
around and watch these movies and not know the lights will
be on?"

That's the kind of fiscal responsiblity she's talking about
- in her family, her extended family and her great big
family, the people of Texas and its 57th Legislative
District.

"Shoot, people in Centerville don't even know who Dunnam is.
We never see him."

The 57th District covers Falls, Leon, McLennan, Madison and
Robertson Counties.