Flores Bus Makes First Campaign Stop At Six-Shooter

"Get Chet" - Candidate emphasizes need to get out the vote

I like it; I love it; it's at the right hand of God and we
gon' have it. But first, where's the hundred thousand
votes?

What hundred thousand votes? Why, the hundred thousand
votes I'm gonna need to get elected and hang up my hat and
prop my boots up on the desk and get on the phone and get
this for y'all.

That's the hundred thousand votes I'm talking about.

- Lyndon Johnson, professional politician

Traveling out of his College Station home base, Bill Flores
played it close to the vest.

Right now, the only thing he needs to do is get himself
elected.

A man designated as a Republican rainmaker and one of the
Republican National Congressional Committee's Young Guns,
it's his sole portfolio.

He's not playing. He's put close to a million dollars of
his own money into the campaign and he's got the Republican
National Committee behind him.

Every day is Get Chet day throughout his District 17
stomping grounds.

"Get here and we'll do the rest." That's the message from
Capitol Hill.

The 17th District is one of 85 seats targeted by the GOP to
change hands from Democrat to Republican representation this
year.

Our man Duke Machado, President of the Hispanic Republican
Club of McLennan County, met the man at the Clarion Hotel
for a closed strategy session with known vote getters.

He asked Mr. Flores what his reaction to the prospect of the
Hispanic vote may be.

The candidate, a veteran oil man, CPA and chief financial
officer of offshore drilling companies, put on his poker
face and played it straight down the line - the party line.

Get out the vote.

Same old story.

We're talking volunteers, again.

"People don't even have to come down to campaign
headquarters to volunteer," he said. "They can stay at home
and work the phone."

He needs volunteers to find out who wants to or needs to
register to vote, get absentee by mail voting applications,
or needs transportation to the polling places for the early
voting. There are signs to put out, voters transportation
to be arranged and doors to knock upon, he said.

It's beginning to look a lot more like a general election
season in a census and redistricting year, to say the least.

Watch this column for word of future Bill Flores campaign
stops.