Most conversations with Robert Morrow begin with strapping on your tinfoil hat and descending down the rabbit hole of his unorthodox theories: Bill Clinton and Jeb Bush ran drugs for the CIA, mega-donors line Rick Perry’s pockets with loose cash for cocaine and strippers, Lyndon Johnson murdered John Kennedy and his granddaughter silences the truth. He can often be found hanging around Austin City Council or Travis County GOP meetings flaunting his red “Trump is a Child Rapist” banner, always donning his signature jester hat. Now, Morrow is well on his way to winning a senior position in Texas government.
A self-described “small ‘l’ libertarian” from Alabama, Morrow launched a longshot bid for the Texas State Board of Education in November. His platform includes offering AR-15 classes in schools, teaching high school girls how to twerk and pole dance, and replacing subsidized budgets for low-income school districts with GoFundMe accounts. In the March primary, he earned 40 percent of the vote – more than any other candidate. He and Lani Popp, the second place candidate at 34 percent, now compete in a Republican runoff on July 14. Whoever wins will represent the Republican Party in the November race for State Board of Education, which writes the curriculum requirements of Texas’ 5.4 million schoolchildren. Texans should not let Morrow get any closer.
When I sat down with Morrow in his Westlake home for an interview in February, I was determined to find the real man behind the show: Who is Robert Morrow, behind the satirical character? As I quickly learned: there is no show. The Robert Morrow the world knows – conspiracies, inanities, crassness and all — is the real Robert Morrow.
Prior to our conversation, a long tour of his house included showcases of the “Clinton Room,” the “Johnson Room,” and the “Bush Room,” each named after the hundreds of conspiracy-laden biographies stacked floor-to-ceiling in each. He fondly showed off his multiple swimsuit calendars, and topped it off with an overview of the “toy table” at the center of his living room – “for big kids and little kids,” he said. I was in an SNL skit. But it was clear that nothing about Robert Morrow was satire.
Once our conversation began, it was defined by conspiracies and peppered with racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic remarks. Any start to a legitimate policy proposal quickly fizzled into fantasization over women’s bodies or a defensive tirade about his use of the n-word. Morrow said, because he has played basketball with Black people, he shouldn’t be labeled a racist for using this slur.
“You have a reporter [at The Texas Tribune], who happens to be black, who didn’t like a picture I shared of Michelle Obama appearing to have a penis, as a joke,” Morrow recounted. “And I said, ‘Touch my monkey,’ referring to her imaginary penis. She said I was making a racial comment. No, you idiot, I’m talking about her being a man, which is a bad joke. I posted one time, ‘I’ve played a lot of basketball with Blacks and I never once called them n****r because I didn’t want to be killed.’ They used that and called me a racist… At the Texas Tribune they engage in slandering me as a racist, and if I share a picture of a girl in a bikini, they’ll say I’m sexist.”
He’s quick to counter the charge of sexism, as well. The pole dancing elective he wants to implement, for example, is merely “empowering women.”
“I like sharing pictures of hot chicks in bikinis and lingerie,” he asserted, referring to his social media. “I like making comments (about them). That is my right as a red-blooded American. You wonder why Donald Trump got elected? So many people are sick of the libtard, politically correct agenda. That’s the one nice thing of having that idiot in office. He is a machine gun spewing political incorrectness constantly.”
“Libtard,” he made sure to clarify, “is a combination of liberal and retarded,” before launching into a rant about homosexuals and transsexuals.
As shocking as it may be to hear this kind of language from a candidate in 2020, Morrow’s voice from the back corner of Texas politics cannot be chalked up to satire or irrelevance.
In 2016, we learned from the national election that inexperience and improbability are never reason enough to discount a candidate. That lesson was hammered home in Austin that same year, when Morrow himself earned 56 percent of the vote for the chairmanship of the Travis County Republican Party. And we were reminded of this lesson once again in March, when 54,772 Texans voted for Morrow and sent him as the frontrunner into the current runoff election for SBOE.
Why Morrow has such a history of shocking victories, one can only guess. Maybe voters are unfamiliar with him when they see his name on the ballot. Maybe in March it was that he was the only male name on the ballot. As for 2016, he admitted, “I was listed first on the ballot, which was a big factor.”
Or maybe people appreciate his seemingly satirical campaigns and want to “flip a bird to the establishment,” as he puts it. For as harshly as he criticizes Donald Trump, he wins using the same playbook Trump did: run against the establishment, use inflammatory rhetoric, grab easy media coverage for the outrage and hope it increases your name ID.
But whether Morrow’s rhetoric is sincere or is a strategic (and highly successful) attention grab should make no difference in the moral calculus of voters. His satirical platform may be intended to be humorous, but even assuming his derogatory remarks about minorities, women, and homosexuals are made in jest does nothing to excuse them.
The chance that Morrow wins the Republican nomination on July 14th is slim. If you ask Morrow, he says it is “one in one thousand.” But his outsized performance already damages our politics and validates his inflammatory tactics.
Morrow is a distraction and an embarrassment to our political process.
Even a desire to “flip a bird” to the political establishment does not justify a vote for him. A vote for Robert Morrow is also a vote for his racist, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic views. When you have a morally compromised outsider candidate like Robert Morrow, you don’t get to vote to burn down the system without also burning your own moral integrity.
Since his first campaign, Morrow has been laughed off, denounced by party officials, and derided by the media. He has since won party office (though he quickly was forced out), and he forced a critical runoff for an important state office. During our interview, I asked Morrow whether his campaign was legitimate or purely satirical. He said, “We’ll see when I get on the board whether it’s satire or real, I haven’t really decided on that.”
Let’s be sure we don’t have to find that out. Maybe we can’t expect our elected officials to be perfect, but we can certainly expect more from them than what Robert Morrow has to offer. If you are voting in the Republican primary this Tuesday, you should not allow this show to enter its third act.
The author is a journalism and government senior at The University of Texas at Austin. | @RyanChandler98
