Appearing before the state legislature to fight for book sellers turned into a bid for state office for Joe Mayes.
The Krugerville resident and Democrat, who owned and operated Patchouli Joe's Books & Indulgences with his wife Diane Mayes in Denton, decided to run against Rep. Jared Patterson, the Republican incumbent from Frisco.
'Our representatives in Austin need to do a better job of representing our community,' Joe said.
House Bill 900, which was authored by Patterson in 2023, was called the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources Act.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down portions of the READER Act that would have required book vendors to rate books either 'sexually explicit,' 'sexually relevant' or 'no rating' before they would be allowed to sell any additional books to Texas public schools.
'There was another bill, similar thing, targeting booksellers, putting onerous, unreasonable demands on those who sold books,' Joe said. 'There were already criminal statutes in place. They drew one to create civil statues to put a target so somebody could walk in and say, 'Captain Underpants is offensive to me, so I want to sue you.' We would win, but it would cost us $10,000 to $20,000 every time we had to go to court.'
That bill died, but the fight for first amendment rights still ignited the fire for Joe.
It's the state of Texas education that kept that fire burning.
'When the school vouchers passed, that really kind of sent me over the top,' he said. 'I've seen what that can do. When schools are more focused on the bureaucratic requirements of public funding, they're unable to deliver the same quality of education.'
He also takes issue with public money going to private institutions.
'It's just fundamentally flawed in my mind that public dollars that are collected for the overall public good are then funneled to private industries,' he said.
Both of the Mayeses have professional backgrounds that touch the education world.
Joe worked with nonprofits that supported education predominantly in Florida, one that focused on helping counties establish and fund voluntary pre-K programs and the other that worked with low-income students in failing schools.
Diane worked as a school teacher, including at Selwyn School in Denton and at Brockett Elementary in Aubrey, where she was known then as Ms. Forester.
'We have absolutely no objections to private [schools],' he said. '... We do believe they should be held to the same performance standards that public schools are.'
Joe has two priorities for Day 1 if elected to office: propose a 'constitutional amendment that bans any public dollars from going to private schools,' Joe said, and bring state funding to public education back up to the national average to help ease the local tax burden.
'Let's not shoot for No. 1, Texas,' he said. 'Let's just start off by being average. That would be a $16.4 billion relief off of ... property taxes across the state, so we don't have to put the burden on Pilot Point residents and Sanger residents.'
It's teachers who are making up the difference to keep students performing, Joe said.
'Somehow, they're pulling it out of their hat,' he said. 'The legends of teachers having to pay for supplies on their own, that's not hyperbole. That's literal. ... For the eighth largest economy in the world, that just seems ludicrous.'
Joe also draws on his background in the military, as an Air Force vet with nine years in special operations, and in cybersecurity to inform his understanding of other challenges that face the state of Texas, such as growth and AI data centers.
'It's really important that local communities have as much visibility over this as possible and retain control over decisions about development in their communities,' he said.
Joe, too, spoke of wanting to focus on state level issues including state-managed roadways like U.S. 377 and the area farm-to-market roads as well as improving the health care landscape in Texas.
'I'm so over being sold the notion that the group who has created or at least not solved problems for the last 30 years want us to hire them again to fix the problems they either created or ignored,' Joe said.
