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Dick Illyes
Dick Illyes (Libertarian Party) ran for election to the Texas House of Representatives to represent District 24. He lost in the general election on November 3, 2020.
Elections
2020
See also: Texas House of Representatives elections, 2020
General election
General election for Texas House of Representatives District 24
Incumbent Greg Bonnen defeated Brian Rogers and Dick Illyes in the general election for Texas House of Representatives District 24 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Greg Bonnen (R) | 69.9 | 65,560 |
 | Brian Rogers (D)  | 27.6 | 25,848 | |
 | Dick Illyes (L) | 2.5 | 2,356 | |
| Total votes: 93,764 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Texas House of Representatives District 24
Brian Rogers advanced from the Democratic primary for Texas House of Representatives District 24 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Brian Rogers | 100.0 | 7,660 |
| Total votes: 7,660 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Republican primary election
Republican primary for Texas House of Representatives District 24
Incumbent Greg Bonnen advanced from the Republican primary for Texas House of Representatives District 24 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Greg Bonnen | 100.0 | 16,890 |
| Total votes: 16,890 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Libertarian convention
Libertarian convention for Texas House of Representatives District 24
Dick Illyes advanced from the Libertarian convention for Texas House of Representatives District 24 on March 21, 2020.
Candidate | ||
| ✔ | | Dick Illyes (L) |
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Campaign finance
2018
General election
General election for Texas House of Representatives District 24
Incumbent Greg Bonnen defeated John Phelps and Dick Illyes in the general election for Texas House of Representatives District 24 on November 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Greg Bonnen (R) | 69.6 | 48,045 |
 | John Phelps (D) | 28.4 | 19,586 | |
| Dick Illyes (L) | 2.0 | 1,405 | |
| Total votes: 69,036 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Texas House of Representatives District 24
John Phelps advanced from the Democratic primary for Texas House of Representatives District 24 on March 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | John Phelps | 100.0 | 4,155 |
| Total votes: 4,155 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Republican primary election
Republican primary for Texas House of Representatives District 24
Incumbent Greg Bonnen advanced from the Republican primary for Texas House of Representatives District 24 on March 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Greg Bonnen | 100.0 | 13,665 |
| Total votes: 13,665 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
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Campaign themes
2020
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Dick Illyes did not complete Ballotpedia's 2020 Candidate Connection survey.
2018
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Dick Illyes completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Illyes' responses.
What would be your top three priorities, if elected?
1. Public Employee Pensions The problem of unfunded pension obligations has overwhelmed our large cities and is spreading like metastasizing cancer to smaller and smaller Texas communities. Except for police and firemen, I propose totally ending public employee pensions. Under my plan governmental bodies would pay the rates needed to fill the jobs, pay into Social Security, and let employees themselves handle future retirement needs. For jobs which have traditionally provided early retirement such as police and firemen, they would pay into these pension funds with each pay check. Funds unpaid at the end of each year are lost. A procedure would be developed to calculate the amount due to other employees who were due pensions, and the governmental bodies would still be liable for paying them, but no new obligations would be incurred. Anyone who has ever served on a committee knows how hard it is to restrain spending. Spending other people’s money, with the pressure of pressing needs pushed by familiar faces, creates a situation where it is impossible to not pay government employees with promises of future benefits, and where there is never money left over to pay into those funds. The huge unmentionable secret among the Democrats who run our large cities is that the fund contributions will never be paid. Instead, they expect bankruptcy. They plan to let the bankruptcy courts force the ruinous property tax increases needed. A Constitutional Amendment is needed to stop this. No human can stand against paying with future promises if that avenue is available. It must be totally forbidden. 2. Higher Education The system is an absolute disgrace. Academia is a corrupt monopoly with academics and administrators making incredible salaries while adjuncts working as near slave laborers provide much of the actual instruction. It has promoted student loans to remove itself from market forces. It has created a situation where young adults can’t afford to start families or buy their first house due to student debt. It is an out of control monopoly that must be opened to competition. I propose to require all State Universities to provide equivalent credits via examinations. The instruction needed to pass these examinations would be provided by the free market. Students receiving these credits would receive the same degree as those who sat through the courses, and could mix actual classes with credits via exams to attain their degrees. The MOOC expansion is a partial move in the right direction, but students should be able to acquire education from any source and earn the same academic credits via testing as by sitting through the classes. This would create an explosion of free market providers of educational services and end the current abused monopoly status of academia. The credentialing exams should also allow retaking, with higher grade points reflecting life experience and added study. The tests should not be pass/fail, but actually indicate the test score. To stop indoctrination, an appeals procedure staffed by volunteer alumni should allow review of grades where other than multiple choice questions are part of the grade. Total transparency at the student’s option should be required. In the fast approaching world of the future, continual education will become the norm. It is time to open the provision of educational services to the free market in a truly meaningful way. 3. K-12 Education Funding State level education funding should pay only for accomplishment. I propose creating an educational endowment for each student, with the money paid out only when that student achieves a specified annual level. Education funds are currently paid in at the top and are expected to be used properly to educate the students, but often are not. Big inner city public school systems have become a funding source for Democrats, while turning out poorly educated graduates, and leaving dropouts to fend for themselves. We should change all state level funding to an endowment at the individual student level. The money stays in the student account until each level is met, making poor students much more valuable to educators who can catch them up. For example, bringing a fifteen year old at the sixth grade level up to sophomore level would pay four years of compensation to the successful educator. Unpaid funds should stay in each student account indefinitely, allowing people who finally get their act together as adults to obtain an education. Opening educational services to the free market will see most students moving through material much faster than at present. This will allow for practical job related instruction, and college level courses, to be included. Competition among educational providers will make full use of technology, will provide useful training for actual jobs, will deliver far more education for the same money, and will free the taxpayers from the grip of an incredibly corrupt and self-serving educational establishment. The school funding mess cannot be ended simply, but if state level funds were used to set up student endowments, paid out only after educational accomplishment, if would start dramatic change. In a world of free market provision of educational services, quality and variety will increase and costs will fall. Tax funding might eventually end, with charities providing for poor students, and the cost of education dramatically lower than it has become. The largest source of endless property tax increases could be removed.
What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?
Law Enforcement Those in charge of law and order should be answerable to the voters in a much more direct way than our large cities now provide. I propose we dramatically expand the elected Constable system to handle all law enforcement except traffic and major cases. Greatly reduced areas for elected Constables would put locally elected officials known to almost everyone in the community in charge of law and order. Traffic enforcement should be separated from other duties. The Constable and his officers should focus on property and domestic disturbance and broken window policing. The elected Constable’s officers could still make traffic stops but there should be no connection between that revenue and their funding. Traffic offense income has become too large a part of the funding used by some cities and has led to widespread abuses and hatred of the police. Texans in rural counties elect sheriffs who provide a high quality of law and order and who answer to the voters. Texans in large cities should be able to do the same.
Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?
The Non-Aggression Principle is the core Libertarian belief. It says that to have the best possible human society, no one should Initiate force against another, or deceive them so that they do something they would not otherwise do. The only proper role of government therefore is preventing force and fraud. Beyond that, government becomes the problem. My two favorite books on Libertarian Philosophy are Healing Our World by Mary Ruwart, and What It Means to Be A Libertarian by Charles Murray An example of government crowding out the best solution is the uproar over censorship by the social media companies. The social media providers have become the target of those on all sides of all issues. It is almost universally agreed that they have failed to apply Solomonic Wisdom. Partisans on all sides are demanding action and organizing to fight over the details. The providers are staffing up to try to accommodate the demands. The current crisis arises from the belief that most people can’t handle information. An elite of clear-minded, right-thinking people must protect them from incorrect or damaging information and ideas. That idea contradicts the entire American experience. What if they did nothing. What if they took the position that while users could block commenters or be invitation only, anyone could post anything. If social media publishers could legally adopt a very simple user agreement that simply stated their policy to not restrict anything, the free market would respond with a number of useful products to handle everything. Apps would proliferate to protect children, provide fact checking, and provide filtering through investigation into the actual backgrounds of those posting (foreign governments, lobbyists of all stripes, religious fanatics, clueless idiots, extortionists, etc.). An entire new knowledge industry driven by the profit motive and competition would provide the information needed far better than the media companies and government monitoring agencies.
What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?
At age 78, after successful life experience as a small business owner, father, grandfather, soldier, and political observer, and a working life designing and supporting very complex systems, I can see the big picture in full detail. Many in our society have accepted as true that government should continually grow, that it is progress if more and more things are brought under its beneficent control. This is wrong. It must be deliberately denounced and opposed. Continual effort must be made to find ways to have the free market address public needs. My website has several specific proposals to do this. I served in the Cold War Army in Friedberg Germany in an armored unit, starting as a tank driver and ending as a tank commander. I made sergeant just as the Berlin Wall went up and ended up spending 31 months in Germany. I later served in the US Army Reserve where I was promoted to Staff Sergeant and was Platoon Sergeant for a Scout Platoon. My military obligation was completed before Vietnam. I spent my working years running a small company that designed special purpose microprocessor based circuit boards and created the software for them. After retiring I started Illyes Technologies Inc. which is developing several microprocessor based systems. I am an active pilot and flight instructor, and hold a Commercial Certificate with single and multi-engine and instrument ratings, and the gyrocopter rating. ?I am a Life Member of the National Rifle Association and was on the Fort Knox Rifle Team and the University of Illinois Rifle team. I am also a Life Member of the Libertarian Party and have served in numerous party positions. As a lifelong student of politics and human culture, I see a continual piling up of quick fixes, which always involve more government, more taxes, and less freedom. It doesn’t have to be that way, but the major parties will never change it. Our cultural and political heritage is a freedom never before achieved by a human society. Jefferson expressed it in his first inaugural as: “a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, and shall leave them otherwise free”. I am running to introduce ideas for moving toward the free market, to downsize instead of grow government, to make public employees more accountable, and to reverse the ridiculous impositions on a formerly free people such as the war on drugs.
What legacy would you like to leave?
I would like to implement Instant Runoff Voting, also known as Ranked Choice Voting. I have personally lobbied for this for years, and it is starting to become better known with Maine adopting it for the 2018 election. The two major parties can most simply be described as the Government Jobs Party and the Management Party. The parties view themselves as the Protector of Victims Party and the Common Sense Party. Both parties resist change until something collapses and then the Management Party tries to fix the problem while the Government Jobs Party tries to raise taxes and create as many government jobs as possible. The result is usually some sort of fix, and bigger government. Both parties regard abortion as the most important defining issue. Third Parties, no matter how appealing their ideas, rarely get out of single digits. Voters fear that voting for them will split the vote and elect someone the voter strongly opposes. That actually happened in recent history. After Bill Clinton had survived his last bimbo eruption and been nominated, the media suddenly discovered Ross Perot. Perot got the sort of coverage that even his money couldn’t buy. A large number of voters thought there might finally be an opportunity to bring real change to Washington. The liberal media knew that was very unlikely, but saw an opportunity to elect a Democrat by dividing the opposing vote. The result was Bill Clinton elected with 43% of the vote vs 56.4% for Bush and Perot. The Australians experienced an even more unpopular Labor Party candidate being elected with a plurality of 34.4% in 1918. They responded with the Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1918, which implemented Instant Runoff Voting. Voters rank the candidates. Second choice votes for voters whose candidate got the lowest first choice votes are then used, with the process continuing until a candidate receives a majority. Most voters only pick a first and second choice, since the remaining candidates are not acceptable to them. However, if Libertarians have their way, the choice of None Of The Above will be on all ballots, providing an acceptable third choice. If None Of The Above wins, the election must be held again with different candidates. Runoff elections are low turnout events, and are expensive for the candidates and the taxpayers. Local party organizations are often hostile to newcomers, keeping good new blood from getting into the system. Instant Runoff Voting at all levels from primaries through presidential elections would change this in a totally positive way. People should be able to vote for their second choice when they vote for their first. Texas could lead the way. It is time for this reform to be implemented. If elected I will push for both Instant Runoff Voting and for putting None Of The Above as a choice on all Texas ballots.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2020 Elections
External links
Footnotes
