Gubernatorial candidate Farouk Shami visits Brownsville
Yolanda Salinas, of Laredo, remembered going to a little hair salon in Houston to take a course from a hairdresser named Farouk Shami who had developed hair-coloring systems without ammonia.
"His lab was a little closet," Salinas, a former hairdresser, recalled Thursday of the day she met Shami 21 years ago.
Those days are long past.
On Thursday, Salinas, now the wife of Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas, was by Shami’s side as he made a campaign stop in Brownsville to meet with local leaders at Antonio’s Mexican Village restaurant. Shami’s visit was part of his election bid for Texas governor in the March 2 Democratic Party Primary.
Shami, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, also now heads a multimillion-dollar empire that manufactures a stream of hair products, including CHI flat irons, and employs more than 2,500 people.
"I am not a career politician. Thank God," said Shami who faces seven candidates, including former Houston Mayor Bill White, in his race for the Democratic Party’s nomination.
As of Wednesday, Shami had spent $11.5 million of his money in his campaign for governor.
And he had not set a cap on what he will continue to spend in the race for the nomination, and if successful, for his race against the Republican Party’s nominee in the November General Election.
Shami will spend "whatever it takes," he said. "I have an open bank account," the candidate added.
Shami, a Palestinian American, also has come a long way from when he arrived in the U.S. in 1965 with $71 in his pocket, waited tables and worked hard, he said, to reach the American dream.
"I want to make sure that the American dream is still alive," he said of why he is running for governor. The state needs to be run as a business and not based on favoritism, he added.
Issues dear to him include job creation and training, investment in solar and wind energy, the building of bridges instead of walls, transparency, assistance to veterans, education reform and the need to secure the future of society and its children.
"We should be the richest state in the world," he said of the great resources the state has.
Shami said that President Barack Obama inspires him and makes him believe that, "If we can have a black president, I’m sure we can have a brown governor."
