ROUND ROCK — Cyclist Lance Armstrong boarded a bus called Survivor One just after 8 this morning as he kicked off a bus tour to promote Proposition 15, the $3 billion cancer research bond proposal on the statewide ballot in November.
“I’ve been on plenty of buses, but I’ve never been on a bus ride around Texas,” said Armstrong just before leaving Scott & White Hospital at University Medical Campus in Round Rock.
His bus and another called Survivor Two are headed to Scott & White West Campus in Temple before continuing on to North Texas, and I’m along for the ride. Sort of. I’m in a minivan the Lance Armstrong Foundation people are calling Soccer Mom Two. Another minivan, Soccer Mom One, is carrying some more folks from the foundation.
"This is a real war and a war I think in many ways we forgot to fight," Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner and a survivor of testicular cancer, told a crowd in City Council chambers in Granbury, southwest of Fort Worth.
With no presidential or gubernatorial race on the ballot, the biggest challenge for Proposition 15 supporters may be getting Texans to the polls.
"Our opponent is voter apathy," said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. "The best way to get the word out is tried-and-true methods just like this bus tour: rolling across Texas and talking to voters."
Proposition 15 supporters are taking on apathy — and opponents who say the proposal would be a burden on taxpayers — with a full-fledged political campaign driven in large part by the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the same group that made yellow rubber bracelets a worldwide phenomenon.
Armstrong — and several state lawmakers who hitched a ride along the way — rode from Round Rock to Fort Worth on Monday, the same day that the annual Report to the Nation on cancer was released showing that cancer death rates are falling faster than ever.
"If you read the headline, you say, 'Well, cool, we're there,' " Armstrong said. "But it's more complicated than that. It's still an epidemic."
More than 95,000 Texans are expected to be diagnosed with cancer this year, and 35,000 are expected to die from it.
Take a look at house bill 14: Relating to reorganizing certain state institutions that provide financing for cancer research, including creating the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, and information about certain cancer treatments; granting authority to issue bonds.
Aaron Pena voted against his own bill!
