Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, Eats Beat Column: Bypassing Fibs and Going for Whoppers

By Bud Kennedy, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Feb. 28–I have followed Texas politics since 1972.

So I’ve seen lying.

But nothing like this year’s.

Reckless critics — some of them outsiders from completely far-right field — are making up attacks against familiar local Republicans such as District Attorney Tim Curry, state Reps. Charlie Geren and Anna Mowery and state Rep. Kent Grusendorf and his opponent, educator Diane Patrick, a veteran Republican.

Look, we know all these people. They have been our lawmakers and leaders and friends for 20 years or more.

Suddenly, somebody in Beaumont or San Antonio with a copy machine or a computer wants to convince us that they are not our friends.

The fabricated attacks are not just Republican-on-Republican.

One candidate is even lying about our paper.

If you want to be the Tarrant County district attorney, I do not recommend making up your newspaper quotes and telling voters they came from the Star-Telegram.

That’s what Curry’s opponent, young Fort Worth lawyer Kirk Claunch, did in a campaign mailer delivered Saturday.

Under the Star-Telegram nameplate, the ad claims to quote the Jan. 22 paper: “We need a D.A. who is not afraid to lead from the front.”

That line was not in the Jan. 22 paper.

It was not in any paper.

Claunch’s campaign made it up.

I called him at home Saturday. At first, he said he was “pretty sure” the quote came from a J.R. Labbe column that day.

It didn’t.

Then he said the quote was “something we put together” from several sources.

If so, the sources did not include the Star-Telegram.

Claunch seems like a nice guy. Until now, he gave me no reason to distrust him.

Curry runs a practical and professional prosecutor’s office, if not always a perfect one. The Star-Telegram Editorial Board is recommending him for re-election.

Yet another Star-Telegram clipping — this one genuine but misleading — has turned up in Grusendorf’s campaign against Patrick, a former Arlington school-board president.

Grusendorf’s campaign has circulated copies of a 1994 Star-Telegram guest commentary criticizing Patrick for supporting high school health textbooks that covered subjects beyond sexual abstinence. After an outcry from religious conservatives, she quickly reversed her stand and voted against the books.

The complaints about Patrick were published in the Star-Telegram. But they were written by the director of televangelist Pat Robertson’s Texas Christian Coalition.

That is far from the worst ad in the Grusendorf-Patrick race. Two different crude leaflets criticizing Patrick for the textbook issue turned up at Republican forums last week, including drawings of men embracing and involved in what appears to be oral sex.

Grusendorf has said his campaign did not distribute the leaflets. He called them “pretty bad.”

After one of the forums, state Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, said he had no idea who published the leaflets. But, he said, they are “obviously the work of an individual” and he had “seen that flying around for some time.”

The Patrick campaign has had its own flaws. One early ad accused Grusendorf of wanting to “consolidate districts so Arlington ISD may have to accept students from cities like Fort Worth.”

Grusendorf has said his House Public Education Committee needs to look at whether some of Texas’ 1,000-plus districts should be combined, but he has never suggested combining Arlington and Fort Worth.

Campaign exaggerations have reached almost farcical levels in west Fort Worth, where Mowery is suddenly accused of surrendering Texas to Mexico and illegal immigrants.

Challenger Robert Higgins is a lawyer who moved here from Lubbock. His primary complaint seems to be that Mowery hasn’t discouraged illegal immigration, which is like complaining that she hasn’t stamped out fire ants or brought more rain.

The most far-out campaign pieces come from inside and outside the campaign against Geren.

Geren has an opponent from Dallas, a new guy in town named Chris Hatley, who is running with a weird crowd.

His campaign is partly financed by a doctor in San Antonio who wants to give away public-education money through vouchers.

That would divert more money and children to church-run and other private schools.

But the real wild card in Hatley’s corner is a Beaumont-area guy who last campaigned against Republicans.

Immigration opponent Tom Owens of Lumberton has made Charlie Geren his newest Republican target. Owens last backed a third-party candidate opposing the Republican in a California congressional race.

Owens sent California voters 70,000 fliers supporting the candidate of the California affiliate of the Constitution Party, which calls for replacing our government with a religious theocracy based on “biblical” law.

Now, Owens likes Hatley so much that he has mailed Fort Worth voters leaflets calling Geren a “sold-out liberal.”

By Constitution Party standards, almost every Republican would be a “sold-out liberal.”

Owens’ leaflets are not directly part of Hatley’s campaign. But Hatley has been in no rush to condemn him.

That’s why former state Sen. Bill Ratliff came to town Monday.

Calling the shadowy smear campaigns against Geren and Patrick the work of the “rabid right,” he said Grusendorf and Hatley should loudly denounce their fringe supporters.

He has given Geren and Patrick campaign money. But he said he is not criticizing Hatley or Grusendorf. Only the stealth critics running the garish campaigns, which he called “political pornography.”

“I think every leader in the Republican Party should be denouncing this kind of campaign,” Ratliff said. When he was the target of a similar campaign four years ago, traditional Republicans rushed to support him.

“This is some of the same bad stuff,” he said.

“Don’t let a millionaire from San Antonio buy your race out from under you,” referring to Hatley’s campaign.

“If you say something loud enough, long enough, and repeat it enough, somebody’s likely to buy into it.”

Not when complete strangers are talking about some of our oldest leaders and friends.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

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