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Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, Eats Beat Column: Patrick Would Give Schools a New Voice

Posted on: Thursday, 9 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By Bud Kennedy, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Mar. 9--With a school principal on bass guitar and a librarian playing drums, a rock band cranked out a victory tune for Texas parents and teachers Tuesday night at an Arlington party celebrating a very early Patrick's Day.

Six months after public school activists from Austin asked her to run for the Texas House, college teacher Diane Patrick had just beaten the Arlington businessman who has been writing Texas' education laws for three years.

When the Austin delegation visited Patrick in her living room on Sept. 7 and asked her to run against 20-year incumbent Kent Grusendorf, "she got kind of wide-eyed," said Carolyn Boyle, a former school publicist who now leads the Texas Parent PAC.

Arlington Republicans were left wide-eyed Tuesday after an organized turnout of parents, teachers and new voters overwhelmed the usual Republican regulars to make Patrick the party's newest nominee.

This question could be on the next TAKS math test:

"Kent Grusendorf is a politician who always gets all the Republican primary votes. That's usually about 4,000 to 5,000 in a nonpresidential election year.

"If Diane Patrick wants to beat him in an open primary, how many votes does she need?

"A. 3,001

"B. 5,001

"C. Who said they had to be Republicans?"

After not one but two campaign visits from Gov. Rick Perry, Grusendorf finished Tuesday with 4,308 votes.

Somewhere, Patrick found 5,971 votes.

If she wins in November, Patrick, a public-education Republican and former member of the State Board of Education -- where she often voted with then-Gov. George W. Bush against religious activists -- would join state Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth to give local school districts two strong voices in Austin.

Grusendorf would say that he was also a strong voice for Texas schools, arguing for $2 billion more in spending but not the $10 billion some school leaders wanted. Both he and Patrick were supported by different public education leaders from the Bush reform years.

Boyle said schoolteachers, parents and public school trustees simply got tired of lobbying the Legislature and decided to run new candidates.

"Educators tend to be patient," she said at Patrick's victory party at J. Gilligan's Bar and Grill.

"We kept going to the Capitol. Nobody was listening. Nobody was paying attention.

"Finally, I just said, 'Did it ever occur to you that you could elect somebody else?'"

Patrick downplayed the Texas Parent PAC's role in launching her campaign, although PAC contributor Charles Butt of San Antonio, owner of the H-E-B and Central Market grocery chains, gave her a huge late boost with a $100,000 gift that lifted her to TV commercials and out of the muck of a muddy mail and leaflet campaign.

"A number of people had contacted me about this race," Patrick said Tuesday night. "I told the Texas Parent PAC what I told everybody else: I wouldn't jump in unless it was winnable.

"One of the things that really boosted my vote was that [Grusendorf] really loaded on the negative campaigning. My supporters were very proud."

Somebody outside Grusendorf's campaign dropped some nasty little leaflets at a couple of Republican forums. But that somebody was not far from Grusendorf's campaign, since the same images showed up later on mailers from the political action committee of a San Antonio doctor who lobbies for school vouchers.

One of the images was a crude cartoon showing how an intravenous drug user should always clean the needles. The mailers implied that Patrick voted to approve textbooks demonstrating drug use, but the cartoon was from an AIDS Services of Austin pamphlet that used the illustrations as HIV warnings for the hearing-impaired. The pamphlet might have been sent to anyone who wrote or called the agency from its listing in the teacher's edition of the textbook.

Another anti-Patrick ad included a sketch of two men embracing. It was from an AIDS Committee of Toronto brochure, also available through the teacher's edition.

Patrick countered by arguing that Grusendorf wanted to equip students with laptop computers, and that would give students easier access to adult content.

The entire flap wound up hurting Grusendorf. The images weren't going to discourage Patrick's crossover voters. And the leaflets took the spotlight away from the public education achievements Perry celebrates in his "Results are on the Rise" campaign -- results for which Grusendorf deserves a share of the credit.

Instead, Grusendorf's supporters gathered sadly around seven tables in a nondescript hotel ballroom at the Hilton Arlington, down a hallway between a health officials' convention and a software sales presentation.

As if to add insult, the sign by the door was misspelled: "Kent Grusendors Campaign."

He told reporters: "A lot of people that don't normally vote in our primary voted today."

If they usually vote in the Democratic Party primary, the Democrats need them back.

Once again, Texas Democrats firmly cast their votes for San Antonio-area lawyer Gene Kelly, sending him into a runoff for the U.S. Senate nomination even though he runs only on his famous name and offers absolutely no campaign.

Kelly drew almost 200,000 votes, barely trailing front-runner Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer.

Lesson: In a March primary, never bet against the luck o' the Kellys. Or a Patrick.

-----

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

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

TelAviv:SBAR,

Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)

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