Dancing With the Devil

But worse is that the leader of the Republican Party and fellow Republicans continue to enable him to ply his trade in trash by funding him in the hopes that they will win an election or two. I had hoped that the party leadership was beginning to understand how despicable this guy is but after listening to his radio show on Friday, all hopes were dashed.

First up, I heard an advertisement for a candidate for judge, Glenn Devlin. Mr. Devlin is running for the 313th District Court and leaves no doubt that he is a Republican, his slogan on the front page of his website being “Republican for 313th District Court”. Great. This is the same guy that poured thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of Judge Pat Shelton, current judge of the 313th. And the same guy that received thousands of dollars in business from that court. Unrelated, of course. Wink, wink.

But it gets worse. The one and only Jared Woodfill, current Chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, was on live to talk about Obamacare. Obama, Obama, Obama. Listen for yourself. That is their one and only strategy. Just as unbelievably, Mr. Woodfill was touting the next move by the cash strapped party. Get this. They recently held a Health Care Town Hall at Copperfield Church for which 700 or so citizens attended. Mr. Woodfill was so impressed with that meeting that he has decided to produce a DVD of the event and send it to every member of Congress. Don’t believe me?

One of the highlights of the night was listening to statements (and fielding questions) from several members of our audience. To ensure your voice is being heard in Washington, we will be providing a video of last night’s meeting to each member of Congress.

WhooHoo! I’ll bet Maxine Waters, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are holding their collective breath, just waiting for their copy. How ridiculous is that? Especially considering that the party couldn’t even meet payroll earlier this year and closed its doors for a few weeks.  How out of touch can the HCRP get?

Back to Terry Lowry. Politicians don’t get on his show and receive “endorsements” from his rag the Link Letter without making significant financial contributions. I decided to research and try to find out just how much money is given to this guy in one election cycle. To keep it simple, I limited my search to the 2008 GOP Primary race. Further, I limited it to races that are required to file campaign finance reports with the Texas Secretary of State, plus a bonus from the Harris County District Attorney’s race. That leaves all Federal races out and many county races. My hope is that someone with more time will round this report out for the full picture. But this one is full enough and even raises the question of how effective this guy is in the first place.

The table below lists the candidate’s name, the race they were in, the percentage of the vote they received and the expenditures they made to either Terry Lowry, The What’s Up Radio Program, or the Link Letter, located at either 12615 Jones Road or 1782 W. Sam Houston Parkway North. The amount is staggering considering that his radio program doesn’t even make it on the radar for ratings: $106,100. That’s right, over a hundred thousand dollars for one primary election cycle. Clicking on the date will take you to the campaign finance report that the expenditure is located on.

Campaign Expenditures to Terry Lowry or his companies for the 2008 GOP Primary

Wow. Trash pays, no?

And just what do the candidates get for their money? Well, if you are an incumbent, you have a pretty good chance of winning. Except former Rep. Corbin Van Arsdale, that is. The $28,100 that he spent was for naught, as Sen. Dan Patrick’s radio station has a much larger audience and was able to oust an incumbent.

The more interesting case for me was State Rep. District 144. Two candidates made it to the runoff, Ken Legler and Fred Roberts. Mr.Roberts put a little extra in Lowry’s coffers and magically received an endorsement in the runoff edition of the Link Letter, in which Mr. Lowry says about Mr. Legler:

First he outsourced his manufacturing jobs to Mexico, and then to China. When asked when life begins, stated “After 90 days!”. Wrong answer.

I wonder if Mr. Legler wanted his money back after that? But guess what? Mr. Lowry’s endorsement was worth less than the paper he put it on: Mr. Legler won the election and Mr. Roberts went home. There is a lesson there for candidates if they wish to learn it.

Another interesting tidbit comes from the race for District Attorney via the voter turnout. In the General Election, a total of 140,904 votes were cast. In the runoff, only 40,068 hard core Republicans turned out to vote, a dropoff of 71.6{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. If one is to believe that Mr. Lowry’s dirty tactics work, then one must also believe that hard core, Bible toting Republicans like to have their faith on Sundays but their muck on election day. pretty disgusting, actually.

One of the major disappointments I found while researching this is that Mr. Ed Hubbard, a challenger to Mr. Woodfill for chair this election, gave Lowry $6,000 in his successful primary race. Of course, he lost in the general, so what good was it? Even more disappointing was to find that Mr. Hubbard was on his radio show this year, just a few short months ago in May. Listen here if you don’t believe me. Does he really think that he is going to get this puke to endorse him in a race against Jared Woodfill? Not only did Mr. Woodfill match his $6,000 when he ran unopposed last year, he also has sent thousands of dollars of HCRP funds to Mr. Lowry through the years. At least I didn’t find that the other guy running for chair, Paul Simpson, gave any money or time to this clown.

I would urge all Republican candidates to take a second look at Terry Lowry before opening up your coffers to him. He doesn’t seem particularly effective at actually getting candidates elected. He is, however, very effective at tarnishing reputations and giving Christianity a bad name.

I will be looking very closely at the campaign finance reports in January to see who has used the services of this prostitute. That’s correct, I said prostitute. There really isn’t another word for people that do what he does, is there. Click here to view a sample of his work: Copy of one page of the runoff edition of the Link Letter from the 2008 GOP Primary. And click here or here for two of my favorite blog posts about Terry Lowry.

Republicans, heal thyself. While roaming through these reports, I found a few other interesting tidbits. More to come…