I started to call this one the massacre at the Texas Asian Republican Caucus forum but it isn’t SEO friendly.
By all accounts, the Paul Simpson campaign for Harris County Republican Party Chair has the money and momentum to win the race. The amount of money he’s raised, over $160,000, is astonishing for a position that doesn’t pay a dime. Dick Weekly has helped him get the endorsement of Michael Berry. Life is good for the campaign.
With all of those positives, why has my day sucked? Because I knew I was going to have to tell you about the forum that I attended last night. My problem isn’t simply that Jared Woodfill crushed Paul in the “debate” – no, that would have been easy to brush off because from what I hear, that is routine when the two meet. And even though the communications part of the job is at least as big as the rest of the job, I had decided that Paul would be “good enough” to get the job done because he would be so much better at the rest of it.
Here is a little context for the rest of this. The forum was held directly after a forum that featured two candidates for HD149 trying to defeat Democrat Hubert Vo – Nghi Ho and Al Hoang. The room was full of people that were probably getting their first glimpse at the leadership of the party. You want outreach? You didn’t need to reach far because those who the party needs to “reach out to” were sitting next to us. So what does Paul do?
He started off with a personal attack on Jared and kept it up until the end. It is one thing to make a sharp contrast between yourself and your opponent on issues that affect the party. It is quite another to come across as a mean, desperate man by repeatedly making personal attacks. Even when Jared tried to give him an opportunity to lighten up by asking a silly question, Paul couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. Other than Paul’s true blue supporters, no one in the room was comfortable. Especially those people that need to be “outreached” to – they looked like they were in a torture chamber. What kind of outreach are we in for?
Perhaps the strangest thing about the very strange night was watching Paul make my little buddy Terry Lowry look like the saint he ain’t. You want “pay-to-play” removed from the party? You’d better not stand in front of a group of people and tell them that you tried to pay money to affect the content that Terry Lowry produces. That is exactly what Paul did last night.
Watch this video with both candidates answering questions about “pay-to-play”:
Watch it again because we’re going to talk about it. I’ll wait.
Okay, now that you have a good memory of what the candidates said, let’s look at a couple of points.
Paul may not think that Jared is a good attorney but Jared ate his lunch on that question. Hypocrisy, thy name is Paul Simpson says Jared. Now you might say, no, you’re blowing this out of proportion. No, I am not. Think about what Paul said.
“The pay to play slates are a cancer on the Harris County Republican Party.”
Is that right? Hmm. Listen to what Paul said on the Terry Lowry What’s Up Radio Program.
As you well know there are people out there that take issue with your system – that’s their fight.
Well, which is it Paul? I’ve been fighting these slates for seven years – I guess it is my fight and not yours. Jared was absolutely right to call out Paul’s hypocrisy – you can’t pay them and then knock them when they don’t endorse you.
Jared then points out that Paul wrote a check for $10,000 this cycle. Paul jumps up and says he only wrote a check for $5,000. Paul is correct but this note is included in his campaign finance report:
Initial (50{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}) payment for full page ad in March 2014 Link Letter
Clearly the commitment was for $10,000, which is why Jared used $10,000.
More from Paul in the video:
I sat down with him, said I’m interested in an ad, will you endorse my opponent? That’s all I asked. He assured me he would not. I wrote a $5,000 check to him. The party, the party, gave Mr. Lowry $5,000. Then Mr. Lowry endorsed Mr. Woodfill. He either lied to me or broke his word.
Okay, so Lowry broke his word. Or lied. But let’s listen to what Paul said in that January 8th show on Terry Lowry’s radio program:
I’ll buy an ad from you and I don’t know what you’re gonna do in my race, that’s the way it is.
Lowry then gives out Paul’s website and stresses that he has not endorsed in the race but never one time says anything to the effect that he isn’t going to skip the race. So which is it? Did Paul demand that Lowry not endorse anyone before he would buy an ad or did he buy an ad not knowing or caring who Lowry was going to endorse? I asked Paul to help me reconcile the discrepancy and he says there is no discrepancy and sent me this:
I asked Terry Lowry in December if he had decided what he was going to do in the County Chair race. I told him we would not buy an ad in his LinkLetter if it also carried his endorsement of an opponent, because such an ad would be a waste of money.
He then said that he was not going to endorse any of my opponents. I told him that, on that basis, I would buy an ad, and paid half the total ad price.
I did not ask or know what he was going to do in the race – i.e., if he would endorse me or stay out of the race entirely.
The next month, he informed me that he was endorsing Jared Woodfill.
So, he either lied to me upfront that he had decided not to endorse any opponents, or he later broke his word.
My campaign has not funded the second half of the anticipated ad payment.
I’m not an attorney and perhaps an attorney would say, okay, that is a good explanation. But this line really sticks out:
I did not ask or know what he was going to do in the race – i.e., if he would endorse me or stay out of the race entirely.
No, what Paul did was to tell Lowry, look, little fella, I’ll pay you but you can’t endorse Woodfill, okay? Deal?
That doesn’t cut it with me. What is the difference between someone sticking out their hand and saying “give me some money and I’ll endorse you” and someone walking up to you with $10,000 in their hand and saying “I’ll give you some money if you either endorse me or go away without mentioning my race at all”?
Tell me, what is the difference? Paul clearly admitted to paying for an ad conditioned on confirming what the content of the endorsements would be. This is very different from someone like Gary Polland that gives candidates the option of canceling their ads and getting a refund if he doesn’t endorse them. Lowry made clear in that interview that the ad is completely separate from the endorsement.
Back to the suitability of Paul as spokesperson of the party, which is at least half the job. Take a look at another portion of last night’s forum – listen to the tone, watch the body language, and ask yourself about “outreach”.
Refusing to have a little light hearted fun in front of people getting their first experience with party leadership? Questioning Jared’s commitment to the pro-life movement? Are you kidding me?
Look, I know I’m going to get a lot of grief for writing this. I get it, a lot of people are fired up about finally making some changes to the party. And after fighting this fight far longer than most of those that are going to criticize me, it would be easy for me to overlook stuff like this and just be glad that change is coming. But as a conservative person by nature, I’m wary of change for change’s sake. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Jared is not perfect but he doesn’t say one thing to one group and another to a different group. And I’ve never heard a peep that Jared would wave money in front of someone in order to affect the outcome of their content.
The party desperately needs to change the way it treats people that don’t pass purity tests put in place by the leadership so that more people are willing to participate. There is no question about. The question is what kind of change will Paul really bring? Are we switching one insider group for another? If so, who is in the new insider group? Why does Paul refuse to name the leadership team that he will put in place?
Now I don’t know who I’m going to vote for and that is as much a shock to me as it is to you. But my concern is not for Jared or Paul – it is for the future of the party that I think has the best ideas and principles to keep Harris County, Texas, and the nation prosperous.