Over at BlogHouston, Kevin’s got a post discussing a KHOU “hit piece” against Dan Patrick, who is running for the State Senate seat being vacated by Jon Lindsay. Last night, KHOU-11, Dan Rather’s old stomping grounds, chose to air a quirky piece in which they basically gave his opponent Joe Nixon carte blanche to insinuate that Patrick was talking the talk, but not walking the walk, when it came to PAC money.

He said, ‘This race, he’s going to win this race without taking special interest money.’ I think we have that clip for you now,� said Joe Nixon, ® Candidate for State Senate District 7.

It turns out Joe Nixon’s campaign spent months recording Patrick’s radio show.

Patrick radio clip: “I don’t want lobby money. I don’t want PAC money unless they’re groups that support the people and issues we support.�

And now, Nixon is trying to use the talk show host’s words against him.

“Those are words and actions of Mr. Patrick and of no one else. And to those, he needs to own up and be responsible for,� Nixon said.

I use the rather loaded word “insinuate” for a very good reason. As Kevin points out:

So, Joe Nixon has an audio clip of Dan Patrick saying something and asserting it means something. Doug Miller has basically given the Nixon campaign a free television ad on the highly rated KHOU news broadcast, seemingly agreeing that Joe Nixon’s assertions mean something. Houston Bicyclist Bob Stein seems to agree that it means something.

The story’s glaring omission? Any specifics as to why Dan Patrick’s earlier comments are controversial.

Or for that matter, that he has any evidence that Patrick is not walking the walk. So isn’t it strange that on the very next day, Rick Casey of the Chronicle has an article (or is that an unmarked editorial?) that starts with the words:

Buying, and selling, a Senate seat Is radio celebrity Dan Patrick trying to buy the state Senate seat being vacated by Jon Lindsay?

It continues in the regular print:

Or is state Rep. Joe Nixon, Patrick’s opponent in next months’s primary, trying to sell it?

And that is nearly the last stab at fair play the article makes. The rest of it is highly slanted, and it becomes clear pretty quickly that Mr. Casey appears to like Mr. Nixon. I suppose I have that idea from the next few sentences:

In an e-mail news release Tuesday, Nixon leveled the charge that Patrick is trying to purchase the seat.

Nixon makes a good argument. Patrick has loaned his own campaign $300,000, a sum available only to a wealthy man.
(Emphasis mine.-ubu)

Well, golly gee wiz, I thought every poor welfare mother had $300k to throw away. So not only does Casey feel it necessary to endorse Nixon’s argument, he has to go the further step and point out that Patrick is a wealthy man. (transl.: Not One Of Us.)

And that’s only part of the story.

Dum-de-DUMMMMM! Oh, the horrors that lurk just beneath the surface! Note the continued use of loaded words:

For years Patrick has been a forceful political commentator on KSEV-AM (700), a conservative radio station he has controlled through Houston Broadcasting LP. The station has a relatively small but devoted audience.

Patrick has openly and effectively used the station to further his candidacy, with frequent and favorable mentions of him by various talk show hosts (including himself until the end of December) in reverent tones.

Remmber children, reverence is a bad thing. Always make fun of anything that looks like /whisper/ religion /whisper/. (Unless it’s Islam of course. We should respect their feelings when they burn down embassies.)

Frankly, that whole last sentence should be bolded. It all but screams “Why that blatant hussy, talking about himself!” And why do I suspect that if the situations were reversed, Mr. Nixon would merely be the “president of Houston Broadcasting LP, which owns KSEV-AM.” Or something to that effect. (I don’t know Patrick’s actual title, so that’s not to be taken as fact.)

No, everyone knows evil conservatives are all about control. Cue the NSA and stormtroopers in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1….

The law requires that something of value, such as those mentions as well as political ads on his behalf, be listed on his campaign finance reports as “in kind” contributions.

Since his campaign began, Patrick puts the total of these contributions at $241,259.

Patrick needs to value ads and mentions on his radio station highly, or else he’ll have some explaining to do to his advertisers. But I wouldn’t argue with this figure.

Oooh, snarky, snarky. Let’s insinuate (there’s that loaded word again) that Patrick is ripping off his advertisers by inflating his own in-kind values. Never mind that it has to work the other way; the in-kind values have to be calculated from the advertising revenue. Otherwise someone with an axe to grind (like maybe Ronnie Earle) comes along and starts making mountains out of molehills.

The radio station is clearly a factor in generating scores and scores of the kind of contributions politicians love to get: $100, $200, $350 and $500 from ordinary folks, many of them made by credit card through Patrick’s Web site.

Funny, I thought they liked to get $10,000 from Jack Abramoff. I confess, I don’t get this. First Casey makes a big deal about how Patrick is financing his own campaign. And then he says that he gets “scores and scores” of credit card contributions. Now let’s see, I’m going to arbitrarly fix the number of “scores and scores” at eighty, since he used the plural twice, and one score is 20, so two is 40, and 2 x 40 = 80. (I are graduate of publik skool, see!) So if we assume the 60% of the contributions are the minimum quoted figure of $100, 25% was $200, 10% was $350 and 5% was the 500 then we get:

80 x 60% x $100 = $4,800
80 x 25% x $200 = $4,000
80 x 10% x $350 = $2,800
80 x 05% x $500 = $2,000
Total: . . . . . .$13,600


Except the very next sentence blows away those numbers:

These make up the majority of his total contributions of just more than $420,000 after you back out the station’s portion.

Now that’s an interesting little tidbit. Since his own loan of $300,000 would be more than half, it’s not being counted either. In other words, Mr. Patrick has received somewhere in excess of $210,000 in contributions no larger than $500 each. In other words, somewhere between 420 and 2,100 contributors! And remember, these are the minimums.

Clearly someone’s trying to buy this election. Could it possibly be… the voters?

Finally, Casey seems to show a bit of even-handedness–near the end. Most people skim newspapers, they don’t read the complete text of every article. So Mr. Casey can argue that he was fair, but in truth, he put all the negatives about Mr. Patrick up front, and buried the negatives about his opponents. Moreover, note the lack of loaded words like the ones I highlighted above:

By contrast, Nixon looks like the entrenched incumbent he is, with special interests scattered throughout his finance reports.

His biggest single contributor is Houston home builder and champion political contributor Bob Perry, who has made five gifts totaling $87,500 since last August.

A cause close to Perry’s heart, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, made two contributions for $25,000 each.

When a PAC gives $50,000 or an individual (other than a wealthy relative or very close friend) gives $85,000, those aren’t contributions. They’re investments.

Damn straight they’re investments. (And just for the record, I’ve had to deal with Perry Homes on behalf of the city. Arrogant describes them pretty well. We’re fairly certain they’ve tried to cheat the city out of a few dollars here and there; frankly, amounts so small the DA would turn his nose up at them. Petty chiseling, just damned petty. But I suppose it adds up after a few thousand houses.)

To put it in perspective, Perry and Texans for Lawsuit Reform together contributed about 27 percent of the money Nixon has raised during this campaign, according to his reports.

So, we know who owns Nixon, then, don’t we?

But Nixon isn’t the only example of the problem with a political system that relies on fuel from special interests. He’s just Exhibit A.

Exhibits B and C are the other two candidates in the primary, state Rep. Peggy Hamric and City Councilman Mark Ellis.

Hamric might be called the Princess of PACs. She received 36 PAC contributions since last June, though to her credit the average was slightly less than $1,000. She did have something of an open tap from the beer industry — her responsibilities include oversight of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission — but the PACS ranged widely, from interior designers to (who knew?) Texas libraries.

I’ve seen her picture. Frankly, the beer is necessary, so I’m not complaining. But I’m curious: Public libraries, I presume? In other words, the Texas Municipal League isn’t the only lobbying group out there taking taxpayer money and showering it on government officials.

Is it just me, or does that whole idea seem a bit . . . . incestuous?

Finally, there’s Mark Ellis, whose contribution list, appropriately, looks much more like that of a city councilman than a legislator.

There are lawyers who do business with the city, engineers and other construction interests who need city permits, a towing executive or two.

No the city of Houston isn’t owned by the developers. No, it’s only a coincidence that towing companies, the recipiant of tax-payer funded largesse and a closed market, are scratching backs (and greasing palms.) Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

There’s Tom DeLay’s brother Randy, a lobbyist, one of the larger contributors at $5,000.

Oh look, a gratuitous DeLay swipe. Ahem. Lobbyist for whom, pray tell? That’s where the money is coming from.

Most importantly, there’s the Houston Police Officers Union. Its PAC gave $5,000, but it also spent nearly $40,000 on radio ads for Ellis, and nearly $16,000 on polling.

Cheapskates.

In all, the union accounts for almost a fifth of Ellis’ contributions as of this week.

It’s a mixed blessing. The conservatives whose votes he seeks tend to love cops and hate unions.

I confess, I have no idea if Ellis is a conservative or not. But it’s not surprising.

What’s the lesson here?

I think it’s simple. As competitive campaigns become more and more expensive, a politician has only two choices.

He or she can buy the office. Or sell shares in it.

And on that score, Mr. Casey and I are finally in complete agreement. Barring some structural repair to the system we have today (and Mr. Patrick’s contributors indicate that we just may be seeing it evolve), offices are going to either be bought or sold. Frankly, I prefer bought. It’s not perfect (it would lead to total restratification of society), but someone who pays for an office themselves (or with help from the little guy) is free to vote as his concience and interest dictates. We’ve at least got a chance at getting the former, and can vote out anyone who demonstrates the latter. But if all the candidates are selling shares in their office to the highest bidders, then the little guy has no chance at all.