Opponent’s late filing gives Gammage ethics ammunition: Bell’s spokesman says financial disclosure delay was an oversight (Robert Garrett, Dallas Morning News via Perry vs World)
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Gammage blistered opponent Chris Bell on Friday for styling himself as an ethics reformer but filing a state-required financial disclosure form 11 days late.
Mr. Gammage stopped short of branding Mr. Bell unethical, though he called him hypocritical.
“You can’t have it both ways, you can’t say you support strong ethics requirements and then not follow the requirements yourself,” said Mr. Gammage, a former Texas Supreme Court justice.
A spokesman said Mr. Bell, a former Houston congressman, is sorry he missed the Feb. 13 deadline for filing a personal financial statement with the Texas Ethics Commission.
“This is an oversight, and it’s been corrected,” said Bell campaign spokesman Jason Stanford. He said staff members forgot about the deadline, though he said Mr. Bell wasn’t blaming others.
“Obviously, it was his own responsibility,” Mr. Stanford said. “He’s apologized.”
[snip]
On Wednesday, the Gammage campaign seized on Mr. Bell’s missing the deadline in a statement that mocked an ethics speech Mr. Bell gave in Austin last fall. “There is an unofficial ‘don’t mess with ethics’ policy around here,” Mr. Bell said then.
The Gammage statement chortled: “Why hasn’t Mr. ‘Don’t Mess with Texas Ethics’ filed his personal financial statement? … Just what does he have to hide?”
What an embarrassing misstep for the Bell campaign.
That’s nearly as amateurish as manufacturing an endorsement from a group that claimed that Bell had withdrawn from a three-way mayoral runoff.
3 comments On The Mandate Misses A Deadline
Democrats seem to be coalescing behind Bell…and I stress seem to be. His complaint against DeLay seems to carry alot of weight with some Democrats. For the life of me, I don’t understand why the Dems would want to run a gubernatorial candidate who finished THIRD in Houston’s race for mayor! To put that in perspective, Ron Kirk WON the race for Dallas mayor and was still soundly defeated in his run for the US Senate. I don’t know enough about Gammage to comment on him, but the best thing that most Dems could do right now would be to skip the primary and get Strayhorn on the ballot in November.
I think this thing is still up in the air. While most of the newspapers are endorsing Bell, most of the Democratic clubs and groups are endorsing Gammage. Those represent the more activist folks who are most likely to vote in a primary. Gammage essentially caught Bell after he’d only been in the race for a couple of months and Bell had been running for over a year. The most generous thing I can say about the Bell campaign so far is that it’s been hapless. Me, I’m voting for Gammage.
I disagree on the skip the primary strategy. As, ahem, a precinct chair, I feel that there are important down-ballot races that deserve the attention of Democratic voters. Plus, I have to show up and run the precinct caucus that night, and I want folks to show up for that. I do think, however, it would be good for us to have Carol Four-names on the ballot. She’ll draw some of the moderate Republican votes away from Perry, and I think we’ll get some of them as well. The question is how many Democrats will cross over and vote independent. I really don’t think it will be that many. With multuple candidates, it’ll only take a plurality to win this thing, and that means anything can happen. Of course, Kinky remains the wild card in all this.
As a side note, I think 2 things happened to Ron Kirk. First of all, the same thing that happened to Democrats all over the country in 2002. Second, Tony Sanchez drug that whole ticket down. If the Bell campaign is hapless, the Sanchez campaign was hopeless. I’ve never seen so much money spent so badly.
Rats. 6% turnout and my guy got hammered.
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