By Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 reporter: In almost daily missives from the John Cornyn campaign, the Republican nominee and his staff have taken direct and sometimes personal aim at Democrat Ron Kirk's campaign, issues, and record. If emails could talk, they might sound something like this...
Voice 1: Ron Kirk is once again dancing the two-step, but it's not the Texas two-step.
Voice 2: Who is Ron Kirk? In recent debates, Kirk invented stories, rewrote history, like his supporter - Al Gore.
Voice 3: Kirk believes he can address Valley problems from the mountains, by phoning it in. He's apparently too busy to visit the Valley.
Voice 4: Texas to Ron Kirk: please call home. Is Kirk confused about whom he wants to represent?
Sprague: When asked about the attacks earlier in the campaign, Kirk replied...
Ron Kirk, Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate: There ought to be enough of what I've done after 6-1/2 years as mayor to go to people and say look at my record, here's what I believe in and here's what I can do.
Sprague: So what did Ron Kirk do in Dallas? Among his claims are that he cut taxes four consecutive years and presided over the city as home values soared. That's all correct. But Peggy Venable, the Texas state director of Citizens For A Sound Economy, says it wasn't enough.
Peggy Venable, Texas Citizens For A Sound Economy: The bottom line is residents did not see their tax bills fall. Property tax rates were cut from 1995 to 2001 less than a penny while evaluations went up 60%. Meager property tax cuts didn't reach the pockets of the taxpayers.
Sprague: Venable's numbers are also correct. And, in the year after Kirk left office, Dallas suffered a major blow - a $95 million budget shortfall. Kirk chalks it up to economic aftershocks from the September 11th attacks. Critics point out cities like Houston and Atlanta managed to survive the year after Sept. 11th with smaller deficits. And they accuse Kirk, a Democrat, of being anti-labor. Although the mayor oversaw a modest drop in crime and voted for police pay raises, he never won over Dallas Police Association President Glenn White.
Glenn White, President Dallas Police Association: The fact is, Ron Kirk never voted for a pay raise until the Dallas Police Association and other employee groups from the force had the votes to pass it. Ron Kirk's a very smart man. He's not going to be on the losing side of any vote. So, to use the phrase we worked together when he was mayor, I wouldn't even use that word "work."
Sprague: To be fair, few Dallas mayors have had a smooth ride with the police unions. And Mayor Pro Temp Don Hill, one of Kirk's most ardent cheerleaders, says Kirk was elected to be a visionary, not a manager.
Dallas Mayor Pro Temp Don Hill: I think what he gave us was a path, a vision for taking our city into the future, which I think we will be looking back for many, many years, looking at the wisdom of those decisions.
Sprague: Hill says the projects Ron Kirk championed will change the face of Dallas over the next 20 years. He cites a new University of North Texas satellite campus in South Dallas, a new downtown sports arena, and the Trinity River redevelopment project. David Biegler chaired the Chamber of Commerce and the Citizens' Council during Kirk's tenure.
David Biegler, formerly of the Dallas Citizens' Council and the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce: The Trinity River would not have moved forward without Ron convening everybody into one room and saying we were going to get this done. I mean, that was nothing other than classic Ron Kirk force of personality. You can argue with any particular aspect of is, but the fact of the matter is, we would be right where we were 20 years ago if Ron hadn't done that.
Sprague: Biegler is a Republican. But he's voting for Kirk because he admires how the mayor cut through the city's racial discord and worked with both Democrats and Republicans.
Biegler: He has a good understanding of everyone. He can relate to an executive out of a Fortune 500 company but he can relate very easily to a single mother living on welfare. And I think that's a skill that defines leadership.
Sprague: By contrast, some Kirk supporters say John Cornyn didn't foster cross-party relationships as a judge, a Supreme Court Justice or Attorney General. When Cornyn cited his work with the Texas Legislature on child support collections as an example of his bi-partisanship, Kirk scoffed.
Kirk: There is no debate in Texas that deadbeat parents ought to pay child support. A much better example for John Cornyn was when he had a chance in redistricting that he could act out and work in a bipartisan way. He gave them the back of his hand and gave them a very mean spirited plan that even the Justice Department rejected.
Sprague: But as Attorney General, Cornyn has been lauded by both sides of the aisle, partly for his record-setting level of child support collections and partly for his advocacy of open government.
Suzy Woodford, Common Cause of Texas: From the day he took office, he stated open records were going to be a priority for him and that he was always going to come down on the side of openness and that he was going to be a strong defender of the open government laws. And that's what we've seen.
Sprague: Suzy Woodford is the executive director of Common Cause of Texas. She praises Cornyn for ordering the Stephenville ISD in 2000 to reveal how much it was spending on attorneys' fees, following a citizen's request. The school district didn't like that.
Woodford: So what they did was remove the names and other bits of information to the requestor. So, Cornyn took them to court and used his authority to get a writ of mandamus and they were then forced to open the records.
Sprague: But even Woodford acknowledges there have been a few "glitches" in Cornyn's record. Robert Bryce, an author and journalist in Austin, puts it more bluntly.
Robert Bryce: Cornyn is for openness when it suits him, but only when it suits him. He has been and claims to be a supporter of open records in terms of government, but he certainly isn't for open records when it could hurt his own political aspirations.
Sprague: For example, Cornyn won't reveal who's contributing to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which he helped establish. The Association, which raises money for the Republican Party, lobbied corporations like Microsoft and insurance giant Aetna for $25,000 donations at an event near Austin two years ago. At the time of the event, the state was suing Aetna for encouraging doctors to withhold medically necessary tests and treatments in order to keep costs down. Robert Bryce explains.
Bryce: Here was Aetna giving money to an event that Cornyn was essentially the host of and they had an opportunity to lobby Cornyn directly at that event and then shortly after the event, the state settles with claims against Aetna in a way that many consumer groups felt did not take advantage of the claims they had already made.
Sprague: In other words, Aetna was not fined for breaking the law. But John Cornyn insists the agreement was good for Texas.
Attorney General John Cornyn: The Aetna decision was widely acknowledged as a tremendous benefit to consumers because what we did was get the accountants from between physicians and patients when it came to making health care decisions.
Sprague: Linda Eads, who prosecuted the case with Cornyn, admits the Aetna contribution to the Republican Attorneys General Association looked bad, but she's adamant it never played a role in the settlement.
Linda Eads, Southern Methodist University Law Professor: And never once did the AG say, "Oh, c'mon, can't we go a little soft on Aetna here?" Not once. In fact, there were times when the AG told me I was being too easy on Aetna and he wanted more in the agreement.
Sprague: That's the way John Ccornyn wants his record portrayed: tough on companies that try to cheat Texans. Ron Kirk frames his record in terms of consensus-building. Both depictions are subject to debate but neither candidate is running on his record alone. And in fact, the last days of the campaign are likely to feature energizing get out the vote stops that talk more about the future than about the past. For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.
To contact Suzanne Sprague, please send emails to ssprague@kera.org.