By Bill Zeeble, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-931414.mp3
Dallas, TX – It's a tough election for voters in Dallas' 30th Congressional District. Long time Democratic Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson is plagued by a scholarship scandal. Republican challenger Stephen Broden has said violent government revolution may be necessary. KERA's Bill Zeeble reports on the contest in the largely minority, southern Dallas district.
18-year Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson has always won re-election, pulling at least 80 percent of the vote in recent years. But when reports showed that she gave scholarship money to relatives and friends instead of eligible, low-income students, some voters, like Gladys Lary, were stunned.
Lary: Normally you would go in the booth and say you know this person, know what they've done, know what they stand for. But after this, yes it does make you question.
Lary says Johnson's acknowledged misuse of $31,000 in Congressional Black Caucus scholarship money would change her vote. Johnson would not talk to KERA about the scholarships, but denied wrongdoing on CNN.
Eddie Bernice Johnson I was not aware of the rules. The rules have been very ambiguous. There were some rules that came out last year. I've acknowledged I made a mistake. I've tried to make everything whole. I've paid all the money out of my personal funds. And I'm ready to move on.
In Johnson's district, one of her sympathizers, Bernard Hicks, is weighing his options.
Hicks: I'm not going to exclude her from my voting. She's, you know, everybody makes mistakes, you know? Because she says she didn't know, which I doubt very seriously. But you know, hey, a lot of people make mistakes in life. That's including myself.
Challenger Stephen Broden, pastor of a small South Dallas church, is less forgiving.
Broden: Redirecting those moneys to her own family and to her staffers' family members is a violation of what you and I know to be the nepotism codes of most corporations and business around this country. It is indicative of a betrayal, of the confidence we placed in her to lead our district with our interests and our needs as her priority.
Broden's public profile - and campaign cash - soared in the weeks following the Johnson scholarship scandal. But last week in a TV interview, Brodin upset even some Republicans, saying he'd consider violent revolution if voting failed to force a change. He rescinded the statement & stopped giving interviews. But the ardent Roe V. Wade and abortion foe holds other controversial views. He told KERA that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg backs the Roe V. Wade decision and believes in the extermination of African Americans.
Broden: She said we passed Roe v. Wade in order to control certain people group. The woman is a eugenicist and eugenicists believe that there are certain races that have privileges and are more evolved & developed than others. The African American community and our people, in the eyes of eugenicists, are not as evolved or intelligent as others.
Broden says Planned Parenthood is part of this eugenics conspiracy, and Eddie Bernice Johnson supports Planned Parenthood 100 percent. Johnson refuses to speak about Broden.
Eddie: No I have no comments. He's commenting enough on himself.
After last week's statements, Broden says he's no longer giving interviews. Johnson, who still won't talk to KERA about the scandal, is talking about issues that benefit her campaign. That includes hundreds of millions of transportation dollars she helped secure for north Texas by sitting on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
Eddie: The green line provides increased access to jobs and economic development, and this will bring new economic development for this area because it always has.
Still, Johnson now carries a tainted reputation as she seeks a 10th Congressional term. And Broden, given some of his statements, struggles in his mission to convince voters he's the one to improve a suffering 30th District.
Campaign website of Eddie Bernice Johnson: http://www.ebj2010.com/
Johnson's Congressional page: http://ebjohnson.house.gov/
Campaign website of Stephen Broden: http://www.brodenforcongress.com/