Tuesday’s special senate election in West Texas features a strong conservative against a flip-flopping lackey to the establishment. One represents the future of Texas; the other represents the bad old days of cronyism.
On the conservative side is Charles Perry. We and every other conservative group in the state have endorsed him. His record serving the people of West Texas speaks for itself. He is truly a conservative champion and taxpayer advocate who will be a great senator.
Challenging Perry in the election is Jodey Arrington, whose resume reads like a wannabe insider. He has no major accomplishments in business, no record in public policy, no achievements in the community. He’s been a professional brown-noser, groveling with his nose in the dirt for whatever entrenched interest will tell him that he’s one of the cool kids.
Politically, Arrington has proven to be a flip-flopper on things big and small. He told popular Lubbock radio show host Chad Hasty that he had nothing – nothing! – to do with an organization pushing a tax hike in Lubbock. Ten days later he was caught on tape telling an audience how proud he was to work with that group. (Arrington has also been called out by West Texas media personality Robert Pratt for his relationship with groups supporting Wendy Davis.)
Not content to only misrepresent his own record, Arrington has also been caught lying about Charles Perry’s voting record. Every conservative group in the state has endorsed Perry (to name a few: Texas Right to Life, Texas State Rifle Association, National Rifle Association, Texas Values…).
We’ve seen the same combination of brown-nosing, deceitful attacks from Arrington. In the last few days, he has taken to the airwaves attacking me and my organization. Frankly, I love it when politicians attack us in their campaigns; it means they are losing. (Entrenched incumbent senators John Carona and Bob Deuell made us the central issue in their losing re-election campaigns earlier this year.)
Arrington has made spurious claims related to the vendetta ruling issued against me by the Texas (no-)Ethics Commission – a ruling driven by liberal House Speaker Joe Straus’ cronies. That ruling came out in late July; it made a few headlines.
Yet on August 3, Jodey Arrington was seeking our endorsement. (Click here to see the dated signature page from the candidate questionnaire we require anyone who seeks our endorsement to complete prior to being interviewed.) He and his cronies were also calling people he thought were our supporters, asking that they put in a “good word” with us. None of them did.
In the candidate interview, he dropped several names as if they were close allies, attempting to prove his bona fides in the conservative movement. I’d never heard such brown-nosing. So I called some of the people whose names were dropped; none knew who he was.
Since he didn’t get our endorsement, Arrington is re-writing history – like he did with his support for a tax hike agenda. This weekend he told the Lubbock newspaper’s columnist Enrique Rangel that, “Empower Texans is not only a group that gives Charles Perry a lot of money and gives Charles Perry passing grades for his voting record but gives Bob Duncan and Drew Darby in San Angelo, [sic] failing grades.”
Of course, so has every other conservative group in the state. And, yes, Arrington knew exactly what grades had been reported for Duncan and Darby when he was asking to be endorsed.
Jodey Arrington is the kind of candidate who will say what he thinks people want to hear. It’s no wonder liberal Republicans like Karen Hughes are pushing his campaign. He’ll carry their water without asking questions. He has demonstrated on the campaign trail that he would push for big-government and high taxes, then go home and lie about it without remorse.
Fortunately, Jodey Arrington won’t be a state senator; regardless of ideology, he lacks the integrity Texans expect of their state senators.
