Whatever bit of honor State Sen. Jeff Wentworth had, he has tossed out the window. In his bid to hold on to a seat he has unsuccessfully been using to seek better-paying government jobs, Wentworth and his desperate lobbyist-consultant have added bald-faced lies to their big-government, high-tax repertoire.
In a new campaign blast, the failed senator claims his opponent – staunch, common-sense conservative Donna Campbell – as supporting higher taxes. That’s crazy on its face. Dr. Campbell has signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge with her constituents, but also strongly stepped out in favor of Gov. Rick Perry’s Texas Budget Compact.
(Not surprisingly, Wentworth has refused to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and refused to support the Compact. Jeff Wentworth has consistently been one of the worst-rated GOP legislators on the Fiscal Responsibility Index.)
So where does Wentworth get this charge? From the mind of Bryan Eppstein, a Fort Worth-based lobbyist who uses tax dollars to lobby for higher taxes and bigger government. Mr. Eppstein and Sen. Wentworth claim that Dr. Campbell is for higher taxes because… we support her.
Confused? Don’t worry, it gets crazier.
They allege nonsensically that we’re pushing for higher taxes because we support reducing/eliminating the property tax. Or, as our candidate questionnaire says, “moving Texas away from property taxes in favor of the existing sales and use tax” – note the word “existing.”
But apparently truth and facts are foreign concepts to Mr. Wentworth and Mr. Eppstein. They falsely claim we secretly want to raise taxes. How? That gets even more crazy. A 2009 study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, authored by Reaganomics economist Art Laffer, suggested that one way to immediately end property taxes would be to re-configure the sales tax, applying it to new items, etc, so as to eliminate property taxes.
I’ll let the nice folks at TPPF – where I worked from 2001 to 2006 – explain further that Laffer study in its full context. Suffice it to say: Wentworth-Eppstein are lying about it and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, too.
So we find Team Wentworth lying as a way to further their own lies and misrepresentations. And we still let this guy use the title “The Honorable”?
TFR has stood strongly against calls to increase Texas’ tax burden; that’s why we exist. Texas doesn’t have a revenue problem (save that too much is being taken from the taxpayers) – we have a spending problem. A problem Jeff Wentworth’s career in politics has helped create and perpetuate.
This nonsensical attack was most recently employed by the now-defeated State Rep. Vicki Truitt, who lost a re-election bid while making these same outlandish lies. Her consultant? The losing Bryan Eppstein. And we see State Rep. Chuck Hopson, another Eppstein client, desperately promoting the same lie in trying to fend off conservative challenger Travis Clardy.
Back to SD25. The Wentworth-Eppstein machine is working in heated over-drive, struggling to keep a barely legitimate politician serving in an office he tried to abandon. Wentworth has overtly used his office to seek high-paying positions at Texas A&M and Texas State University – in what many might view as an unsavory abuse of his position as a member of the senate.
Big-government shill Jeff Wentworth is desperate to change the conversation away from his worthless record in the Texas Senate. He so desperately wants to hide his own record that he is now making up policy positions for others. It’s time for voters to send Jeff Wentworth packing.
