Voters ended the political career of liberal Republican John Carona in 2014, replacing him with conservative stand-out Don Huffines. So this cycle, Carona and other has-been politicians are lining up against State Rep. Jonathan Stickland, the man establishment Republicans love to hate.
Carona joined with Patricia Harless, Rob Orr, John Otto and Vicki Truitt in giving money to the going-nowhere-fast campaign of the redemption-challenged Scott Fisher, Stickland’s challenger.
Fisher is the pastor of a small church who has spent his lackluster campaign attacking Stickland for mistakes the Bedford family man made – and publicly admitted to – as a teenager.
So Fisher is the kind of pastor who preaches redemption from sin on Sundays, but smears Christian conservatives Monday to Saturday. Rather peculiar way for a pastor to live out his faith…
Truitt was run out of office a few cycles back and now works as a pay-to-play lobbyist, representing interests (like pay-day loan providers) she once eviscerated as a legislator. To say Truitt has no principles would be an understatement.
Otto is fleeing public office, telling colleagues he was scared of standing before voters and defending a record that has become a sick joke against taxpayers. While 94 percent of Republican primary voters want to strictly limit the growth of government, and the Texas Senate passed a measure doing just that, Otto held a hearing without public testimony so he could gut the measure. Basically, he wanted to let government agencies set their own limits.
Orr ran away from office in 2014, scared of being defeated by voters who had gotten wise to his game of saying one thing at home and doing something else in Austin.
Harless isn’t seeking re-election in 2016, having seen that she was going lose to conservative challenger Kevin Roberts.
Suffice it to say that Carona, Otto, Orr, Truitt and Harless were all failures as lawmakers, working against the taxpayers.
So that’s the company Fisher keeps when he’s not tending his flock. As an appointee to the Texas “Ethics” Commission, Fisher was part of the cabal seeking to use government power to silence conservatives. As a former member (and chairman!) of the bloated JPS hospital board (the public hospital district in Tarrant County), Fisher has been a proponent of excessive local debt and dubious public finance practices.
