I don't mind that out of town papers are writing about my congressman, Tom Delay. I don't even care that they are writing pieces that reflect negatively on him, and which seem to paint those of us who are backing him as blind to ethics questions. What I do object to, though, is the hiding of the political affiliations of those who criticize him. Take this Philadelphia Inquirer piece as an example.

Maybe DeLay's diehards are needlessly worried, because plenty of local Democrats doubt that he can be beaten. Karl Silverman, a NASA weather forecaster for the space shuttle, stabbed at his salad the other night and said: "So many people here wear blinders. They see politics as just another negative, so they ignore it, because they already have enough negatives in their lives. And they're ideologues anyway, so they figure, 'He's a Republican, he must be OK.' "

"Yeah," said John Cobarruvias, another NASA man. "They keep coming back for more. At the office, I keep asking people, 'How much more are you going to take?'"

The funny thing is, I recognized those two names. The thing is, I didn't recognize them in the context of their work for NASA (I live about 5 miles from Johnson Space Center and know a number of NASA employees and contractors.). No, I recognized the name because they are two of the leading Democrat activists in the area!

Yeah, you read that right. They are are not a couple of NASA employees who happen to be registered Democrats -- they are high-profile local Democrat activists.

Karl Silverman is the founder of the League City Neighborhood Democrats and sits on the Texas Democrat State Executive Committee as the Committeman for Senatorial District 11.

And John Cobarruvias -- you might have a very different perception of him if you had been informed that he is a frequent contributor of articles to the Democratic Underground, as well as being head of the Bay Area New Democrats, the group that sponsored last year's protest in front of Swift Boat Vet John O'Neill's home. Among his classier recent stunts was calling Tom DeLay a "bastard" in one of the local papers.

Now you will never get me to believe that Dick Polman, the Inquirer's political analyst who has over a decade of experience covering national political news, didn't know who these guys were. He would, in fact, have had to pick them precisely because they are two of the top Democrat voices in the area. To fail to identify them as anything but Democrat activists -- especially as humble, hard-working employees with NASA -- is rather disingenuous. It would be like quoting Howard Dean and identifying him as a Vermont physician! This was clearly an attempt to deceive the reader.

UPDATE: After this information was posted at Oh, That Liberal Media, one commenter pointed out that one of the sources cited was a former elected official with GOP connections. I therefore went back and found the following information.

Brian Gaston was a city council member in Sugar Land -- which I believe has a non-partisan form of government.

And I've since discovered that Therese Raia (a name I didn't recognize, despite being a Harris County precinct chair) is the SD17 Committeewoman.

Pat Baig, on the other hand, is an ersatz Republican who gave money to DeLay's opponent in last year's congressional race, Richard Morrison. That might have been an important detail, along with the fact that she never votes in GOP primaries.

Beverly Carter is a precinct chair in Fort Bend County, but is better known for running a local paper that has been at odds with DeLay for over a decade. She was censured by the Fort Bend County GOP when she endorsed Morrison last year.

Dean Hrbacek is another former Sugar Land city official -- a former mayor, whose defeat was partially orchestrated by Ms. Carter's paper and a local radio host who also wrote for her paper (before the host/columnist was convicted of exposing himself to a neighbor girl).

But, if anything, this shows that Polman wants to have folks think he has the pulse of the common man -- but all he does is talk to the same old local officials and politicos that everyone else does.

And as for why I pointed out the two Democrats, that is easy -- they are both local to me, rather than 30 or so miles away in the Sugar Land area, on the other side of the 22nd District.

Posted by: Greg at 07:51 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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