April 8, 2005

Capitol Inside Stands By Story
on Democrats and Gambling

The four Democrats who signed this letter are all outstanding legislators and leaders to whom the people of this state owe a tremendous debt of gratitude. But their letter attacking Capitol Inside misses the mark on several key points - and we feel a need to respond for the sake of the truth.

First of all, Capitol Inside stands by the story. The premise of the story was that Democrats in the House would be open to a deal on gambling if they could get certain concessions in return. There are many House Democrats who consider CHIP funding and teacher pay and other issues to be a higher priority than their positions on gambling. While the four Democrats who sent the letter appear to be setting their feet in concrete on gambling during the current legislative session, there are others who are still flexible on that issue. If votes for video lottery would bring about full CHIP funding before the cuts two years ago, we'd be willing to bet that a substantial number of Democrats in the House would decide that health care coverage for 176,000 children would be more important than opposition to gambling for one specific session. Several dozen conservative Republican members oppose gambling - period. They opposed it last year. They oppose it now and they will oppose it in the future. The four Democrats say that expanding gambling this session would not be prudent. Does that mean they might support gambling in a special session or perhaps in 2007? If that's the case, is it fair to criticize Governor Rick Perry for backing VLTs last year then trying to remain neutral this time around?

The last thing in the world we intended to do was to impugn the integrity of four people we admire and respect. In politics, people often take positions and then modify those positions as a process evolves as a way to gain concessions. Compromise has always been a fundamental part of the political process in this country. Our system revolves on it.

Phone calls were indeed made, but instead of verifying that our information was suspect, they confirmed that it was correct. The story never says that any one of the four Democrats in question personally confirmed or denied the information we printed. The story does not mention the House Democratic Caucus, which State Rep. Jim Dunnam chairs. It mentions "Democratic leaders." While these four Democrats are leaders, they're not the only Democratic leaders in the Texas House. None has a copyright on the term "leadership." One could argue that every Democrat elected to the House is a leader in his or her own right. If the four Democrats who wrote the critical letter have not been apprised of what other Democrats in the House are doing, maybe it's because some feel that they have been too adversarial in their approach to the leadership to be effective in sensitive compromise talks. They have no doubt been effective in many other ways. But that's an issue for Democrats to sort out among themselves. We can only speculate on that.

If the four Democrats who have called our integrity into question reject the old advice about never saying never, we respect their right to do that and take them at their word. What puzzles us, though, is that a number of people from both sides of the aisle along with lobbyists in the middle have remarked to us that they thought our story helped the House Democrats in general, even though they know we didn't write it with that particular intent. The Democrats, Republicans and independents we've heard from agree that the story made it appear that House Democrats are operating as a viable political force and learning how to be effective as a loyal opposition and thinking outside of the box.

We didn't call any one of the four Democrats who wrote the letter because we were able to get the story through several other channels. By the same token, none of them called us after it was published to point out a single error. We did hear from one of Rep. Jim Dunnam's aides - and that person did not point to any factual errors. Nonetheless, we welcome criticism and feedback and encourage readers to speak out about what's on their mind.

-- Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor