Republican comptroller candidate Glenn Hegar spoke to the state GOP convention in Fort Worth in June. (Tom Fox/Staff photographer)
Democratic comptroller nominee Mike Collier says his Republican opponent Glenn Hegar bragged to a Houston-area tea party interviewer last year that he was proud of the Legislature’s 2011 budget cuts to public schools. On Friday, Collier released a web video to prove it.
“It’s embarrassing and unacceptable that Glenn Hegar takes pride in cutting education despite our extraordinary prosperity,” Collier said in a statement.
“Hegar does not share our values, and he poses a profound threat to something Texans have held dear since our founding, … a great educational system,” said Collier, a Houston businessman.
Hegar spokesman David White called Collier’s 40-second video “a distortion.”
Though Hegar, a state senator from Katy, joined other Republican lawmakers in approving $5.4 billion in cuts to schools in the budget-cutting session of 2011, “Senator Hegar believes in adequately funding our education system,” White said.
Collier’s “entire campaign amounts to a distortion of truth and negative campaign commercials,” said White, Hegar’s senior adviser.
The Montgomery County Tea Party posted video of its interview with Hegar on its website late last year. At the time, Hegar was running against three other Republicans for the party’s nomination to succeed Susan Combs, a Republican who is giving up the post after two four-year terms.
Democratic comptroller candidate appeared at a League of United Latin American Citizens event in Dallas on Saturday. (Andy Jacobsohn/Staff photographer)
For his ad, Collier harvests some of Hegar’s quotes, and — the Hegar camp says — pulls them out of context. He does it to buttress his ongoing effort to tie Hegar to Combs, who supported Hegar in the GOP primary.
Collier, other Democrats and many educators have criticized Combs for botching a two-year revenue estimate at the start of the 2011 session. Her move caused “unnecessary cuts,” Collier said Friday.
In the tea party group’s video, which you can watch at the bottom of this post, Hegar at 38 minutes, 23 seconds into the tape delivers what Collier considers the offending quote: “Some people were saying, oh, we’ve put more money in education. No, we didn’t. … I was proud that we did not.”
Some three minutes earlier, Hegar was asked whether as comptroller he would be to recover money that an interviewer says was wasted on CSCOPE, a controversial curriculum. He launches into a discussion of using online technology to improve instruction, especially in rural schools. He says the state can “do education smarter and cheaper.” Hegar then recounts what apparently are constituent comments about last year’s restoration of nearly $4 billion of the earlier cuts.
That’s when he says he was proud not to have “put more money in education. … There’s no way you could spend that.”
Hegar says some school superintendents thanked him for the 2011 cuts, saying the reductions provided cover for them to make necessary – but presumably unpopular – trims of inefficient local spending.
“I was happy to be the scapegoat,” Hegar tells the interviewer.
Collier casts the cuts, though, as a Combs-instigated disaster for schools. As part of an ActBlue fundraising appeal, he noted there were widespread layoffs before classes resumed in the fall of 2011.
“In the end, over 11,000 teachers lost their jobs,” Collier wrote potential donors. “Here’s the part you don’t know: Glenn Hegar was proud that he voted for those cuts.”
Below, you can see Collier’s video and read a transcript of it; and see the raw, uncut tea party video.
The election is in November.
Transcript of “Proud,” Democrat Mike Collier’s web video:
[Opens with menacing music. Visuals of classroom and blackboard, then a still photo of Hegar on the floor of the Texas Senate, appearing to dance with glee.]
Narrator: Glenn Hegar voted to cut more than $5 billion dollars from Texas schools — money for teachers, computers, even books. All cut — and Hegar’s proud of it.
[Cuts to Hegar behind a desk, with the lens painted so viewer has a sort of peephole.]
Hegar: Some people were saying, oh, we’ve put more money in education. No, we didn’t. There’s no way you could spend that. No, we didn’t. But I was not ashamed to say we didn’t. I was proud that we did not.
Canned audio: [Crowd moans in horror.]
Narrator: Glenn Hegar’s proud to cut our public schools?
[Upbeat music.]
Narrator: Not Mike Collier. Mike supports our schools. And as comptroller, he’ll help assure the money’s always there — without raising taxes. Mike Collier, the watchdog. He’ll protect Texas schools.
Raw, unedited video of Hegar’s tea party interview. CSCOPE question is at 35:40: