State Sen. Dan Patrick
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s campaign on Saturday slammed GOP runoff opponent Dan Patrick, saying this Dallas Morning News story about his involvement with a savings and loan swindler in the late 1980s should trouble voters that they’re about to “vote a fox into the hen house.”
The newspaper reported that Patrick made his rebound from business disaster to business success with capital provided by Houston lawyer-real estate investor W. Harold Sellers, though Patrick said he didn’t know at the time that Sellers and two other men had defrauded the largest S & L in Louisiana.
Dewhurst’s campaign said the story details “the way an S&L swindler hid money from law enforcement by underwriting Patrick’s radio station purchase.”
Dewhurst campaign political director Chris Bryan said it should be a cautionary tale for voters in the May 27 GOP runoff election. Patrick is a heavy favorite going into the election, having led Dewhurst by 13 percentage points in the initial voting in March.
“As Texans get a more detailed look at Dan Patrick’s sordid financial past, it becomes clearer by the day that he is unfit to preside over the Senate and its budget-making authority. If we vote a fox into the hen house, we’ll have only ourselves to blame,” Bryan said.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, left, gestures to State Sen. Dan Patrick, right, at Houston Public Media studios during the GOP lieutenant governor debate on Friday in Houston. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Eric Kayne)
Earlier in the week, Patrick adviser Allen Blakemore told my colleague Terrence Stutz, with whom I co-wrote Saturday’s story, that the Sellers story is a Dewhurst hit job.
“David Dewhurst is clearly becoming more and more desperate,” Blakemore said. “He is now simply throwing stuff at the wall, hoping that anything will stick.”
Blakemore called the Sellers-Patrick relationship in the past “a story Mr. Dewhurst has been peddling for several months. It’s all part of his campaign of personal attacks to deflect from his record of failed leadership and not discussing relevant and important public policy issues.”