The Contrarian

Our recent cover story on refinery pollution in Corpus Christi apparently touched a nerve over at Koch Industries.

“Kochworld” profiles the fenceline communities bordering the Koch and Citgo-owned refineries in Corpus. Melissa del Bosque and Jen Reel spent months interviewing sick residents living in the shadow of refineries spewing large amounts of known carcinogens such as benzene and 1,3-butadiene.

Koch’s response? Attack the messenger.

The company—owned by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, famous for contributing hundreds of millions to conservative causes, including climate change denial—has posted a lengthy response to our story at kochfacts.com headlined “Confronting Dishonest and Distorted Advocacy Journalism by a Soros-Funded Publication.”

Strangely, though Koch’s response employs the words “dishonest,” “distorted,” “misleading” and “flawed,” I couldn’t find a single challenge to any of the reported facts in our story.

Instead, the Koch folks devote five paragraphs to attacking Melissa del Bosque’s reporting techniques and the Observer’s integrity. Reminds me of the old lawyer strategy: When you don’t have a case to make, attack the other side.

Koch officials’ main complaint is that Melissa misled them about the intent of her story. It’s an unfounded assertion. Melissa was pretty frank with Koch officials that she was working on a story about the impact of refinery pollution on the neighborhoods near their facility and asked for the company’s response to specific resident complaints. She also asked the company to detail its positive impacts on the community. We then quoted the Koch responses fairly and accurately at three different points in the story. But you can judge for yourself: Koch has posted large parts of Melissa’s email exchanges with company spokesperson Katie Stavinoha at kochfacts.com.

Koch officials seem most perturbed that we didn’t include information about health studies they sent us. According to the company spokesperson, “Numerous independent health studies have not indicated causation.”

Notice the careful wording there. They don’t claim that these studies have vindicated Koch’s refinery or shown that emissions have no impact on human health. Rather, it’s “have not indicated causation.”

And that’s true. The studies the company cites—a federal investigation and an ongoing TCEQ study—document the amount of carcinogens released into the community and also discuss health problems in the area, including alleged frequent birth defects, but make no statement on whether the pollution has caused these health problems. Causation, as we write in our story, is very difficult to establish, and there’s no definitive link between Koch Industry’s emissions and the health problems of its neighbors. However, other public health studies, including this one from Houston, have shown that people living near refineries are more likely to endure serious health problems, including elevated rates of leukemia—studies that bolster the anecdotal evidence offered by residents.

As for Koch’s other accusations, well, we do receive some funding from the Open Society Foundations of George Soros fame (though we don’t have any Open Society Fellows on staff, as Koch officials allege; no idea where they got that one). While we do lean left, the Observer certainly isn’t partisan or ideological, as any number of Texas Democrats burned by our reporting can tell you. And we don’t engage in “advocacy” journalism. Our story isn’t advocating for anything; we simply produced a thoroughly reported account—so thoroughly, in fact, that even Koch can’t seem to find factual errors in it—about the lives of people living near the refineries. But don’t take my word for it. Go read the story yourself, if you haven’t already.

Meanwhile, Koch has spread its attack to media sites like Poynter’s Media Wire, using Melissa’s headshot in web ads promoting its aggressive response to our reporting. This isn’t unusual. Koch has used similar tactics to go after other media outlets, including the New Yorker and Bloomberg, for reporting on the Koch brothers’ political activities. So we’re in good company.

“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N., and what is going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war, maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.

“Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ‘em in Lubbock County. OK, so I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here.’”

—Tom Head, Lubbock county judge, in an August 21 interview with Fox 34 on why the county needs extra public safety measures if Obama is reelected.

When I first heard the comments made by Tom Head, the suddenly infamous Lubbock County judge, on the local Fox affiliate, my first thought was of Woody Allen’s line in Annie Hall, after Duane, played by Christopher Walken, explains his fantasies of swerving his car into oncoming traffic.

“All right. Well, I have to go now, Duane, because I’m due back on the planet Earth.”

Just when Missouri had swiped the title for state with the wildest-sounding politician—thanks to Senate candidate Todd Akin and his “legitimate rape” comment—Texas seizes it right back. And we’ll probably hold the title for quite some time. This one looks like a keeper.

Tom Head’s venture into an alternate reality—in which an American president abdicates to the United Nations, citizens rise up in revolt and the United Nations invades anyplace, let alone West Texas—is the looniest damn thing I’ve ever heard a Texas elected official say. The competition is fierce, mind you, but I think Head’s comments barely beat out Debbie Riddle’s “anchor babies” interview. It certainly makes Rick Perry’s secession remark seem plausible by comparison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfZL2zACM-4

(By the way, the best part of that video of Head’s remarks is the interviewer who’s awkwardly stuck there nodding like a bobble-head doll and answering Head’s fantasies with “rights” and “uh-huhs” and even one “true.”)

But, as always in politics, there’s a story behind the story. In this case, the backstory may help explain what Head was up to—well, maybe not explain it, but at least provide some context. I’ll add the disclaimer that I have no idea why Head said what he did. I don’t know whether it was a political ploy or whether he actually believes it. I have no insight into what Tom Head actually thinks, and that’s probably a good thing.

But if you look at the backstory, it seems the reelection that should most concern Tom Head isn’t Obama’s, but his own.

Head’s remark was meant to justify a tax increase. Lubbock County commissioners are considering a hike in the property tax to pay for seven new positions and new equipment for the county sheriff’s department, and salary raises for the DA’s staff. It’s your basic tax-and-spend plan.

The extra officers are needed to ensure public safety in Lubbock—at least that’s how county commissioners have been trying to justify the tax hike at a time when every other Republican in America is trying to cut taxes. Head’s comments were just another variation of this, taken to another level.

The sheriff’s department has asked for funding increases in recent years. The reason it needs more money? Mismanagement by Head and other county officials. (For all you out-of-staters: In Texas, the “county judge” is actually an elected administrator, who along with the other county commissioners, oversees county government.)

In 2011, Lubbock County opened a massive, 1,500-bed $100 million county jail. The county didn’t need a jail nearly that big, but Head and other officials hoped to lease out jail space to the federal government or other outside entities that needed to stash prisoners somewhere.

This is a racket that many communities in Texas have tried with diminishing returns. (The criminal justice blog Grits for Breakfast has excellent coverage of the issue here and here.) Lubbock County missed the boom in immigrant detention, and now the big expensive jail sits only 70-percent full, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

Meanwhile the staffing costs of operating the massive jail are draining sheriff’s department resources, which has led to call response times going up and some cases going uninvestigated.

As the Avalanche-Journal reported last year, “The almost $100 million county jail dominated county budgets even before voters approved $82 million for its construction in 2002. Call times have languished and cases gone without investigation as spending on the roughly 1,500-inmate facility crowded out new deputies and other officers for the growing county.”

The county instituted property tax increases to help pay for the jail, but it’s still been a disaster that’s straining county resources.

All that eventually comes back to Tom Head, who’s been county judge since 1999.

So let’s recap. Under Head, we have multiple tax increases to compensate for a bloated government project that isn’t functioning as planned. That kind of record could earn Head a Republican primary opponent in a conservative place like Lubbock. He’s up for reelection in 2014.

I don’t know if Head plans to run for office again. But given that he’s pitching another tax increase to make up for the county jail boondoggle, you can begin to understand why he wanted to change the subject and make the tax-increase debate more about Obama’s U.N. invasion or whatever other unlikely catastrophe he could dream up that needed more county law enforcement.

Either way—whether he actually believes what he said or was trying to distract voters from a tax increase caused by the jail fiasco—Head will have a lot to answer for.

By the end, David Dewhurst seemed utterly confounded that he was losing so decisively to a political novice like Ted Cruz.

“You could argue that there’s not that much difference between the two of us, other than I’ve done all the things Mr. Cruz says he wants to do,” Dewhurst told reporters five days before the U.S. Senate runoff, when it was becoming clear that Cruz was the likely winner.

He made a similar comment last night during his concession speech. “This is not the way I envisioned this evening would start,” he told supporters, “especially in light of my conservative record and all the things we’ve accomplished.”

And all that is true. There isn’t much ideological difference between Dewhurst and Cruz. Not really. Cruz did run to Dewhurst’s right by spewing more outlandish statements than the sitting lieutenant governor was willing to, but if you go point-by-point on actual policy, the areas of disagreement are few.

I wrote last night that Cruz’s victory would probably be portrayed as a great tea party win, a victory against the Republican establishment—and sure enough, that’s how the national media is playing it today. But I don’t buy it. I don’t see any larger political trends behind Cruz’s win.

Abby Rapoport—our former colleague—has a terrific piece on the American Prospect site debunking the national media’s conventional wisdom. Cruz’s win, she writes, had more to do with internal Texas politics and rivalries than the false tea party vs. the establishment meme many pundits are peddling. (Ted Cruz, the Harvard-educated corporate attorney, may be many things, but anti-establishment he ain’t).

I would add an even more basic, fundamental reason for Cruz’s victory.

He was simply the better candidate.

I’ve been watching David Dewhurst since 2003 and often wondered to myself how a man this stiff, halting and uncharismatic had risen so high in Texas politics. Whether he’s giving a prepared speech or simply answering questions in a press gaggle, Dewhurst speaks with all the assurance of a 6^th grader trying to master Hamlet. His words are usually bereft of passion, and when he tries to sound passionate, it seems forced. Even his unscripted remarks have the cobblestone cadence of a man reading from prepared text, and he punctuates his sentences with a tight smile that, rather than connecting with the audience, seeks approval from it.

Dewhurst seemed aware of this failing. In his concession speech last night, he thanked his staff for “trying to make me a better speaker—tough job.” No kidding.

Dewhurst’s inability to connect with voters came off as insincerity. And that proved a defining flaw in the eyes of tea party voters constantly guarding against insincere politicians and so-called RINOs seeking their support.

Ted Cruz was charismatic. Ted Cruz sounded sincere. Ted Cruz was the better salesman. That’s not to say Cruz doesn’t believe what he says. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. It’s tough to judge a politician with no record. We do know how Dewhurst has acted, and he has a very conservative record: He’s slashed state spending, passed voter ID, passed the sonogram law, and passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

But that didn’t matter. How you present yourself and how you come across to voters often matters more in campaigns than the records or the details of policy. Image is paramount. So it was in this runoff.

Dewhurst won his previous elections by beating hapless Texas Democrats in a Republican state; his closest race a 5-point victory over John Sharp in 2002. But in this campaign, Dewhurst’s toughest yet, his political flaws were exposed.

He began the race last year with more money and more name recognition. But Dewhurst squandered those advantages, and when the money and name ID evened out—as in most races—the more disciplined, more charismatic, more (at least seemingly) genuine candidate won. Simple as that.