The Texas Observer

The more I think about something that happened at yesterday’s press conferences, the fishier it seems. We already half-joked about the possibly intentional scheduling overlap between the press conferences of Senator John Cornyn and Senate-hopeful Rick Noriega. But at each one, there was an unfamiliar face in the normally consistent Capitol press gaggle, and both were asking questions that seemed downright “fair and balanced,” by the Murdoch definition.

Notably, both new guys were asking pointed questions about immigration. This is pure conjecture (this is a blog, after all), but it seems unlikely that the Republican party coordinated this. It would be awfully early for dirty tricks, although I guess anything’s possible. More likely, if the two events were in fact related, maybe it’s something more like a coordinated Minutemen press? Worth keeping an eye on and making sure to get names next time. Details after the jump.

First, at Noriega’s event, after most of the familiar Capitol press corps had asked the questions you expect from an MSM press corps — about fundraising, minority voters, etc. — some guy in shorts and holding an empty Dr. Pepper bottle piped up. After Noriega, in response to another reporter’s question, said he thought the most important issue to Texas voters was “the war,” the new guy asked incredulously, “You don’t think immigration’s important?” (These quotes are from memory and may not be word-for-word exact.)

With his aggressive tone, and sporting a thick moustache and dark sunglasses, he had a Lone Wolf feel to him, like he spent the weekend building a fence along the border. I couldn’t tell if he worked with the cameraman standing next to him, or if he was a random, ballsy tourist curious about the hubbub, or if he was a crank who got wind of the meeting and crashed it to interject his piece.

Later, though, when someone brought up the subject of the Administration’s handling of the Iraq war and Noriega voiced his displeasure, the Wolf popped back up: “Would you impeach the president?”

“I don’t know,” Noriega responded, trying to get back to what he had been talking about.

“You don’t know?” the Wolf asked with the same tone of disbelief.

Noriega hemmed a bit and eventually said something like, “Send me to Washington, and we’ll discuss that.”

The whole exchange might have been shrugged off except that something similar, albeit inverted, happened at Cornyn’s press conference a few blocks away.

One of the last questions the Senator took was a softball from another unfamiliar face, also asking about immigration. He began his inquiry by saying to Cornyn, “You already stood up to Karl Rover and the illegal alien amnesty lobby…” That’s a handy setup for a guy trying to distance himself from an administration that he’s so close to, but whose popularity is bottoming out.

Related or not, it’s certainly not the kind of editorializing we’re used to hearing from the crew who covered the Lege all session.

by Matthew C. Wright

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Elections, Offbeat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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