ustxtxb_obs_2010_10_29_50_00019-00000_000.pdf

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October 29, 2010, 12:00 AM, CDT

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<div id="pico"><p>ORNETTE COLEMAN QUARTET .\\ YTHINK GLOBAL BU LOCAL! \(IF:16!    .        E.TKTEXAS.6311111 r  AUSTIN  SAN MARCOS  SAN ANTONIO and all Texas Box Office Outlets. Groups: 512.471.0648.  $10 STUDENT TICKETS Av A  HE111 Al1/11.11  gismsi   lor timrrs . <tu   t  90.5 pm  says that on several occasions, Dewhurst helped her  pass health care reform measures. In 2005, after her  bill to fund AIDS medication for 20,000 Texans failed  in subcommittee, she went to Dewhurst.  "I told him that AIDS was no longer a terminal  disease, and that if this funding passed, thousands  of Texans would live, work and pay their taxes," she  says. "If not, they will die, and we'll have to pay for  them in hospitals."  Dewhurst, Zaffirini says, spoke to the Finance  Committee chair. She credits him with the bill's passage. "I didn't agree with everything he did," she says,  "but if you could convince him on an issue, he would  really go to bat for you."  According to Kip Averitt, former Republican senator from Waco, Dewhurst brought new insight to the  Senate, broadening the body's thinking beyond the  day to day. "He has a different outlook on certain  issues than the extreme right," Averitt says. "He's very  pragmatic. He always stacks costs against benefits."  These accounts stand in contrast to the issues he  burned many bridges to pass. In his attempts to pass  Voter ID in 2007 and 2009, Dewhurst tried to bypass  the two-thirds rule, nearly derailing the 2009 session. In 2011, Republicans will try again to pass it.  Since the Tea Party insurgency started blowing  holes in the Republican establishment, Dewhurst's  talking points have begun to resemble Tea Party  talking points. He has campaigned on tough border security, warning about "spillover" violence  from Mexico. He told an audience at the state GOP  convention that "Phoenix, Arizona, has the second highest number of kidnappings in the world,  right after Mexico City."  \(The Austin-American  Statesman's  PolitiFact, which evaluates politicians'  Dewhurst's political showboating has worked.  As Perry found himself under surprise attack in  this year's primary from Tea Party-backed challenger Debra Medina, Dewhurst sailed unopposed  into his party's nomination. According to early  polling, he will easily beat Democratic challenger  Chavez-Thompson.  "There's a difference between a politician and a  public servant," says Barrientos, the former senator.  "A public servant does what is right, what is necessary, despite the heat. He doesn't please people  short-term just so they'll re-elect him.  "Dewhurst is a politician."  "There's a difference between a  politician and a public servant.  Dewhurst is a politician."  Dewhurst has supported mandatory ultrasounds for  women seeking abortions. He proposed requiring every  high school athlete to undergo steroid testing. He proposed to fingerprint 300,000-plus teachers in Texas just  in case. Both proposals passed as part of the 2006 school  finance bill. Four years later, after spending millions, the  TEA reportedly has caught only about 20 steroid users.  "Dewhurst was a different kind of authoritarian than  Bullock," says Barrientos, "but he was authoritarian. He  just wasn't as good at it. He was strictly partisan, even  though he tried not to appear partisan. He didn't look  like a right-winger, he didn't act like it, but he supported  everything right-wing I can remember."  The crowning example of his devotion to the trivial  was his 2007 support for his version of what his website terms "one of the toughest Jessica's Laws in the  country," a ghoulish piece of legislation named after  a murdered 9-year-old that would empower judges  to give child-rapists the death penalty. On his website, Dewhurst's campaign team names Jessica's Law  as one of his greatest achievements, an example of  Dewhurst's ongoing commitment to "public safety."  According to a Capitol insider who worked on the  issue, it was commonly known that "if you wanted to  grab ahold of the electorate, you just had to find out  how to guarantee the death penalty for child sex offenders." The bill Dewhurst and his senior adviser Kevin  Moomaw put together was so bad that Republicans  talked its authors into taking it back to committee.  Dewhurst is smart, even a bit nerdya good listener, everyone agrees, and a moderate at heart. But  for whatever reason, he has broken with tradition  and used the Senate for his own political purposes.  OCTOBER 29, 2010 
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