It’s been amazing to watch Belo/DMN spinning hard to marginalize Debra Medina, the constitutionalist/libertarian candidate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. First the company tried (unsuccessfully) to shut Medina out of its TV debate. Then the paper’s Gromer Jeffers and Colleen McCain Nelson both pronounced Medina’s tax proposals unworkable on Channel 8’s Inside Texas Politics.
Next the paper leaped on the candidate’s 9/11 answer to radio host Glenn Beck–she basically said questions remain about Sept. 11–and has used it to bludgeon her with at every opportunity since. Today editorial columnist William McKenzie picks up the flag, slamming Medina in part for her unwillingness to raise taxes (as all good little Texans should want to do, apparently).
Meantime the DMN editorial page has thrown its support in the race to Kay Bailey Hutchison, who happens to have fared very poorly in an online preference poll of all the gubernatorial candidates in this week’s Dallas Business Journal.
The admittedly unscientific but surprising poll of more than 5,000 DBJ readers put Hutchison at 14 percent, Gov. Rick Perry at 20 percent–and Medina at 53 percent. (Bill White nabbed 9 percent.)
It will be fascinating to see whether voters turn out to be more sympathetic to the Belo argument–or to the upstart nurse from Wharton County–come March 2.
