TRAVIS TAKES OUR MONEY AND RUNS

Dallas State Sen. Dee Travis, who wants the voters to promote him to Congress, appears to have spent more than $43,000 of our tax dollars furthering his political aspirations.

The 30-year-old legislative rookie has mailed perhaps half a million newsletters, computer-customized letters, and other reminders of his presence in Austin to voters throughout east Dallas County, including hundreds of thousands of citizens who live outside his Ninth State Senate district. Some of his friends and foes also say that he has spent state funds to buy mailing lists of Republican primary voters in the new Fifth U.S. Congressional District.

That Congressional seat currently is held by Democrat Jim Mattox, but thanks to re-apportionment it has become a Republican district. Political savants expect that the only real election in the Fifth will be next May’s Republican primary, which makes a list of guaranteed Republican voters a candidate’s most valuable campaign weapon.

Travis contends he just wants to “keep voters informed on the issues, and never will apologize for that.”

His costliest effort in that direction was a summer newsletter for which he obtained 393,504 mailing labels for voters in 158 precincts in Dallas County alone. But 67 of those precincts were outside his state senate district, a fact Travis explains by saying that he wished to inform his old constituents plus those he would have picked up had the governor approved a reap-portionment plan that would have forced him to run in the 16th state senate district. The senator, however, requested labels for 10 precincts that were outside both his old and his prospective districts.

The four-page newsletter, prepared and mailed at state expense, contained 11 pictures of Travis and featured a front page article in which the senator extolled his hardworking self and promised to keep up the good work. Ditto for most of the third page. The “news” was on page two, where Travis reported the fates of 23 bills on “major issues” and his own votes on the mostly uncontroversial bills (14 passed unanimously).

The newsletter was not Travis’ only controversial purchase. In May he paid $1322.50 for 33,470 selected voter names from a Piano firm called Campaign Systems, Inc. Travis said he spent tax funds only to get lists of voters interested in special issues. Several facts make his statement hard to believe.

The items Travis says he mailed with those lists are so vague that they would be almost useless except as appeals to Republican voters. A May 20 letter begs voters to tell him if they are interested in any pending bills, without mentioning any bills that might be pending, and notes that Travis has been working “to provide a healthier free-enterprise market” and to curtail “our state government bureaucracy.”

In a June 18 letter, Travis stresses how stolidly he stood with Republicans against the proposed redistricting plan that would have cost him his seat. The word Republican appears four times in the half-page of text.

A second reason to disbelieve Travis is that Campaign Systems specializes in providing lists of voters in party primaries, and a third reason is that the company’s president, Robert Lewis, declined to comment on Travis’ claim. “Is that what he said?” Lewis asked. “If he said that’s what it is, that’s what it is.”

Travis may be truthful about the mystery lists, and pure of heart about the newsletters, but the ease with which he used tax funds should prompt Texans to worry about their state senate. The Senate Administration Committee, of which Travis is a member, approved the purchase of the Campaign Systems lists without even inquiring about their contents or purposes. Travis did not voluntarily send along any documents giving those facts, and one official told D that the matter had been left vague “on purpose.”

Equally troubling is the Senate’s failure to put a cap on members’ state-funded office expenditures, as the House has done for years. Travis’ mail-out costs were more than twice those of any other Dallas County senator, and were approximately triple the bulk-mail bill for the entire Dallas County delegation to the House, perhaps because senators can spend whatever their Administration Committee approves. And, as State Sen. John Lee-dom, R-Dallas, said, “The Senate is inclined to give members what they want.”