If you want to see the latest issue of the Fort Bend County Republican Party’s newsletter, you can read it on their web site, but don’t look for it anytime soon in your mailbox.
| Fort Bend Politics |
| By Bob Dunn |
Some 20,000 copies of the October 2007 edition of The Fort Bend Republican are stacked up and ready to go, said Andre McDonald, county GOP communications committee chairman. “It’s been printed, it’s been addressed, it’s ready to go to the mail house, and Mr. Gillen is refusing to sign the checks to let that happen.”
He referred to county GOP Party Chairman Gary Gillen, who confirmed on Thursday that he indeed has not signed the checks in question. Gillen said he has three reasons for withholding payment. The first, he said, is that payment for two or three ads in the 16-page newsletter has not been received.
The second is more complicated. In a mock-up of the newsletter, which Gillen said he viewed on Oct. 10, an article on the Congressional District 22 race wrapped around a political ad for Fort Bend County Judge Bob Hebert.
But after the newsletter was printed, Gillen said, Hebert’s ad was replaced by another ad for “one of the CD-22 candidates,” which Gillen believes gives the impression that the party favors one Republican candidate over others running for the same office.
Gillen declined to name the CD-22 candidate who drew the favorable ad placement, but a look at the online version of the newsletter shows it is Dean Hrbacek. Hrbacek also happened to help spearhead a change in party bylaws in May 2006 that shifted the balance of local party power away from the party chairman and toward the executive committee.
Other candidates seeking the GOP nomination and a chance to run against incumbent Democrat Nick Lampson for the CD-22 chair also had ads in the newsletter. They included Shelley Sekula Gibbs, Robert Talton and Pete Olson.
“They swapped ads. That gives that candidate an unfair advantage,” Gillen said, obviously referring to the Hrbacek ad. “I can’t stand idly by while a few individuals use the party newsletter as a weapon against other candidates.”
McDonald said the editor of the newsletter made the decision to swap out the ads, not for political reasons “but because that made the best layout, visually.”
McDonald also said he doesn’t believe the CD-22 ad is the one Gillen really has a problem with.
“I think his biggest concern is that his opponent has a full-page, full-color ad” in the newsletter, McDonald said, referring to Rick Miller, who has announced he’s running against Gillen for party chairman, in the spring elections.
For his part, Miller also is concerned that the GOP newsletter is gathering dust on a floor instead of being put into Fort Bend County mailboxes.
“If you continue to hold up payment to get it printed and mailed, then I would like an explanation from you why you are doing this,” Miller said in an email to Gillen, adding, “it makes no sense to me at this time. And I believe there are legal issues involved with the printer and with the advertisers.”
Two parts of Gillen’s three-part reasoning for withholding payment obviously appear above. The third reason is, the newsletter was printed without Gillen’s column.
Gillen and McDonald disagree over why that happened, with McDonald saying the chairman missed the deadline, and Gillen saying that the column arrived three days before the newsletter was taken to the printer.
“To deny the chairman the opportunity” to include his own column, as has traditionally been done, “is unfair,” Gillen said. “I think it reeks of political manipulation.”
So what happens next?
Gillen said a possible compromise would be for his column to be run as an insert folded into the newsletter before mailing, although no decision has been made to do so. And in the future, “I need to see that newsletter before it goes to the printer rather than after.”
“It leaves us with 20,000 newsletters all printed, and this nice young man who is our printer looking to get paid,” McDonald said. “And 20,000 Republican households waiting to get a newsletter that’s not going to be there timely – maybe not before the election.
“It’s just an embarrassment to us as a party,” McDonald added, “that this one individual has decided he’s going to hold his breath and turn blue.”
Some 20,000 copies of the October 2007 edition of The Fort Bend Republican are stacked up and ready to go, said Andre McDonald, county GOP communications committee chairman. “It’s been printed, it’s been addressed, it’s ready to go to the mail house, and Mr. Gillen is refusing to sign the checks to let that happen.”
He referred to county GOP Party Chairman Gary Gillen, who confirmed on Thursday that he indeed has not signed the checks in question. Gillen said he has three reasons for withholding payment.
