Chronicle's Casey confuses facts (updated)
The Chronicle's Rick Casey appears to make a big blunder in his column on the State Senate District 7 candidates today:
Is radio celebrity Dan Patrick trying to buy the state Senate seat being vacated by Jon Lindsay?
Or is state Rep. Joe Nixon, Patrick's opponent in next month's primary, trying to sell it?
In an e-mail news release Tuesday, Nixon leveled the charge that Patrick is trying to purchase the seat.
Nixon makes a good argument. Patrick has loaned his own campaign $300,000, a sum available only to a wealthy man.
The Chronicle's Kristen Mack has reported that the amount of Patrick's loan to his campaign is $250,000. That figure is corroborated by Patrick's campaign finance report (pdf).
[UPDATE (02-09-2006): Casey's figure is correct, as explained in the UPDATE at the end of the post. Apologies for MY error. -klw]
Furthermore, Casey has inaccurately presented the Nixon campaign's email to the press on the subject. I get those emails, and here's what the campaign's Monday (not Tuesday) email said:
Mr. Patrick’s campaign finance report ... indicates he has lent his campaign at least $250,000.
The figure doesn't particularly change Casey's argument, but the inaccuracy is sloppy, and even worse, the attribution makes it appear as if the Nixon campaign made the error (they didn't).
Perhaps Casey conjured up the erroneous figure from an old column of his blasting Joe Nixon for receiving a $300,000 payment from Farmers Insurance related to a mold claim (the newspaper later reported that the Travis County DA's office found no wrongdoing in the matter). Perhaps an editing error is to blame. Or perhaps everyone else is wrong and Casey obtained information from the Patrick campaign that the rest of us couldn't get (unlikely).
BLOGVERSATION: Houblog.
UPDATE (02-09-2006): I just tracked down Dan Patrick's most recent campaign finance report, and Patrick has recently loaned his campaign another $50,000. So, Rick Casey's figure IS correct and my suggestion otherwise is incorrect. However, the Nixon campaign email DID indicate the $250,000 figure, as quoted above, on Monday (not Tuesday). My apologies for introducing any confusion, but I think it's all sorted out now.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/09/06 12:09 AM | Print | Comments (7)
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