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Truth or Consequences

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For once, the yowling screeches of the peacocks infesting the lakefront behind Vargo's restaurant were smothered by those from another sort of strutting bird, a flock of Republican candidates making their earnest campaign pitches to the Daughters of Liberty.

The Daughters of Liberty is one of the more recently formed local Republican women's clubs, and one of the most conservative. Before the speeches, one of the Daughters had offered the luncheon benediction, exhorting the Almighty to "protect us from the filth all around us."

Then it was time to hear from Jerry Dumas, a stolid 60-year-old business executive who recently moved into District 7 from the Rice University area. Dumas' spiel included a rather pointed call for amending the state bribery law to include a five-year, rather than three-year, statute of limitations. (District Attorney Holmes didn't pursue the bribery allegation against Lindsay because the statute of limitations had long expired when it was finally aired publicly.) Dumas then fielded a few friendly questions about his finances, which allowed him to answer an attack by Lindsay on Dumas' business foreclosures. A foreclosure is not the same as a bankruptcy, Dumas reminded the crowd, and in any case, he blamed his financial difficulties on a bout he had fought and won with cancer.

When it was Lindsay's turn, the former county judge delivered a short, almost perfunctory appeal for support. He then cautiously awaited questions. The first came from Ann Mather, the wife of former county Republican chairman Russ Mather. The Mathers are avid Dumas supporters, and Ann Mather also may have her own personal ax to grind with Lindsay, since he had appointed her to and then purged her from the county Mental Health-Mental Retardation Board in a general housecleaning of that agency back in the '80s. Nevertheless, she had a question that has occurred to more than one Republican since Lindsay launched his comeback bid.

"Jon, I'm real confused, and I'd like you to straighten this out," Mather said with a straight face. "You're running as a Republican, but the record shows that in the '90s you have given to almost every liberal Democrat statewide, and that's very confusing as to why you're running as a Republican E."

Lindsay attempted to justify the contributions to Democratic legislators, which he doled out from his own campaign fund, simply as a way to further Harris County's interests in Austin.

"The issues that come from county government are not partisan types of issues, by and large, and it gave me a step forward to work with those particular people," he said. "And it will in the future."

"Can we expect that again?" Mather fired back.
"It depends on the situation," replied Lindsay, with the condescension of a teacher addressing a rather slow pupil. "The county judge's money doesn't come from Republican contributors, as some of you people have declared. [It comes from] people that primarily E very candidly, did business with Harris County."

Some of the impeccably made-up faces in the crowd hardened as another questioner chimed in with, "You gave money to Jew Don Boney?"

You could almost hear the Daughters, whose ranks were devoid of black faces, suck in their collective breath at the thought of a Republican helping finance the campaign of Boney, the African-American city councilman who is anathema to west-side Republicans.

But Lindsay offhandedly explained the contribution as a favor to a good friend, Commissioner El Franco Lee, another liberal Democrat.

By then, some of the Daughters looked thoroughly baffled. You could almost read their faces: "He has a black liberal Democrat for a friend?"

The contributions also are viewed with disgust by another Lindsay critic and Dumas supporter, former GOP state chairman George Strake.

"That was money that was given by Republicans to elect Republicans, and it's found its way into the wrong political coffers, as far as I'm concerned," says Strake. "I'm a party builder, and I just don't think that's the way you do it."

Strake is also critical of Lindsay's transfer of several hundred thousand dollars from his campaign account into that of his wife, the state district judge. "I'm not saying this is illegal," says Strake. "I don't like it. It breaks the spirit of the law and the contributors' wishes."

One Daughter of Liberty, the wife of a major Harris County GOP contributor, suggests there is a hidden backlash vote lying in wait for Lindsay come primary day. Asking for anonymity, she opined that her friends were remaining publicly polite to Lindsay's face but planned to vote for Dumas.

"Republicans have got to put up people with a clean record," she whispered outside earshot of the gathering. "I'm not sure everybody even believes that what he was accused of was all valid, but they believe probably some of it was. We can't put up people who have a gray area."

If anybody comes in shades of gray, it's Jon Lindsay.
The Daughters' difficulties in accepting Lindsay's less-than-doctrinaire stance raises the question: have his worldly ways made him too liberal for his old stomping grounds in District 7? Asked later about the chilly reception at the Fondren restaurant, Lindsay says, "You're judging by a group of ladies that are probably, I wouldn't say all of them, but a percentage of those ladies you saw the other day would be more conservative or ideological than I am in some ways."

Which ways, for instance?
Well, Lindsay suggests, some folks might even consider him a liberal on "children and mental health-mental retardation and hospital" issues.

"You don't really find too many Republicans who really have an interest in those kinds of things," he avers.

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