By Tisha Crow
Last month, a series of text messages found their way to an online media outlet that appeared to expose a lewd and outrageous affair by a Republican lawmaker in Texas.
The lawmaker’s loyal supporters didn’t want to believe it, many clutched their pearls saying no way would such an outstanding Christian family man do that, and all he had to do was sit silent and refuse to deny the allegations through the election and hope to win.
I am talking of course about Republican Congressman Van Taylor.
Only with Mr. Taylor’s affair, he was unable to outright win his re-election, and the day after being forced into a runoff he confessed and withdrew from running – admitting he had a lewd affair with a woman who was a reformed radical Islamic jihadist.
It does sound like a fictitious plot from a movie rather than real life, but the elements of the allegations were convincing enough that they deserved to be investigated, and they turned out to be true.
My point is that the Republican Party is one of accountability. We don’t turn a blind eye to inappropriate behavior in public office, and we strive to hold our own accountable.
Apparently the Odessa American has fallen so far from the status of an institution of journalism, that they not only turn a blind eye on a regular basis to any scandal that negatively inflicts the candidates that they support and provide cover for, but the mere act of asking our State Representative to make himself available to the leadership of the Party and answer questions has sent them into a fit of triggered rage that they try to pass off as a valid viewpoint.
The paper has an unfathomable amount of nerve making the accusations they have levied against the Republican Party – and their salacious commentary reflects the bias they project in their reporting.
The Ector County Republican Party Executive Committee is organized under Texas law to lead the Party, and the voting members of the board are respected leaders of this community from a wide variety of professional backgrounds who were duly elected by their constituents to lead the Party.
The attempt to portray it as anything less is typical of the liberal fake news media.
In addition to governing the local Republican Party, the Executive Committee is tasked with getting good conservative Republicans elected to every office which the paper’s hit piece laughably tries to spin in a nefarious light as “taking control”. The OA’s spin provides a clear insight to the paper’s bias that they will attack any candidate who doesn’t do their bidding or flood their advertising coffers with campaign cash.
Or perhaps their motivation against the GOP board is due to the fact that several members of our board who serve on city council didn’t bow down to the newspaper’s demands to settle their fraudulent lawsuit, costing the newspaper hundreds of thousands of dollars by not getting their taxpayer funded settlement – a lawsuit that was rightfully dismissed by the court because in truth it was bogus. If only their candidates David Turner and Dewey Bryant had won, perhaps they would have gotten their cash settlement at the expense of Odessa taxpayers.
But candidates they could not control were overwhelmingly elected by the voters of Odessa.
No wonder the Odessa American avoided reporting on Turner’s IRS trouble and still refuses to report on the ongoing lawsuit against Bryant that alleges he had a role in a bank fraud Ponzi scheme.
In the HD-81 race, the Executive Committee made no endorsement, and members of our board supported both candidates, and some were neutral. Saying we supported one candidate over the other is an outright lie.
In fact, the board is very visible and vocal about who we do endorse. When those endorsements are made they are published publicly by the Party. In the 2022 Primary, two of our endorsements, Senator-Elect Kevin Sparks, and SBOE-Elect Aaron Kinsey, not only heavily carried Ector County but carried their entire districts and will serve as fine representatives for our community going into 2023.
It is difficult to respond to all the ridiculous allegations the Odessa American pulled from thin air and levied against the Republican Party, but instead I will close with this message to them.
The media is supposed to deal with facts, and exercise a judicious amount of unbiased neutrality, and is supposed to make inquiries and provide fair coverage – not push for one candidate over the other.
Elevating and perpetuating delusional rumors to the status of an editorial board viewpoint is a remarkable new low, even for the OA, and it is a self-statement that it will be your policy to act as a political action committee to benefit those who run in the social circles of the paper’s management.
Since the OA chooses to act as a political action committee rather than a legitimate news organization, the Republican Party will now treat you as a political action committee.
Lastly, the editorial board, by encouraging the public to single out private donors for disparaging treatment is a completely inappropriate and mob-like behavior that should be universally condemned.
The Republican Party saw a successful primary this month with high turnout not just in Ector County but across the state, and we look forward to taking the fight to the Democrats and the fake news in November to keep Texas red – not just in partisan offices, but we will crush the RINOs and Democrat buddies of the newspaper who have run the local governments in Odessa for generations.
The game is up, and the red wave is coming.
Tisha Crow is the Ector County Republican party chair.
