Tom Kirkendall calls attention to this Washington Post column, in which reporter Mike Allen was dispatched to Sugar Land to check in on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R) and relations with the locals.
KSEV-700 morning host Edd Hendee makes an appearance in this story:
Edd Hendee, who owns the Taste of Texas restaurant in Houston, teaches a Bible study class that DeLay attends at a local Baptist church, and said the other members love to tease the big shot. “Like they’ll have the top 10 reasons not to be late to class: ‘You don’t want to walk in with Congressman DeLay and have his two thugs frisk you outside,’ ” Hendee said. “It’s a hoot. He’ll shoot back something like, ‘I can arrange a private frisking for you.’ “
It sounds like something less than a hoot, but we’ll take Hendee’s word on it.
Here are a couple of paragraphs unlikely to make it into a Chronicle “Another Voice” column:
Houston Mayor Bill White, former chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said DeLay was “ruthless” on redistricting but has been cooperative in getting money for the area and has moved to make amends with corporate leaders he alienated with his opposition to funding for light rail instead of buses.
Indeed, DeLay is greeted as a sugar daddy almost everywhere he goes here. During a symposium DeLay attended last week at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, he was repeatedly saluted in the speeches and PowerPoint presentations for the federal funds he had helped arrange for the school’s Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness, which bills itself as “improving our nation’s health security.”
Whether one likes our local conservative leaders or not, it’s probably more effective to try to work with those in control of the purse strings than to antagonize them.
