Dewhurst’s state office purges old speeches from website, including his 2007 call for work visas for illegal immigrants
July 11, 2012
By Robert T. Garrett/Reporter
The Dallas Morning News
The text of a five-year-old speech by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, in which he supported work visas for illegal immigrants, has disappeared — only two weeks after surfacing in his hotly contested U.S. Senate GOP runoff race.
It’s gone, at least, from the lieutenant governor’s website and a link to the speech was recently deactivated, Lauren Thurston, Dewhurst’s state office spokeswoman, confirmed Wednesday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cmkxZb3Yyg8
But look for Dewhurst’s words, captured in a screenshot by Senate rival Ted Cruz’s campaign, to live on.
“I agree we must have secure borders,” Dewhurst said in accepting the Mr. South Texas award in Laredo in February 2007. He broached the touchy subject of immigration late in the speech.
After denouncing the idea of a wall at the border and calling for “a humane presence at the border,” Dewhurst said, “I support secure borders both North and South and I support a guest worker program for those here today illegally. Labor and skilled workers are critical to our Texas economy. Our federal government needs to get its act together.”
Why do old words matter? Five days before the May 29 primary, Dewhurst aired a radio ad accusing Cruz of aligning with groups that favor amnesty for illegal immigrants. Allies of Cruz, who’s said he strongly opposes granting a legal path to citizenship for undocumented workers who’ve jumped the line, blasted the ad as a not-so-subtle reminder to GOP primary voters that Cruz’s father is Hispanic, a Cuban immigrant.
On June 27, Dewhurst aired a runoff TV ad in which he blasted President Barack Obama for halting deportation of some young immigrants who were brought here illegally as children. “Obama wants amnesty. Burns me up,” Dewhurst said to camera. Immediately, the Cruz camp coughed up the Mr. South Texas speech, which Hearst Newspapers Austin Bureau Chief Peggy Fikac linked to in this blog post. But as you’ll notice, the speech link no longer works. Complicating matters, Dewhurst, in a debate with Cruz at Dallas’ KERA-TV five days earlier, said, “I don’t support a guest worker program, never have, until and unless Congress addresses this — but after, and only after, we have secured our border.”
Dewhurst campaign advisor Mark Miner insisted Wednesday there’s no flip-flop or tone change in those words.
“His position has always been that we need to secure the border first, and these other issues can be discussed when that is done,” Miner said.
Cruz campaign manager John Drogin, though, noted in an email to some supporters Wednesday morning that Dewhurst once supported an immigration position much like the one he unfairly tried to tie Cruz to, through guilt-by-association tactics.
“It’s remarkable — David Dewhurst has gone from whitewashing his record to literally deleting it, but Texans aren’t fooled,” wrote Drogin, who in press interviews later questioned whether state employees of Dewhurst are engaged in campaign-related activity. “Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, David Dewhurst’s words in support of amnesty were preserved for all the public to see,” he wrote.
Thurston, Dewhurst’s state office spokeswoman, said there’s been no political hanky-panky.
She said that more than a year ago, before Dewhurst announced for Senate, the lieutenant governor’s office asked aides to Secretary of the Senate Patsy Spaw to “archive all our speeches” — by which Thurston said she meant they were to be yanked from Dewhurst’s official website but kept in digital form in his office. A path to the speeches on the website’s home page was removed last year, she said.
After Fikac’s June 27 blog post, though, “we just noticed that our original request … had not been completed,” Thurston said. “They hadn’t completely removed them because they were still searchable,” she said. So Dewhurst aides called Spaw’s office, and the links finally were deactivated, Thurston said.
“The public can still request them,” though, she said of the speeches.
You can safely bet John Drogin has screenshots of all of them.
One Old Vet
Dewhurst’s state office purges old speeches from website, including his 2007 call for work visas for illegal immigrants | Trail Blazers Blog
