February 6, 2006

Karen Hughes Becomes Unlikely Howard Defender
as Republicans Hit Runoff Candidate in Mail Piece

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

After barely surviving several torpedoes in a special state House campaign, Republicans have opened fire on Democrat Donna Howard with a new mail piece that accuses her of throwing millions of taxpayer dollars away on an unsuccessful push for a new high school while serving as a trustee for a west Austin school district.

Against a smoky black backdrop that shows a $100 bill about to go up in flames, the state GOP mailer accuses Howard of ignoring the wishes of Eanes school district voters in 1995 while campaigning for a $3.8 million bond package for land acquisition, building design and a road to a proposed second high school in the area of town known as Westlake Hills.

"Ever wonder why voters kicked Donna Howard off of the school board after only one term?" the mailer asks. The Republican Party answers the question on the flip side of the mail piece, saying that Howard as the chair of the school board's finance committee "thought she could force the voters to do what she wanted" while squandering the taxpayers' money on a plan that some parents labeled ridiculous.

The mailer notes that Eanes voters rejected the bond issue twice while Howard failed to win re-election the next time she was on the ballot. Howard's campaign, which had been expecting a hit on the Eanes school bond battle, responded quickly by pointing out that the House candidate wasn't the only parent who thought that the Westlake Hills area needed another high school and not the only school board member who voters ousted after contending that the proposed financing package made good fiscal sense.

But according to a letter that Hughes penned to the Westlake Picayune newspaper in September 1998, the bond proposal's critics had exaggerated warnings about the additional debt that taxpayers would be forced to shoulder and had employed flawed logic in their campaign against it.

"The "Don't double our debt" tries to raise financial doubts," Hughes wrote. " Yet our bond rating is strong, per-pupil debt is lower than any other local district, our school board just lowered the tax rate and interest rates are low. Now is a good time to build."

Hughes, whose husband, Jerry Hughes, served alongside Howard on the school board and went down in defeat with her after backing the bond sale as well, argued that most residents in the Eanes district had already "doubled their debt" in order to live in an area with public schools that are viewed as the best in Austin. "Additional operating costs for a second school add less than two cents to the tax rate, a small price to pay for academic excellence," Hughes asserted.

At the time that Hughes wrote the letter to the neighborhood newspaper, she was the press secretary for then-Governor George W. Bush. Hughes had been executive director at the state Republican Party before going to work for Bush in his first campaign for governor in 1994. She joined Bush at the White House with the job title of counselor after he became president in 2001. Hughes and several other high-ranking Bush advisers including political strategist Karl Rove and current Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pressed for funding for a new high school as part of an Educational Excellence for Eanes campaigns in 1999.

The repeated defeats for bond advocates in Eanes was generally attributed to speculation that Westlake Chaparral football would be diluted if a second high school was built. Westlake had one of the most successful football programs in Texas during the period in question. The Chaps won their first state championship in 1996 - and they made it all the way to the state finals five times between 1990 and 2001.

Howard's camp has been bracing for attacks from the Republicans ever since she surprised partisans on both sides by claiming more than 49 percent of the vote in the initial election last month after being perceived as the underdog throughout the first round. Bentzin, a former Dell Computer executive who lost a state Senate race in 2002, had remained positive throughout round one as the perceived frontrunner in the special race to fill the northwest Travis County seat that Todd Baxter left vacant when he stepped down in November and signed on as a cable television industry lobbyist.

Democrats didn't wait for the second round bell to take off the gloves in the HD 48 fight. The Travis County Democratic Party hammered Bentzin in a series of mail drops in the days leading up to the first election, leaving Republicans no time to effectively respond before the votes were cast in round one. The mailers attempted to tie Bentzin to the investigation that led to criminal charges against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and several fundraising consultants. The mailers also blasted Bentzin's positions on issues such as school funding, vouchers and abortion.

While using the Hughes letter from eight years ago in Howard's defense, the Democrats' campaign added that Howard is backed in her House race by the candidate who defeated her in her bid for re-election to the Eanes school board. Howard fell short in two campaigns for the State Board of Education after losing her seat on the Eanes school board. She has made public education the center piece issue of her campaign at a time when another special session on school finance is expected to be called sometime this spring.