| |
|
| 1 |
* Dade Phelan |
| 2 |
Todd Hunter |
| 3 |
* Tom Oliverson |
| 4 |
* James Frank |
| 5 |
* David Cook |
| 6 |
* Shelby Slawson |
| 7 |
Drew Darby |
| 8 |
Brad Buckley |
| 9 |
Cody Harris |
| 10 |
Briscoe Cain |
| |
* Announced as candidate |
| |
|
| |
|
|
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan's sweeping denial of potential wrongdoing with the use of state airplanes failed to prevent an Austin television station from airing a more extensive report on the subject on Wednesday.
The day after rival station KHOU 11 in Houston published a piece on the Republican speaker's flights to Austin and Lubbock on the same day in 2022, the ABC affiliate KVUE in the Capitol City post a video that rehashes the story with additional details.
Phelan communications director Cait Wittman sought to discredit the report from the CBS affiliate in the state's largest city in response to a social media post by conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan praising it.
"MQS’ fake news is just as bad as KHOU’s fake news," Whitman argued on X. "Not only did that trip include legislative business (KHOU conveniently left that out), this flight was paid for with PRIVATE, DONATED FUNDS – not at taxpayers’ expense. This fact is buried at the bottom of the story, only after 6 paragraphs of pure biased nonsense and a headline designed to mislead readers into believing this was a state plane used for purely political purposes on taxpayers' dime. It was not."
The speaker's business in Lubbock included a meeting with Texas Tech University officials on their legislative priorities for the regular session in 2025. Phelan, a University of Texas graduate, attended the Red Raiders football game against the Longhorns on the day in question two years ago. But Phelan finds himself facing considerable heat now as a consequence of the fact that he also raised tens of thousands of dollars for his campaign at a fundraiser in Lubbock that day.
The Austin and Houston stations both KHOU and KVUE cited state law that forbids the use of state aircraft for travel to locations where officials are planning to raise cash for personal or political purposes. According to both stations' interpretations of statutes that pertain to the questions they raised, the fact that Phelan had a fundraiser in Lubbock and reimbursed the state for the flights there and back would render the state business that he conducted there irrelevant to a potential defense.
But there's been no signs up to now from prosecutors in Lubbock or Austin on possible investigations into the speaker or a pair of GOP colleagues who are called out in the TV reports for flying on state jets from Austin to East Texas hometowns to attend high school graduations on the final weekend of the regular session last year.
State Rep. Jay Dean of Longview and Cole Hefner of Mount Pleasant are called out in the reports for taking trips on Texas Department of Transportation planes to East Texas to watch children graduate when the House was on the verge of voting on Attorney General Ken Paxton's impeachment in May 2023.
Dean flew on a TxDOT jet from Austin to his hometown and back on the eve of the impeachment vote. Dean said that his campaign foot the $2,077 bill for the cost of the day trip. Both TV stations noted that lawmakers are barred from using campaign funds for personal use.
According to KVUE, Hefner traveled home on a state plane on the same day that he voted to impeach the three-time elected attorney general. The Austin station reported that Hefner, a certified pilot, returned to the state capital on a single-engine plane in an attempt to get back to the Capitol before the historic vote. KVUE said flight records show that Hefner landed in Austin at the same time the House was voting on impeachment.
A video shows an unidentified representative reaching over to vote for Hefner - a blatant violation of House rules known as ghost voting. KVUE also reported that Hefner was in the air en route to East Texas when he was shown to be present in the House roll call that day.
more to come ...
