Pat Fallon	Shelley Luther	Drew Springer

Luther vs. Fallon Video

Luther Locks Horns with Outgoing GOP Senator
as Springer Campaigns after Wife Tests Positive

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor
September 20, 2020

State Senator Pat Fallon insinuated this weekend that Shelley Luther is a political one-trick wonder in a bid for the seat that he's giving up and trying to pass on to a Republican state representative who's running as the establishment candidate in a special election next week.

A Frisco Republican who's a belated nominee in an open congressional race, Fallon also suggested in an impromptu confronation with Luther at a GOP event that she's a closet Black Lives Matter supporter based on comments she's made on the stump in the special Senate District 30 contest.

Sparks flew as Fallon told Luther that the one night she spent in jail for refusing to abide by emergency law didn't automatically make her qualified to be a state senator in Texas. But Fallon might be wrong in that assessment considering that Luther appears to be the first-round favorite in the special Senate vote despite her stauts as a political novice who was a total unknown outside the Austin beltway before the virus surfaced in Texas.

The heated discussion between the outgoing lawmaker and one of the five Republicans who are running to replace him was captured in a four-minute amateur video that was recorded with a cell phone camera. Fallon had shown up as a last-minute stand-in for State Rep. Drew Springer - a Muenster Republican who's perceived to be Luther's top GOP rival in the special vote that will be on the ballot next Tuesday.

Fallon revealed that Springer wouldn't be making any more campaign appearances because he's quarantined at home with a wife who tested positive for COVID-19 last week. But Luther pointed out that Springer had gone to at least one public event since his spouse was diagnosed with the coronavirus on September 14.

Springer has acknowledged that he attended a campaign event at a farm in Grayson County on Thursday - four days after learning that he'd been exposed to the virus. But Springer says that he didn't take the time to get tested himself based on her doctor's recommendations when he'd experienced none of the basis symptoms.

Springer has asserted that he stayed about 10 feet to 20 feet away from the other people who were there without shaking hands or posing for pictures with activists. Most physicians would have urged Springer to get tested - especially if he had any plans to be in the same spaces with people outside his immediate family.

Springer would have been violating a self-imposed quarantine at the very least if the story about the coronavirus in his household is accurate. But Springer and other candidates for the GOP have been routinely ignoring the state's emergency health laws that Governor Greg Abbott has in place to slow the virus spread.

Neither Luther or Fallon were wearing a mask during the weekend encounter at the gathering that also appeared to have no sign of social distancing or other standard protocols that are temporary law in a state where the coronavirus had infected almost 690,000 people including nearly 15,000 who have died from the disease. Fallon, Luther and the others at the event where they clashed also were running afoul of bans on large gatherings.

While Abbott has been hammered with criticism from conservatives like Luther for the public health and safety measures he's implemented in the past six months, the governor has been content to look the other way when fellow Republicans are blantantly breaking the emergency laws at partisan gatherings.

Abbott watered down the enforcement authority in his pandemic orders in a capitulation to Luther in a power play in May after she'd spent a night in the Dallas County jail for reopening her beauty salon before nonessential businesses like hers were allowed to get back in business during the first lockdown.

But Abbott has called out young people for the same basic behavior - arguing that the failure for everyone to abide by the emergency disaster laws is effectively prolonging the pandemic.