Cancer Proposal Originated With Democrats

Remember how the cancer research initiative Governor Perry proposed in his State of the State Address was one of the most talked-about things early on in the session? Remember how even some of us Dems were giving credit to the governor for wanting to do something about cancer?

Well, turns out that the idea wasn’t original to the Governor, but rather to a former statewide Democratic officeholder:

But the initial idea — or at least its precursor — came almost a decade ago in a duck blind, according to former state Comptroller John Sharp. He said he, former Travis County Democratic Party Chairman Ken Wendler and John Mendelsohn, president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, were on a hunting trip in Port Lavaca when Sharp was running for lieutenant governor in 1998. The men talked about starting a cancer research project after Sharp was in office, Sharp said.

But Sharp lost the race — to Perry — and the cancer project didn’t progress.

Fast forward eight years. Last Fourth of July, Mendelsohn joined Wendler and Wendler’s partner, Cathy Bonner, who served in Gov. Ann Richards’ Cabinet, at a summer retreat in New York. At the time, Bonner said, Richards was being treated for esophageal cancer, and her health weighed heavily on Bonner’s mind.

The group revisited the idea of a cancer research project for Texas. Later, Sharp and Bonner founded killcancer.org to push the plan. and Bonner reached out to Armstrong. “The rest,” Sharp said, “is history.”

So, the real credit here belongs to a Democrat. Interesting.

This, of course, is a bit of a bizarre thing, because the proposal approved by the Lege calls for $3 billion in voter-approved bonds. Of course, had we not spent the vast majority of the surplus buying down property tax rates, perhaps the initiative could have been properly funded without a constitutional amendment.

Alas, alas, alas.