Rep. Wayne Christian Hosts Town Hall Meeting With Indicted Conservative Leader

Vince Leibowitz | Sep 17, 2007 | Comments 0

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It’s always interesting to see who Republicans are hanging around with, especially when they hold their wonderful “town hall meetings.”

Rep. Wayne Christian (R-Center), one of the Leininger 5 from the last election cycle, held a town hall meeting last week with several members of the Texas Conservative Coalition–including indicted former Texans for a Republican Majority leader John Colyandro:

Christian summarized major conservative victories in recent sessions of Congress for the crowd of about 40, and John Colyandro, executive director of the coalition, discussed action items that could develop into future legislation. County Judge Joe English, Sheriff Thomas Kerss, and local Republican Party Chairman Jackie Yates were also present.

“What we’re trying to do is get feedback from people all over the state to give us a sense of what priorities we ought to have going into the next legislative session,” Colyandro said.

Even more interesting is that State Reps from other districts not even adjacent showed up for the event:

The politicians who hosted the event, including representatives Christian, Brian Hughes and Dan Flynn, took credit for the recent passage of various bills addressing fiscal responsibility, education, health care, illegal immigration and traditional values.

We shouldn’t be surprised those two showed up. Hughes (R-Mineola) received more money than any state representative candidate from TRMPAC during the 2002 election cycle. His former consultant, Kevin Brannon, also worked for TRMPAC and received a boatload of cash:

4. Bryan Hughes $56,000
5. Kevin Brannon $54,163

Flynn received a cool $25,000 from TRMPAC.

And, they are taking credit for achievements they really didn’t make. All of the major education and health care initiatives of the 80th Legislature are credits to Democrats, not Republicans.

Naturally, the right-wing also used that opportunity to cry over spilled milk, like the failure of their disenfranchising Voter ID proposals:

The Coalition’s suggestion of requiring voters to use a state-issued identification card with a photo and fingerprint prompted several to raise concerns of privacy and personal liberty, while others questioned whether enough illegal immigrants voted to make a problem. One woman in the crowd responded to that concern.

“If just one illegal votes and cancels my vote, that’s one too many,” she said.

Colyandro was not able to provide a specific number of illegal immigrants who had voted in Texas, but he cited anecdotal evidence that suggested the number is large.

He can’t provide any proof because there is scant, if any proof, that illegal immigrants are registering to vote. It’s just a sham.

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