Nor was his treatment of Texas Supreme Court Justice Steven Wayne Smith. Smith should be a hero to conservatives everywhere, as he was the lead attorney in Hopwood vs. Texas, which led to a landmark ruling against affirmative action and racial preferences in 1996. Several years later Smith ran for the Texas Supreme Court against Xavier Rodriguez. Rodriguez, who also called himself a moderate, had been appointed to the court by Governor Perry, no doubt as part of an effort to reach out to minorities. After Smith defeated Rodriguez in 2002, Rick Perry gave Smith the cold shoulder. In 2004 he personally recruited Paul Green to oppose Smith in the GOP primary, and lent his voice to tens of thousands of automated “robo calls” denouncing Smith. Unfortunately, his efforts paid off, and Steven Wayne Smith, one of the most conservative judges in Texas history, lost his seat on the Supreme Court. This sorry episode of petty vindictiveness revealed an ugly side of Rick Perry that few Texans had suspected.
http://www.petermorrisonreport.com/
“This sorry episode of petty vindictiveness revealed an ugly side of Rick Perry that few Texans had suspected.”
Excellent, thanks very much. I didn’t hear anything about it, but then the media’s reporting here is in the stone age. As far as vindictiveness, naa, you can usually see it in a person, and I’ve always seen it in him.
Weird...that link went dead this morning. It was really good yesterday.
Anyway, I found another site that overall is pretty positive on Perry, but still (rightly) hits him on Smith:
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Rick_Perry#Purging_of_Supreme_Court_Justice_Steve_Smith