Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Rove is about to get some of his own medicine




Via Daily Kos, from Radar Online:

For years, political insiders in the Lone Star State have whispered about Rove’s close friendship with lobbyist Karen Johnson, a never-married, forty-something GOP loyalist from Austin, Texas. The two first became close when Johnson sat on the board of then-Governor George W. Bush’s Business Council over a decade ago. Their friendship reportedly deepened after Bush appointed Johnson—a little-known spokesperson for the Texas Good Roads Association—to a seat on his Transportation Department transition team in 2000. The plum appointment enabled Johnson’s lobbying firm, Infrastructure Solutions, to snare such high-paying clients as Aetna and the City of Laredo. Sources say Johnson now frequently travels between Washington D.C. and Austin, where she frequently appears at Rove’s side at parties and unofficial functions.

Although there is no evidence that their relationship is anything but professional, the close association between the married White House aide and the comely lobbyist has long raised eyebrows in conservative Texas circles. Asked about the pair, a prominent political journalist who has written extensively about Rove says, “I’ve heard the stories, but I would never write about Karl and Karen. If you want to keep your job as a reporter in Texas, you make believe you don’t see them together.”

In the post-Lewinsky era, Washington’s press corps has mostly avoided reporting on the private lives of public officials. But as the political climate in the capitol grows more poisonous, Rove’s close friendship with the lobbyist has attracted increased scrutiny from opponents eager to prove that Bush’s dirty trickster is sitting on some dirty laundry of his own.


And kos adds:

In a fortuitious coincidence, Jerome and I have just finished interviewing a long-time Texas political writer here in Austin who says that Rove is absolutely having an affair with Karen. Rove is married and has a teenaged son. According to this writer, Rove's wife is a hardcore liberal. "I don't know how he and his wife get along," he said.

Well, quite obviously, they do not.


In a more discreet political era -- say, just a few short years ago -- I might have said that a politician's personal private life is none of our business.

But, as we are constantly reminded, 9/11 changed everything.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Meet Texas' newest precinct chair

Well, maybe not the newest, but one of them, as I accepted the appointment yesterday.

In order to maintain a tiny shred of anonymity, I won't identify it by number, but if you've been reading here and elsewhere I post for any length of time you can figure out a lot; I will tell you that my precinct flips conventional wisdom about the city I call home on its head. In fact it is even more liberal than I suspected -- in 2004 it went more than 60% for John Kerry.

And there's plenty of room to improve upon those numbers.

Heh.