Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst Wants To Be Your Next Demon Sheep

While we have been busy gently expressing our disappointment at the mess that is Wendy Davis’s gubernatorial campaign down in Texas, the race for the GOP nomination for Lieutenant Governor has apparently gotten wacky, weird and vicious. For starters, here is a campaign ad released yesterday by sitting Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst attacking his opponent, State Senator Dan Patrick, with a parody of a song called “Let It Go,” which we had to look up. Turns out it’s from Frozen , which we have been avoiding because we are not five years old. As campaign ads go, it is no “Demon Sheep,” but what is?

We’re trying to figure out what we find most weird about this ad: the animation that looks like it came from Jib Jab around 2004, the terrible, terrible lyrics, or the wide-lapel leisure suit Patrick is wearing in some old footage the Dewhurst campaign dug up, probably from a crumbling grindhouse somewhere. The crappy video shows Patrick mugging like a blow-dried idiot entertainer, which is what he was before he became a blow-dried idiot politician.

The thrust of the ad is that Patrick changed his name to hide his bankruptcy and his unpaid tax liens, a charge Dewhurst has been making that turns out to be blatant bullshit. The former broadcaster, whose real name is Dannie Goeb, had taken Dan Patrick as a stage name when he went into broadcasting in the late ‘70s. He did file for personal bankruptcy in 1986, but did not legally change his name until he first ran for political office in 2003, when he apparently had to put his legal name on the ballot. Since the public had known him as Dan Patrick since he moved to Houston in 1978, it made sense to officially change his name to that.

Dewhurst’s charge that Patrick changed his name so no one would find out about his bankruptcy is so obviously false that PolitiFact rated it Pants on Fire. 

Don’t let the fact that we’re defending Patrick on this one issue fool you. He is still terrible! He is actually more conservative than Dewhurst and has accused the incumbent of giving in-state tuition and free health care to illegal immigrants. And there is the apparently obligatory (in Texas) demand that schools teach creationism because Christians are the most oppressed minority in all the land. Also, we know it was the ‘70s but ye gods, that leisure suit.

[ Atlantic Wire ]