Month or so ago, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price called me up and reamed me out for suggesting he may be carrying water for Ross Perot Jr. and the Perot-dominated Alliance freight airport in Fort Worth. The commissioner told me he barely knows Mr. Perot and said he couldn't remember ever having spoken to him.
Of course, this all has to do with Dallas's Inland Port rail center project in Southern Dallas and whether Commissioner Price is sandbagging a promising development in his own backyard -- at the expense of his own constituents -- to help out a competing Perot deal, Alliance, in a whole other county.
As I say, Price's attitude to me on the phone was, "Perot who?"
Surprised I was, then, when I got my hands on a copy of the birthday invitation the commissioner is sending out for himself, showing Ross Perot Jr. as one of his special friends. You can see the invite for yourself after the jump.
I noted other rich Republican notables on the list, especially John
Adams and Mark Stiles of Trinity Industries, a company deep in the rail
freight business.
What I did not note -- and I do have an e-mail out to the commissioner
seeking clarification -- is the name of the political committee doing
the fund-raising.
It's confusing, because a generous donor would need to
know before showing up at the party to whom to write the check. And, of
course, the commissioner wouldn't want any checks written to himself by
accident, because that would involve people in an unfortunate violation
of the criminal codes.
I'll let you know as soon as I hear back on that. Let's not hold
our breaths.
The other thing I did not see on the birthday party sponsor list for
"Our Man Downtown?" I sure didn't see anybody on the list I would
describe as "grassroots."
But that has always been the key question: whose man downtown?
