This guy was collecting petitions for the no-hotel folks at the Dallas Farmers Market a few weeks back. And he didn't seem too "over the top" to us, but little is.
On their Web site, the Build the Hotel folks are accusing the Don't Build the Hotel folks of being "manipulative, misleading and over the top" in order to get the 60,000 signatures that were dropped off with the city secretary this morning. Among the accusations leveled against Harlan Crow's Citizens Against the Taxpayer-Owned Hotel:
It's believed that the petitioners receive anywhere from $15 to $20 per signature. One citizen reported that the petitioners are "talking off a script filled with inflammatory, misleading statements designed to illicit worry and concerns" and couldn't answer any questions about the project. In fact, one petitioner flat out lied, stating that "the convention center hotel is the reason Dallas ISD had to lay off all those teachers."Brooks Love of CATOH, who asked City Secretary Deborah Watkins to please count those signatures carefully, hadn't heard about the pro-hotel faction's press release till contacted by Unfair Park this afternoon. After we read it to him, because there's nothing else to do on Yom Kippur, he said: "All of this is unsubstantiated, of course. The only thing over-the-top was the signatures we just turned in. They're just operating on two old political adages: Accuse your opponent of doing what you're doing, and if you repeat a lie enough, people will believe it." --Robert Wilonsky
