Mike Hashimoto writes editorials for the Dallas Morning News and, thus, might be excused if he limited his recent blog post to the big-city media perspective.
He writes about how the big-city newspaper editorial boards aren’t exactly sobbing aloud over Gov. Rick Perry’s decision to go on down the road once his current term is up.
But here’s a flash: I’m guessing there isn’t an editorial board in the state — large, medium or small — that’s heartsick over Perry’s pending departure from Texas politics.
You see, I worked on one of those medium-sized papers during the 2010 election, the one in which Gov. Perry declared he didn’t have anything to say to any of the state’s newspaper editorial boards. Therefore, he wouldn’t seek their endorsement for re-election. Turns out he didn’t need them.
He didn’t get it from the Amarillo Globe-News. We endorsed former Houston Mayor Bill White in the 2010 general election, believing that White — a business-friendly Democrat with a lot of solid ideas on how to build the state’s economy — was better suited for the times. The reaction from our readers was, um, interesting to say the very least. You’d have thought we recommended Mao Tse-Tung for governor, based on the reactions from some of our more fervent Republican readers.
Our colleagues in Lubbock also went with White and I understand the South Plains reader reaction was as livid as it was up here on the Caprock.
Did the governor’s stiffing of editorial boards influence our decision to recommend Bill White? I don’t recall it. We did have plenty of questions to pose to Perry and it would have been mighty swell of him to stoop to talk to answer them for us. Mayor White was candid and forthright and I suppose those are the kind of qualities you would want in the chief executive of a state government as large as ours.
At least that’s what I remember our medium-sized editorial page hoping we could get in 2010 when all the ballots were counted.
So long, governor. Don’t let the door hit you in the backside.