I finally got a chance to talk to Chris Homan, Campaign Manager for Pete Sessions, about the sign war going on in the Sessions-Frost race down in Dallas.
Homan said he believed that the school sign incident (described below) was authorized by the Frost campaign and designed to “intimidate” Sessions and his disabled son. He called Frost’s charges that the whole stunt was a Sessions dirty trick “delusional” and an example of the “near psychopathic level [Frost] is willing to drop to” to win the election.
It seems awfully hard for me to believe that the Frost campaign really authorized covering Sessions’ kids school with Frost for Congress signs. On the other hand, Homan notes that Frost’s campaign hasn’t put forward any evidence to support its dirty tricks claims. And while I doubt very much that Frost authorized this little stunt, it certainly doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that this is something that might have been done by over-zealous supporters.
Homan also said that the Frost campaign had a history of sign practices that were “sleazy at best.”
Now, finally to the matter of the police report I mentioned earlier which showed Sessions getting questioned by a police office for personally removing his Democratic opponents signs late in the evening a few days before election day 2002. (According to the police report, Sessions was not cited.) Homan confirmed that it was a genuine police record but called it “more or less a police activity report … a meaningless piece of paper.”
According to Homan, Texas has a law against putting candidate signs on public roadways. And Sessions and his aide were merely “collecting yard signs … that had been illegally placed along the road.”
In other words, says Homan, Sessions was just doing his (rather late night) civic duty.
