Hot Air Candidate Survey Results: October Edition

This is not going to help Perry:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/64911.html

and here:
BREAKING – WashPost A1, lower-left corner, “Rick Perry and a word set on stone: The candidate calls the old name of his family’s Texas hunting camp ‘offensive,’ but what he did about it is unclear,” by Stephanie McCrummen in Paint Creek, Tex.: “In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family’s secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance. ‘Niggerhead,’ it read. Ranchers who once grazed cattle on the 1,070-acre parcel on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River called it by that name well before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. … But the name of this particular parcel did not change for years after it became associated with Rick Perry, first as a private citizen, then as a state official and finally as Texas governor. … As recently as this summer, the slablike rock — lying flat, the name still faintly visible beneath a coat of white paint — remained by the gated entrance to the camp. When asked last week, Perry said the word on the rock is an ‘offensive name that has no place in the modern world.’ …

“In his responses to two rounds of detailed, written questions, Perry said his father first leased the property in 1983. Rick Perry said he added his own name to the lease from 1997 to 1998, when he was state agriculture commissioner, and again from 2004 to 2007, when he was governor. … ‘When my Dad joined the lease in 1983, he took the first opportunity he had to paint over the offensive word on the rock during the 4th of July holiday,’ Perry said in his initial response. ‘It is my understanding that the rock was eventually turned over to further obscure what was originally written on it.’ In response to follow-up questions, Perry gave a more detailed account. ‘My mother and father went to the lease and painted the rock in either 1983 or 1984,’ Perry wrote. ‘This occurred after I paid a visit to the property with a friend and saw the rock with the offensive word. After my visit I called my folks and mentioned it to them, and they painted it over during their next visit. … Ever since, any time I ever saw the rock it was painted over’ …

“Perry’s version of events differs in many respects from the recollections of seven people, interviewed by The Washington Post, who spoke in detail of their memories of seeing the rock with the name at various points during the years that Perry was associated with the property … [One] local who visited the property with Perry and the legislators in those years recalled seeing the rock with the name clearly visible. ‘I thought, “This is going to embarrass Rick some day.”’ … This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen people, including residents, hunters, ranchers, government officials and others … [S]even … said the block-lettered name was clearly visible at different points in the 1980s and 1990s. One, a former worker on the ranch, believes he saw it as recently as 2008.” http://wapo.st/rds2Uj

g2825m on October 2, 2011 at 8:39 AM