Here’s the Chron story about Chuck Rosenthal’s apology statement. I’ll focus on what’s new here, some of which I had seen previously in the NYT and on Miya’s blog.
Jared Woodfill, Harris County Republican Party Chairman, said he is meeting with party leaders to discuss Rosenthal’s political future. But he declined to say whether the party would draft a primary election opponent for Rosenthal, who is running for re-election, call on him to resign, or support him despite the concern about his conduct.
“He’s done a good job as district attorney, but this is a serious mistake that we are dealing with right now,” he said. “We’re taking it very seriously.”
Rosenthal didn’t return calls and e-mails Friday.
The political problem, if any, posed by the e-mails was still unclear.
That’s a curious sentence. The political problem is that the emails, and the information about the county car being used by Rosenthal’s ex-girlfriend administrative assistant, make Rosenthal look like a fool who gives preferential treatment to certain people, and that’s on top of the allegations made in the lawsuit that he turned a blind eye to malfeasance by Sheriff Tommy Thomas. This may or may not translate into an electoral problem – as we all know, November is a long way off – but the nature of it as a political problem is, I think, pretty clear. It’s the scope of that problem that no one can be sure about.
The personal e-mails, along with attorney-client privilege e-mails, were originally sealed from public view in a motion by Rosenthal to withhold them as privileged communication. Last week, they were unsealed by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt.
In an emergency hearing Thursday, Hoyt said he intended only to unseal the motion, not the e-mails, which were attached as exhibits. He then resealed the exhibits, withdrawing them from public view on the U.S District Clerk’s Web site — but not before several media outlets downloaded the information.
Earlier in the week, Rosenthal said the release of the e-mails is political and pointed out that Kelley was a law partner of former HPD Chief C.O. Bradford. Bradford is Rosenthal’s Democratic opponent in his bid next year for re-election. Kelley, who ran unsuccessfully against Rosenthal in 2000, has said he and Bradford are still friends.
Bradford denied that he had anything to do with the disclosure.
That at least answers the question about why bother resealing them. It also firmly rebuts the charge that this was politically motivated, unless you think Judge Hoyt had something to do with it. This was basically an accident, one that obviously causes some real hardship for Rosenthal. Because of the unintentional nature of the emails’ release, I can feel a small bit of sympathy towards him. But not much – it’s still the case that he himself wrote those emails, using his county-owned email account. It’s still his actions that are the cause of his embarrassment.
In my last entry, I noted that I had not found any commentary on this, even a link to a story, by any of the Republican blogs in town. That got Kevin Whited all upset in my comments:
Are you REALLY wanting to establish the standard that someone who votes a certain way is obligated to blog about about everyone who affiliated with a party they have voted for at some point?
That’s an interesting conclusion to draw from my simple statement of fact (one that I note is still true today), but no, I’m not looking to establish any Department of Blogging Obligations. This is a huge story (front page, above the fold, two days out of the last three) that may have a big impact on one of the main local elections next year. If you really can’t think of any reasons why I might be interested in the opinions of my political counterparts on this, let me suggest a few possibilities:
– I’m genuinely curious as to what Republican voters think of this. Do you feel indifferent? Betrayed? Angry? If so, at whom? Do others feel the same as you? Personal reactions to current events is one of the big reasons why people read blogs, after all. It’s obvious (and well-blogged) how we Democrats feel about this. I’d like to know what the Republicans are thinking.
– Do you want to see someone challenge Rosenthal in the GOP primary, or do you stand with him? If you want to see him replaced, whom do you support? Do you have a candidate in mind, or do you trust Jared Woodfill and the local GOP leadership to come up with someone?
– Do you think this was a political hit job? If so, whom do you blame?
– Do you have anything to add to this story? My blogging compatriots and I frequently hear insider information from, well, insiders. Some of what we hear we can even write about. I presume the local Republican blogs are on the receiving end of this sort of thing as well, though I could certainly be wrong about that. Have you heard anything that hasn’t made it into a mainstream news account yet?
I would have thought this would be self-evident to anyone interested in Houston politics, but whatever. If none of Kevin or his colleagues care to talk about this, then I’ll have to guess as to what they might think. Given a choice, I’d rather hear it from them. But that’s the way it goes, I guess. On a lighter note, John Coby has more.
