When hundreds of North Texas voters protested President Obama's socialized health care plan outside of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's Dallas office on July 17, it presented the senator who wants to be governor an opportunity to win new supporters. Instead, Hutchison refused to meet with protest organizers or even accept their petition in person.
Organizers of the Dallas Tea Party scheduled the protest to not only make their views of Obama's health care plan known, but to seemingly show support for Hutchison, who opposes the plan and had been the target of Democratic protests herself.
Despite 100 degree temperatures, the midday protest was well attended, with estimates sizing the crowd between 220 and 400. The size of the crowd can be seen in a YouTube video posted by Bert Mueller, shown below. While Dallas police were on hand, the protest was peaceful, with the only problem arising when the property owner of a vacant Circuit City next door to the senator's office threatened to have protesters' cars towed when they parked there. The same property owner allowed Democratic protesters to park in the lot only the week before.
During the protest, organizers attempted to deliver petitions to Hutchison voicing their opposition to President Obama's attempts to socialize health care. Even though Hutchison's office was informed ahead of time of their intentions, neither Hutchison nor any of her representatives would meet with organizers. As shown in the YouTube video below, organizers were not even allowed to enter the building. No one from Hutchison's office would come down to accept the petitions, and a building security guard promised to deliver them himself.
It is not clear if Hutchison was even in the office, as she was in Washington the day before. In the YouTube video, however, a security guard implies that it is the senator that is refusing to see them. The incident left many protesters bewildered. One Examiner reader, responding to the event in a comments section, summed up the feelings of many by stating "Hutchinson not only lost a good opportunity to campaign but she lost support by not responding positively...If she or one of her people had come out and said a few positive words it would have helped her...If she won't respond as a Senator then let her become a private citizen."
Hutchison has been an outspoken critic of Obama's heath care initiative, which makes her actions toward the protesters surprising. The senator has stated her intentions to run for Texas governor, and her opponent in the race, Gov. Rick Perry, has been an outspoken supporter of the "Tea Party" supporters. The senator has made no public comments about the situation.
Kay, this is a story you need to fix in a hurry or the entire teaparty movement will probably work hard against you in the election... unless you have already written off the teaparty peeps as nutjobs for Rick. I don't think these people like being ignored. I am receiving daily personal emails from some of the Dallas teaparty organizers trying to get their story out. This is a group that is very, very organized, from what I can tell, and they are not happy and very confused right now by the continued snub. How hard is it to meet with some teaparty leaders for a few minutes... or at least do what Ralph Hall's office did and give them cookies and punch?
The msm is not covering the snub, but in the blog-o-sphere this is a damaging multi day story.
I think most TEA Party people were already predisposed to vote against Kay Bailout Hutchison. Medina or Perry is my choice. I am leaning to Perry just so Hutchison doesn't win, although Medina would be nice too.
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