Burka taken out by Kay's campaign manager Terry Sullivan...?

Et tu Terry?

Kay's campaign manager has knifed the highly opinionated Paul Burka... a reporter who takes harsh shots at both Rick and Kay (link). Excerpt follows...

Paul Burka, the dean of Texas political writers, won't be asking questions when the Republican gubernatorial candidates debate next month. He's been banned.

"I didn’t like the idea of it," says Terry Sullivan, campaign manager for candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison. "He's got his mind made up on the race."

Sure sounds like Kay's campaign dictated that Paul Burka could not participate in any debates... an odd move, because it opened up the door for the Texas Tribune to repeat Burka's attacks... not that any Republican voters have heard of the Texas Tribune let alone read it.

• On the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll at the beginning of November: “The results underscore how abysmal Hutchison’s campaign has been. Her handling of her resignation, or non-resignation, from the Senate has made her look weak and indecisive. She comes across as lacking self-confidence. And lacking ideas. To make matters worse, she is down by 12 after a six-week stretch during which Perry was hammered by the media, a time during which she had a chance to gain ground. She continues to pursue a strategy of single-shot criticisms of Perry without giving any definition to her own candidacy. She is now at the same level in the polls that Perry was at the beginning of the race. The problem here is not the campaign. It’s the candidate.”

• After a Rasmussen Poll a couple of weeks later that showed Hutchison behind: "The temptation is to say that the race is over, but I’m going to resist it, because of two factors. One is that the media campaign hasn’t started yet. The other is that Hutchison may yet find a way to enlarge primary turnout, though the constant negative attacks of the two campaigns is more likely to suppress turnout.”

• After seeing her first campaign ad: “If she gets in a TV debate with Perry on Texas issues, she’d better have EMS on hand because she is going to get slaughtered... If this is the best she can do, she ought to quit the race.”

• The next week: “If there was any life to the Hutchison candidacy, it would appear in her first media spot. The spot, of course, turned out to be an utter disaster: no sign of intelligent life here.”

• And, finally, a headline from just before Thanksgiving: “One more sign that the Hutchison campaign is intellectually bankrupt.”

It also makes Kay look weak and petty... why is she afraid to face Paul Burka? He may be harsh against Kay, but he has also been harsh against Rick over time... especially on Kay's key campaign theme... cronyism... it almost seems like the wrong person to nix since he could have been very hard on Rick...

What could Paul Burka possibly ask that would be so bad as to require them to nix him completely?

Wayne Slater blogs (link). Excerpt follows...

Political campaigns are notoriously prickly, and both the Hutchison and Rick Perry camps have demonstrated thin skin in advance of next March's GOP primary. Truth be told, campaigns always try to negotiate details -- including members of the panel, if they can get away with it -- in advance of agreeing to debates. In this case, KERA says its policy is that opinion writers don't quality and Burka is an opinion writer. Hutchison campaign manager Terry Sullivan says he didn't want Burka on the panel. In the magazine and on his blog, Burka has taken aim at Hutchison's struggling campaign -- but he's also been critical of Perry.

The Dallas Morning News and WFAA are among the sponsors of another debate in January. No such problem there, at this point. Stay tuned.

Saying "at this point" and "Stay tuned"? Does that mean Wayne Slater may be knifed also?