Open Records Request Filed with Lieutenant Governor’s Office Regarding Deletion of Controversial Speeches
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 12, 2012
Contact: Tony McDonald, Senior Vice Chairman
Mobile: (512) 923-6893
Email: [email protected]
Austin, TX — Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) today filed an open records request with the Office of the Lt. Governor requesting that the office turnover all speeches that have been deleted, or “archived” by the Lt. Governor’s legislative office since he has declared his candidacy for the United States Senate in addition to any communications between the Lt. Governor’s office and the Secretary of the Senate ordering those deletions to be made. The request was in response to news which broke Wednesday that the Lt. Governor’s office had deleted a controversial speech delivered by the Lt. Governor from his state website.
In the speech, delivered in 2007 by Lt. Governor Dewhurst upon receiving the “Mr. South Texas” award, Dewhurst stated that he supported “a guest worker program for those here today illegally.” This stance had drawn fire for being at odds with Mr. Dewhurst’s more recent comments in the US Senate race. Specifically, in a debate hosted by KERA on June 22nd, Mr. Dewhurst claimed that he didn’t “support a guest worker program” and “never had.” The contradictory “Mr. South Texas” speech was deleted from the Lt. Governor’s website sometime after Mr. Dewhurst made his false claim in the KERA Debate.
“We have known throughout this campaign that the Lt. Governor is running away from his record,” said Jeff Morris, YCT State Chairman. “But it is appalling that Mr. Dewhurst would try to delete the past in his effort to pull the wool over Texas voters’ eyes. If he expects to be our next Senator, Mr. Dewhurst should stand-by his moderate record and apologize for it, not try to hide from it, or deceive voters about it. We have filed our open records request so that Texas voters can know the full truth about David Dewhurst’s record.”
The request comes in response to statements by a spokesman from the Lt. Governor’s office made to the Associated Press on Wednesday confirming that his office had requested that his speeches be removed from his state website when he entered the US Senate race last year. The spokesman also confirmed that more recent efforts were made by the Lt. Governor’s office to ensure that the speeches were, in fact, removed from his state website.
YCT’s open records request, which is attached, asks the Lt. Governor’s office to provide Young Conservatives of Texas with all pages deleted from the Lt. Governor’s website in the past two years and any communications between the Lt. Governor’s office and the Secretary of the Senate ordering those deletions to be made.
The Lt. Governor’s office is required, by law, to comply with the request within 10 business days. The group hopes that the Office will comply with their obligations under the law in time for Texas voters to see the speeches before the US Senate runoff election on July 31st
Young Conservatives of Texas is a non-partisan organization that has promoted conservatism at universities across the Lone Star State for over three decades. The State’s most active political youth organization, YCT is composed of hundreds of members and alumni who participate in the full spectrum of politics. YCT issues the most respected ratings of the Texas legislature and is the only conservative group to have done so without interruption over the past 19 legislative sessions. For more information about YCT, please visit www.YCT.org.
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