This past week, the Texas Attorney General race heated up post primary. The incumbent Attorney General chose an interesting personal attack in lieu of any substance. On the front page of the Saturday, March 27 Dallas Morning News he chose to go immediately negative with personal attacks, including: “Radnofsky failed to grasp the issues.” My website pokes gentle fun at my love of issues and wonkiness. My 30 years as a lawyer and college debate training reflect longstanding interest in issues. Folks may disagree with my issue/policy analysis and opinions, but ordinarily come forward with reasons.

As the Democratic nominee I’ve made issue rich attacks, explaining that the incumbent had stumbled in litigation several times, including his incorrect claims to the EPA on his anti pollution record.  Our campaign emphasized his losing litigation against application of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Texas Attorney General's hypocrisy in his suit against health care reform.  We contrasted his current claims against health care reform with his successful advocacy for Texas Attorney General managed children's health care as an option. This advocacy followed the Texas Attorney General's long time embrace of federal mandates which he enforced against certain Texas parents required to make medical child support payments. These are serious criticisms of the Attorney General, who enabled Tom DeLay's mid decade redistricting and gave the opinion which allowed the controversial margin tax, which violated the Texas Constitution according to my legal briefing. 

The general campaign is less than one month old, and my campaign has made it issue rich. For example, when Mr. Abbott claimed Texas, in a public filing, to have "an acclaimed record" on environmental matters, citing the ASARCO pollution settlement, I pointed to the inadequacies of the settlement and Texas' number one pollution rankings.  State Sen. Shapleigh gave the Texas Attorney General plenty of notice that the 100 acre remediation omitted 250 acres of contiguous, ASARCO owned land upstream, impacting cleanup on site.  As Senator Shapleigh explained to the Texas Attorney General, protesting the settlement for its inadequacies, all of the lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals on the eastern acreage upstream flow to the smelter site, over 100 acres of impervious coverage, and down toward the Rio Grande and American Canal. The settlement also ignored ASARCO slag contaminated fertilizer sold in El Paso, affecting properties in the area. 

I’ve challenged Attorney General Abbott to a debate on the issues in January, when he claimed that the Helvering decision by Justice Cardozo was a warning to Congress on the limitations of its powers. I said he wrongly cited Helvering, which stands very much for the opposite proposition. He still hasn't responded on that issue. Are we reduced to seven months of personal attacks, with literally no substance< I will continue to call for reasoned debate on the issues. The Attorney General has made competence an issue; let’s debate competence too.