Stretching the Truth: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson Caught in a Misstatement

Texas Republicans are facing a primary to end all primaries should Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison indeed enter the gubernatorial race. 

Lately, in her stump speech, she has started adding bragging that she was “the only state official that stood up against” a state income tax.

As the Dallas Morning News reports:

"I was the only state official that stood up against the governor and the lieutenant governor in 1991,” she told a group last week, referring to her time as state treasurer.  I was the only state official that stood up and wrote op-ed pieces all over the state against Bob Bullock saying we should not have a
state income tax and why it was important,” she said, repeating the assertion at a Round Rock fundraiser and other political stops.”

... Problem is, that’s not true, as Wayne Slater points out:          

“Lots of people were against it — Gov. Ann Richards, Comptroller John Sharp, Hutchison’s opponents in her 1993 U.S. Senate race” [were against it.] Part of a campaign is holding politicians accountable. If a candidate
says something, is it true?”

Thus, the issue is, just saying something during a speech doesn’t necessarily make it true:     

“To say she was the only person out there is false and misleading,” said Perry spokesman Mark Miner. Perry, agriculture commissioner at the time, was also opposed.”

... Even Hutchison campaign spokesman Hans Klingler acknowledges it wasn’t true:        

“Hutchison campaign spokesman Hans Klingler acknowledges “there were other folks out there talking about it. True.” But, he said, Hutchison was the most assertive.”

Problem is, that isn’t quite accurate either:

“In her speech to newspaper editors in Austin last week, she cited her columns in Texas newspapers that produced an “outcry so overwhelming it caused us to have a constitutional amendment against a state income tax. The two Hutchison op-eds published in The Dallas Morning News, one in June 1991 and the other in February 1992, make scant reference to an income tax. “

If her own campaign acknowledges that the Senator is out there using falsehoods during stump speeches, what does that say about her leadership? Volumes -- but not in the way the KBH campaign wants it to…and goes along with her problems convincing conservatives she can be trusted.