Chris Daniel's interview, part 4 (in which there is a vast conspiracy against him)

 Posted on October 05,2010 in Uncategorized

In his interview with David Jennings (my earlier commentary, in three parts, is here, here, and here), Chris Daniel renounces the idea of illegally redacting documents as they are filed, claiming that Chronicle Reporter Chris Moran "unfortunately misquoted" him. (Because, y'know, journalists are misquoting people all the time.) Moran published a clarification on his Houston Politics blog:

District Clerk candidate Chris Daniel says his position on redaction of court documents was misrepresented in today's story on the race....My notes from the interview show that Daniel told me the clerk's office should use technology to redact documents as they are entered into the system. There's no mention of online redaction, at least according to my notes.

Daniel then complains to Jennings about "surrogates" attacking him. I suspect that by "surrogates" he probably doesn't mean actual surrogates, but rather people who feel that Loren Jackson should remain the District Clerk. (By which definition, Loren Jackson has at least 1,270 "surrogates," according to the the Houston Bar Association's 2010 Judicial Preference Poll, in which Jackson crushed Daniel 1,270 to 200 while most every other Republican candidate was at least 40 percent over her opponent.)

Now, certain questions have arisen about Chris Daniel's personal life. If Daniel didn't introduce the topics, they would remain personal and be entirely irrelevant. This summer he volunteered that he and Michael Wolfe are not a couple. That's not exactly a denial that he is gay, but it's still an odd thing for a straight man to say; if Daniel weren't such a lightweight, I would think that he was trying to get people talking about his sexuality.

There is some buzz about Daniel's religion as well. I don't care whether his faith is real or, as Jennings might put it, "expedient." Whether he believes in Jesus Christ, Zoroaster, or Zool should make no difference. To his core voters, though, it would make a difference, and it would serve them right if they elected him thinking he was one thing when he was in fact another.