Democrats turn harsh eye on Bush record in Texas

From CNN National Correspondent Tony Clark

MIDLAND, Texas (CNN) -- In the waning days of the campaign, Vice President Al Gore and his running mate Joe Lieberman have turned their attention toward Republican rival George W. Bush's home state of Texas in hopes of turning Bush's gubernatorial record into a liability.

While Texas is considered to be solidly in Bush's electoral column, Democrats are using the socio-economic conditions on Bush's watch to win votes for Gore in other states.

Sen. Joe Lieberman arrives in Texas for a campaign visit.

Lieberman paid a visit to the Lone Star State as part of the Gore campaign's new effort to shift public focus to Bush's own credibility and track record as the state's chief executive. Lieberman began his tour by focusing attention on Bush's environmental record, meeting with residents in Odessa, Texas -- just down the road from a plant that, in 1998, vented foul smoke over poor neighborhoods for three weeks.

"If Gov. Bush will do this to us here in Texas, what will he do if he's president?" one woman asked Lieberman.

The following day, Lieberman stopped at a colonia -- an impoverished settlement near the Texas-Mexico border -- to hear complaints that Bush is not doing enough to help the poor.

"We went to the county. We talked about it. Even we went to Austin to talk about it, so it can help us in the colonias," parish priest Albert Lelo said. "But nothing was done."

Bush aides point to a colonia initiative office that has been set up in Texas to focus on getting residents hooked up to water and sewer lines using federal grant money.

"During the past five years, we have completed 26 colonia projects under Gov. Bush's tenure, and that is serving about 90,000 residents at this point," said Scott Storment, director of the state's colonia initiative.

The latest attacks from Democrats also target some of Bush's remarks in last week's debate.

In response to a question from Gore about hate crime laws, Bush noted that Texas has a hate crime law on the books. But Bush did not support new legislation to strengthen the language of the Texas statute -- a fact noted in newspaper ads featuring the daughter of James Byrd, a black man who was chained to a pick up truck and dragged to his death by three white men, and radio ads with the mother of Mathew Shepard, who was beaten to death in Wyoming apparently because he was gay.

Scott Storment, director of the state's colonia initiative

"Last week you said in the debate that you opposed the Kennedy hate crime bill," Judy Shepard rhetorically asks in the radio commercial. "I want to know why." The bill is referred to as the "Kennedy hate crime bill," because its chief sponsor is Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts.

At the time of Byrd's murder, Bush called for those responsible to be treated harshly.

"It's barbaric behavior, and these people need to be treated as barbarians," Bush said in 1998. But despite the urging of Byrd's family, Bush did not endorse changes to Texas' hate crimes law that would have protected specific groups.

When it comes to helping families without health insurance in Texas, critics also say Bush has failed to do enough for his state.

"We spend $4.7 billion a year on the uninsured in the state of Texas," Bush said in the second presidential debate. But the state comptroller reports three-fourths of that is from charity care provided by doctors and hospitals and paid for by local governments and charitable institutions -- not the state.

On the environment, Bush maintains that Texas has seen an 11 percent reduction in industrial emissions and cleaned up more industrial sites "than any other administration in my state's history."

But Environmental Protection Agency data shows toxic releases in Texas went up between 1995 -- the first year Bush was in office -- and 1998, the last year for which figures were available.

"Mr. Bush likes to point to the fact that Texas is an industrial state and that's why it's so polluted," said Richard Wiles of the research organization Environmental Working Group. "That's not the case. In fact for the industries we look at, California has far more of these big industrial smog polluters. But California enforces the law. Texas doesn't."

Messing with Texas might have a familiar ring to Bush, whose father leveled similar attacks on then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in 1992. How successful Gore and Lieberman will be remains to be seen.