See the Link yet?

The postal carrier delivered a reminder today of the danger implicit to politely overlooking the grotesque for the sake of political unity. I write of Terry Lowry, proprietor of the Link Letter and a half-dozen other shill corporations who may be better known to voters as the resident street harlot of Republican Party primaries.


For the last decade or more, Lowry has emerged biennially from his broadcasting bordello to ply his well known but seldom acknowledged trade upon would-be officeholders with a too little shame and too many federal reserve notes. For a couple thousand dollars and the privilege of treating Terry to dinner, any candidate could obtain a coveted voter slate endorsement, and with it, some say, instant electoral viability against the habitués of other slate-card call girls with more discerning tastes.

Some years ago, tracking Lowry's trade was no more difficult than searching the Texas Ethics Commission for the many venereal droppings he deposited on expenditure reports under the name "Link Letter." As scrutiny increased, he began to hang his red lanterns more cautiously; payment for a visit could be disguised as an advertisement purchase on his "What's Up" radio program or his ubiquitous "Find a Christian College" company, if reported at all. But those who know Terry also know that an endorsement means payment, presumably to "circulate" his magazine, which conveniently only happens to be in print in months preceding an election.

Terry's house reached a new level of disrepute this week, not simply for his clientèle but by the character of his endorsements-for-hire. Two races in particular stand out, as the Link Letter approached outright slander in its characterization of the opponents of two endorsed candidates. With a lip to match his looseness in other regards, Lowry described the wife of Justice of the Peace contender Richard Risinger as a live-in "paramour." District Attorney candidate Kelly Seigler was spared from no insult, as she was variously described, in a stroke of Lowry's self-inflicted irony, as a drunkard, adulteress, and foul-mouthed mariner. In both races, the attacks were boorish, venomous, and replete with personal malice. While your correspondent takes no public stance in either of those races, true offense is taken in the caddish presentation of paid attacks against them.

Republican voters have long tolerated Lowry's chlamydial presence in our primaries, and candidates - by partaking in his trade - have facilitated its spread. Let his technique, now on display in full printed prurience, be the blue mass that finally expurgates the Link Letter from the body politic of Harris County.