Rick Casey: Flattering quotes in campaign materials? Careful candidates, your opponent may link to this column

On occasion when I was a columnist for the old San Antonio Light or the Express-News or the Houston Chronicle, a candidate for office would call and ask me for permission to print in campaign ads favorable excerpts about them from a column I had written. My response was, “If you ask for permission, I can’t give it to you.” The reason I wouldn’t give them permission is that it could be seen as an inappropriate assist to a campaign. I stood by what I wrote, but I didn’t want to have any involvement in putting my words on their campaign mailers. That went unsaid, but something else didn’t. I told them in friendly tones that if they cherry-picked quotes that were out of tune with a broader context I would feel a powerful urge to provide that broader context to the readers. Again, the more sophisticated candidates understood and were careful. Those conversations came to mind Thursday when one of the oversized campaign cards that are clogging my mailbox arrived from Ivalis Meza Gonzalez, a candidate for Bexar County judge. On one side it has a large photo of U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, together with what appears to be a quote from him saying she “is a passionate, determined leader who will do great things as Bexar County Judge.”

Next to his photo is a circular “badge” saying “ENDORSED.” I’m confident he did endorse, and that he at least approved, if he did not write, the quotation. That’s not the problem with the mailer. The problem is on the other side. The way the quotes were lined up, with ones from the Express-News at the top and the San Antonio Report in the middle, they looked very much like endorsements to me. Gonzalez’s campaign says they weren’t meant that way, and could point to the fact that there is no badge on that side of the mailer like the one next to Castro saying “ENDORSED.” But I failed to get that nuance, just like I suspect many other recipients of the mailing did. And I knew the San Antonio Report does not endorse candidates for elected office. Among other things, having such a direct involvement in political campaigns could endanger the news organization’s nonprofit status. I assumed it was a quote from a story by one of the reporters or columnists made to look — inadvertently or not — like an endorsement. As it turned out, it was worse than that. Before I get to that, I want to put into context a quote attributed to the Express-News that was from columnist Gilbert Garcia, whose work I admire. “Gonzalez has politics in her blood,” the quote reads. “She’s the daughter of the late Choco Meza, a longtime political organizer who also served as the chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party.” The quote is not from an endorsement but from a column by Garcia last Dec. 4 on what was then the lineup of candidates for county judge. In it Garcia has something positive to say about each of the three leading Democratic candidates.