“Pro-Life Hero” Attacked From the Right After Saying MQ Sullivan Should Register as a Lobbyist

This story originally appeared in The Quorum Report.

After publicly taking a stand against Midland oilman Tim Dunn’s spokesman Michael Quinn Sullivan for failing to register as a lobbyist, pro-life activist Joe Pojman finds himself under attack by what he described as “dark information.”

A new website accuses Pojman, who is the executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, of “being used by establishment powers to cover the tracks of politicians who are weak on life. Even worse, Joe has empowered the healthcare lobby and hospitals to end the life of a patient without family permission.” The site, JoePojman.org, does not indicate who’s behind the message against him.

The site does look quite similar to websites that were paid for by Texans for Fiscal Responsibility to attack Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, and Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo. The site attacking Carona had been taken down but the one attacking Seliger is still online. Sullivan, who of course runs TFR and Empower Texans, denies having anything to do with the anti-Pojman site.

This new scrutiny of Pojman comes after he said in a strongly worded blog post last month that Sullivan is doing a disservice to the entire legislative process:

“…a lobbyist who is paid a six-figure salary by his non-profit organization was issued a stiff fine by the TEC (Texas Ethics Commission) for failing to register as a lobbyist. Although that lobbyist did register in 2008 and 2009, he failed to register the following two years, 2010 and 2011, and was fined $5,000 for each year. Here is the TEC’s Final Order. He claims the TEC should not enforce the lobby registration law because it is an ‘unconstitutional’ restriction on his right to free speech. Yet the TEC points out that the lobbyist ‘has not pointed . . . to any court decision that has held the Texas lobbyist registration statute to be unconstitutional’ to back up that claim.”

Pojman had seen the new site attacking him when Quorum Report called about it. “If there’s such a thing as dark money maybe this is dark information,” he said. “Some of the language is similar to some of the groups that have opposed us.”

Pojman said he would not speculate about who is behind the new attacks on him. But, he did find it “interesting” that he’s under fire after criticizing Sullivan. It is also interesting, he said, that the attacks are being delivered in a way that has the same look and feel of Sullivan’s attacks on others.

After seeing the anti-Pojman site, Ronda Moreland – the producer of the conservative Mark Davis Show in Dallas/Fort Worth, which often features Sullivan as a guest – said she was “ashamed” of Sullivan. “THIS IS AN OUTRAGE,” Moreland wrote on Twitter. When Sullivan responded that he didn’t know what she was referring to, Moreland wasn’t buying it: “You are an embarrassment to conservatives,” Moreland said to him. She called Pojman a “pro-life hero.”

Moreland, who recently worked on the campaign of Sen. John Carona when he was under fire from Empower Texans and others, is very familiar with the website run by Sullivan against the incumbent senator from Dallas and so she immediately saw a connection.

In response to QR’s request for comment about his dustup with Moreland, Sullivan said “I have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about.”

“We put our name on everything we do, and everything we do is focused on policy actions, elected officials and candidates,” Sullivan said. “Cannot say it any clearer, Scott: no idea who or what’s behind it, but it isn’t us.”

Forgetting for a moment the question of who might be driving the attacks on him, Pojman said that he’s really disappointed to see another division within the pro-life movement. “This is probably the worst part of my job. Dealing with schisms of parties who should be smart enough to work together,” Pojman said. “We do not serve mothers and unborn babies by behaving this way.”


Copyright September 23, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved. Reprinted with permission.

 

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