San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Dem hopeful rips Cornyn over ‘racist’ nickname
WASHINGTON — Sen. John Cornyn has called one of his Democratic challengers “Restful Royce,” a Donald Trump-style nickname that its target, longtime state Sen. Royce West, calls a “racist dog whistle” that “plays into stereotypes about African-Americans being lazy, on welfare and the like.”
“He knows that; his staff knows that,” West said in an interview with Hearst Newspapers. “So the question is, is he going to begin doing the thing the president does — trying to be a bully?”
West, a multimillionaire who runs a Dallas law firm, has served in the Texas Legislature nearly 30 years and is one of two Democrats vying in a July runoff election to challenge Cornyn.
West said he’s “asking Cornyn to apologize and demand his campaign stop with the stereotyping and the name calling.” An apology seems unlikely. Cornyn’s campaign declined to comment, but campaign press secretary Krista Piferrer told the Dallas Morning News: “‘Restful’ is a pseudonym for quiet, calm, tranquil and leisurely — all words that describe the pathetic campaign that West has been running; one that lacks any sort of policy depth, financial backing or inkling of grassroots support.
“However, lest we continue to ‘offend’ Royce, and considering his defense of Wendy Davis’ radical positions on abortion and his radical desire to eliminate the oil and gas industry, we will now start calling him Radical Royce. You’re welcome.”
Cornyn has called West’s complaints “ridiculous.”
“I wonder what Royce’s reaction was when … Trump called Jeb Bush low energy. Did he think that was racist?” the senator told the Texas Tribune. “I mean, come on. This is ridiculous.”
Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court justice, is running for his fourth term and never has had a foe get within 12 percentage points in a general election. His campaign has amassed nearly $13 million for a re-election fight many expect to be his closest yet.
Cornyn said West is trying to get attention in a time when nobody’s paying attention to the Democratic runoff.
West faces former Air Force pilot MJ Hegar in the runoff, which is set for July 14. The two emerged from a crowded field of Democrats vying to take on Cornyn.
West has sought to build his support among minority voters in the race, vowing in March to “bring Latinos and African-Americans further together, as well as Anglos and others. We will pull together a coalition of people in this state.”
West’s campaign launched a web ad last week that, in addition to mentioning the “racist dog whistle,” says Cornyn said little or nothing when the president attacked congresswomen of color and called Baltimore, a majority black city, a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
It also accuses Cornyn of making “flagrantly racist comments” about the novel coronavirus.
The senator in March faced criticism for blaming Chinese “cultural practices” for the coronavirus pandemic, saying “these open meat markets that serve everything from bats to tapirs to snake to dog meat, and some of these viruses that have previously been only in animals have then jumped to human beings in creating this particular outbreak, and that’s a very serious problem we need to address.”
“Cornyn has never done this before that I know of. Now all of a sudden he wants to lower himself to start calling people names. That’s Trump politics,” West said. “I’m going to start calling him Trump, Jr. He’s trying to engage in the same kind of bullying tactics Trump has.”