‘Fort Worth is only about 40 percent of the vote’: Putnam plays outsider vs. Granger
Chris Putnam didn’t come out of nowhere.
Now, he’s U.S. Rep. Kay Granger’s Tea Party opponent. But he comes out of the wealthy suburban enclave of Colleyville, where for much of the last six years he has been complaining about Fort Worth.
In 2014, when he was elected to the Colleyville council, he wanted to stop Fort Worth’s TEXRail airport train.
Between North Richland Hills and Grapevine, the train ran a half-block from his house on White Drive.
Then, Putnam decided that a downtown Fort Worth river project was to blame for lavishly landscaped Colleyville’s high water bills.
Fort Worth leaders soon became regular scapegoats for Putnam and the small-town NE Tarrant Tea Party, an Empower Texans afflliate.
Now, he’s running for the Fort Worth congressional seat held since 1997 by former Mayor Kay Granger.
But he says he can win without Fort Worth.
“Fort Worth is only about 40 percent of the vote,” he told a January Republican forum in Hurst.
The district is more conservative than Granger, he said. He’s campaigned heavily in outlying suburbs, Parker and Wise counties.
For Granger, it’s her only serious test.
Putnam is close to winning, for three reasons:
▪ It’s a low-turnout Republican primary, with nobody running close to President Donald Trump or U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
▪ Two factions vote heavily in primaries: church conservatives and gun-rights voters. Neither has strong ties to Granger, a strong-defense Republican in the home district of Lockheed Martin’s F-35.
▪ The Washington-based Club for Growth, which attacked Trump in 2016 primary ads, will spend up to another $1 million on ads to support Putnam in the name of smaller government.
But Granger also has three ways to win:
▪ Make sure Lockheed Martin’s 18,000 workers vote. Granger won funding for 16 more F-35s than the Pentagon even requested, contining the 70-year tradition of Fort Worth’s congressman or congresswoman safeguarding defense jobs.
▪ Make sure women vote. Granger was the first Republican woman from Texas elected to the House, and remains the only woman in the delegation.
“Among the 23 current GOP representatives in the U.S. House, 22 are men and only 1, Kay Granger, is a woman,” Rice University political science professor Mark Jones wrote by email.
“One would think that statistic alone would keep sensible Republicans from attempting to oust Granger in the GOP primary, but apparently that is not the case.”
▪ Remind voters of her endorsements, not only from Trump but also from state Rep. Phil King of Weatherford and new-generation national Republican stars like U..S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Houston.
One gray spectre looms over her campaign: the unfinished bridge in downtown Fort Worth that has become a symbol of the troubled Trinity River Vision flood control and downtown redevelopment project.
In 2006, when county criminal prosecutor J.D. Granger was named to oversee the then-$435 million project, the Star-Telegram Editorial Board criticized Granger’s hiring and wrote that opponents would say he got the job “based not on merit but on Mama.”
As of last fall, he’s no longer the project manager but still works for the regional water agency.
J.D. Granger is not to blame for most of the project delays.
The damage Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans’ levees led the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to require much higher and stronger flood protection. (The Corps has yet to take action here despite worsening rains and storms.)
The idea for showcase bridges turned into an engineering and construction nightmare.
Then, the current White House budget office turned cold to the project.
Now, the prediction in these 2006 pages has come true..
Putnam is within a few points — maybe less — of victory.
Jones, the political science professor, wrote by email that the last time Granger had a tough campaign was her first run for Congress, in 1996, when “Troy Aikman was the Cowboys’ quarterback, Bill Clinton was president and W. [George W. Bush] was governor.
“One would not want to count out Putnam out,” Jones wrote, “although in the current electoral and political climate, President Trump’s endorsement is worth its weight in gold to Granger.”
From Fort Worth, it looks like a close race.
I can only imagine how it looks from Colleyville.
This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
