Athens Review, Athens, Texas

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November 6, 2006

Head trying to throw the book at Combs

As comptroller campaign winds down, local attorney hammers home assertion 1990 novel is ‘pornographic’

By Jayson Larson

A day away from one of the biggest elections of his life, local attorney Fred Head is doing his best to talk about the issues he feels are relevant in his race to become the state’s comptroller.

But talking is becoming a tall order these days. After a weekend of campaigning in Waco, Head’s voice was about give out by Sunday evening.

That didn’t stop him from trying to get his message across as Tuesday’s general election nears.

Head, a Democrat, faces former Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs in the comptroller’s race. A former state representative, Head is spending the last days of his campaign insisting that a romance novel written by Combs in 1990 is pornography.

Head said Combs, a Republican, is a hypocrite for writing such a book and then trying to gain support from “family values” voters.

“Anybody who can read knows it’s pornography,” said Head, who noted that he does not feel everyone who writes romance novels are pornographers. “We don’t need those kinds of folks in state government, or any other kind of government.”

Head said Combs has offered three explanations about the book, beginning with statements she regretted writing the book, then saying it was a non-issue, and finally brushing it aside as being all in fun.

“I wrote a novel about 20 years ago,” Combs told the Athens Review during a fund-raising stop in town in late September. “I have no idea what (Head’s) buying a novel has to do with the comptroller’s office.”

If his goal was to get the word out about Combs’ past career as a novelist, he has succeeded. News outlets around the state, including the Dallas Morning News and the Associated Press, have chimed in on the issue. The News, for its part, editorialized that the campaign for comptroller should move on to issues of substance.

Head thinks that’s exactly what he’s been doing — and said he feels his message must be getting through judging by the $3.2 million he said Combs has spent on advertising in the final three weeks of the campaign.

“I think that stuff,” he said, “is all very relevant.”

———

e-mail news2@athensreview.com

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