When Politics and Tragedy Collide: Hillary’s Unscripted Moment

The festive rally Sen. Hillary Clinton had planned last week in front of Fort Worth’s old courthouse never happened, and I was there to cover it. The first indication that the tone had suddenly changed was when campaign aides sent the mariachi band packing before they played a note or sang a word. Quickly, word spread among the gathering crowd about why.

As her campaign struggles to stay viable, Sen. Clinton badly needs to court voters in Dallas and Fort Worth. Not a bad idea, since Sen. Barack Obama had been here several days earlier, and D-FW is the biggest metro area in Texas, which even Hillary’s husband Bill has said is a must-win for her March 4. Polls have shown it’s a statistical dead heat here.

Clinton had planned outdoor rallies first in Dallas, then in Fort Worth.

But on the way to a rally in Oak Cliff, her campaign took a tragic detour when a motorcycle officer escorting her motorcade wrecked and died. She was toward the front and apparently didn’t see the accident.

For a presidential candidate in a heated campaign, there is no script for something like this.

Clinton found out the officer had been injured immediately before her Dallas rally began, but it wasn’t known how serious it was, and she went ahead with the event as planned. She talked about the troubled economy, and health care. She hugged emotional supporters. Great images for the news cameras. Everything was going according to script.

But as soon as the rally was over, she learned the officer had died.

What to do.

The senator did the only thing she could. She cancelled the Fort Worth rally (she did appear for a few minutes to explain what was happening to her supporters who had waited in the late morning chill to see her.)

From a purely political standpoint, the message she had intended to send Friday was lost in news coverage of the officer’s death. Sr. Cpl. Victor Lozada was a 20-year veteran and father of four. He had worn a new uniform that day because he was so proud to escort a presidential candidate, the police chief recalled.

A tragedy like this, in the middle of a presidential campaign, offers a glimpse into how a candidate responds when thrown a curve ball and the “politics” of the day have to go out the window.

Senator Clinton was caught on an open microphone as she was leaving the Fort Worth stage, not realizing her comments were still being picked up by our news cameras. She was speaking to Constable Sergio DeLeon, a Hillary supporter and leading Tarrant County Democrat.

“I gotta go,” she said urgently. “I gotta get to the hospital.”

And with no glad-handing or picture-taking, she jumped in her SUV and the Secret Service driver rushed her to the hospital. Police Chief David Kunkle said Clinton privately comforted the officer’s widow for 15 minutes. Obviously there were no news cameras, no photo ops. Nothing to help her candidacy at a time when it desperately needed a boost.

No matter how you feel about her politics or her positions or her personally, whether you’re Democrat or Republican, you have to admit she handled herself admirably. Whether it all helps or hurts her campaign, who knows? (Helps because in the tragedy, people saw her human side. Hurts because of the missed opportunity to rally her supporters.)

The campaign, of course, must go on. From Texas, Clinton headed to Ohio.

Back in Dallas, the officer’s family, his friends and colleagues are left to grieve.

I knew it was a sad day when the mariachi band went home early.

The New Cowboys Stadium

If you haven’t had a chance to see the progress on the new Cowboys’ stadium in Arlington lately, you might be surprised. I snapped this picture with my BlackBerry when I drove by the other day. It is HUGE! The $1 billion stadium is set to open in 2009 and will host the Super Bowl in 2011.

To Catch a Killer

As a TV reporter, I’m often frustrated by how little time we have in a TV newscast to tell a story. Of course we hit the highlights, the headlines. But sadly it’s often the details, the depth, that gets lost.

So when our friends at the Star-Telegram asked us last week to help them kick off their 24-part series, “To Catch a Killer,” it was a pleasure.

We aired a report in our Friday 10pm broadcast, basically teasing the story and inviting people to read the full version in the newspaper, which will stretch over the next month. (In our short TV version we couldn’t possibly get into the depth that the newspaper could in 24 installments.)

Their ambitious story covers every angle of one of the most intriguing crime sagas in Fort Worth in the past decade.

Several of the Star-T’s best reporters — Tim Madigan, Deanna Boyd and Melody McDonald — spent a year exploring the case of convicted killer Andy Ortiz, a gang member and general all-around punk from Fort Worth’s North Side, linked to the strangulation murders of two teenage girls and one young woman over three years.

I hope people have the appetite to devour it all. For those who like crime stories, it’s a great read. It’s also great journalism. To think it’s all true is more than a little chilling.

In this new media age, the newspaper includes a number of video and multimedia elements on their website, including a prison interview with Ortiz himself. If you haven’t had a chance, check it out at
Star-Telegram.com

Mother Nature’s Fury

ATKINS, Ark. — February is a little early for tornado season, but the experts say twisters can strike anytime of the year. We’re seeing proof of that here in Arkansas, where photographer Quincy Thomas and I have come in Stormtracker H3 to cover yesterday’s deadly outbreak.

Thirteen people lost their lives, and a lot more lost their homes, when tornadoes danced across the state. Across the southeast, more than 50 people were killed in the deadliest tornado outbreak in 9 years.

In Atkins, northwest of Little Rock, an 11-year-old girl and her parents died when their home took a direct hit.

As a reporter at NBC 5 for 14 years, and at another station in Oklahoma before that, I’ve covered my share of tornadoes, and their power never ceases to amaze me.

The stories survivors tell are always remarkable. In Atkins, a family of 7 darted into the bathroom as the twister approached. Within seconds, the tornado ripped the house apart. The bathroom ended up being the only room left with a roof. The family walked away. The home is gone.

One thing tornado victims always talk about is how lucky they feel. The first tornadoes I ever covered, I didn’t understand. “What do you mean, you feel lucky?” I would ask. “Everything you own is gone. Your house is a bunch of rubble.” What tornado victims feel, no matter how much damage is done, is how lucky they are just to have survived.

A Teenage Murder and Other Senseless Crimes in Arlington

19-year-old Chad Robinson of Arlington died Friday night. And for what?

The ex-Martin High School student was stabbed to death when he jumped out of his car to help a friend who was being attacked near his home by a group of 15-20 Martin thugs.

Incredibly, his 3-year-old nephew saw it all from inside the car as someone in the crowd pulled a knife and stabbed his Uncle Chad in a main artery in his leg. He basically bled to death. Can you imagine what was going on in the mind of the 3-year-old as he watched this?

His brother Michael says Chad died “with pride” coming to his friend’s defense. Heroic? Maybe, but by what value system? The law of the street? Senseless seems more like it.

By way of background, it started as a squabble between some Martin punks and their assorted cohorts. They planned to fight at Deaver Park around sundown Friday evening. Police had heard what was going to happen, and stationed patrol cars there. When the kids saw the cops, they just moved the melee a few blocks away. To their credit, police tried, but ultimately were powerless to stop it.

“It’s not gonna stop. It’s a never-ending thing.”

Robinson’s murder was just the beginning of a bloody weekend in South Arlington in which nine people, most of them teenagers, were either shot or stabbed. There were three separate incidents. A squabble over a girlfriend Sunday night. A gang war the night before. (When officers arrived they found as many as 100 young people in the street. Three had been shot. Two were 17-year-old girls. The third was a 17-year-old boy.) In Chad’s case, nobody is sure what the fight was about. But does it really matter?

My question is where are these kids’ parents? Weren’t they taught any better than to roam around in armed packs killing each other?

You’ll remember Arlington is the same city where less than two years ago six teenagers made headlines for producing and actually selling violent fight videos. Bands of teens were recorded attacking their victims in vicious brawls. Some of the attacks took place outside a high school. Who would buy such a video? In many cases, other high school kids.

In this culture of violence among young people in Arlington, Chad’s brother is pessimistic about the chances of avoiding future bloodshed.

“It’s not gonna stop,” Michael says. “It’s a never-ending thing.”

Let’s hope he’s wrong. And let’s hope police and city leaders can get a handle on all this. Is this the image of Arlington we want the world to see when the Super Bowl comes to town in just a few years? How many more young people like Chad Robinson will die before the community decides enough is enough?