Dream on, Dream Team

We Won! -- That's Classified

Last Friday, the Chronicle called the campaign office of Dist. 50 Republican candidate Jack Stick to find out where Stick and his supporters would be watching election returns. The person answering the phone politely started to tell us, only to be cut off by a Voice-in-the-Background demanding, "Who is that?" Informed it was nobody but us Chroniclers, the Voice forcefully ordered, "Don't tell them anything!"

Nevertheless, despite this formidable Stick campaign security, using deep-background investigative reporting and highly confidential sources, we were eventually able to discover Stick and many other Travis Republicans holding forth at J.C.'s Bar and Restaurant, near Hwy. 290 and across the interstate from election-return central at the Crockett Center. The gathering wasn't nearly as gaudy as we expected -- aside from a heinous Texas flag shirt here and American flag tie there, the real big-hair set was apparently down at the Convention Center. Several televisions were set to News 8 to follow local counts, and the others were set to Fox (natch) and CNBC (natch again).

At J.C.'s, we overheard Stick taking a phone call and saying, "It's over? We've got it?" and then telling well-wishers that he had indeed defeated Democrat Jim Sylvester. At the Crockett Center minutes later, however, asked to confirm this, Stick told the Chronicle, "No, we don't know anything." Asked if the mysterious campaign info-secrecy was typical of what the press could expect from him as a representative, Stick said, "What the press can expect is an open relationship based on mutual respect, based on a need to get information to citizens in a timely fashion."

Gee, Jack, we're off to a rocky start.