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The Dallas Morning News says it would not have published a weekend opinion column backing Democrat Gina Hinojosa for Texas governor if it had known the author was working as a paid consultant for Hinojosa's campaign. The paper has added an editor's note to the column after campaign finance reports showed the author's firm was paid $57,000.
The column, titled "I'm a Republican, but Gina Hinojosa has my vote," was written by Suzanne Bellsnyder, a rural newspaper publisher and former staffer for Gov. Greg Abbott, and ran over the weekend, three days before Tuesday's election. In it, Bellsnyder presented herself as a longtime Republican backing the Democratic nominee over the Republican incumbent.
What the column did not disclose, according to a report by Current Revolt, is that Bellsnyder's company, Bellsnyder Group LLC, received four payments from Hinojosa's campaign between June 3 and October 1, totalling $57,000, as shown in the campaign's reports to the Texas Ethics Commission, where the company name appears misspelled "Bellsynder."
Bellsnyder told Current Revolt her firm handles rural outreach for the campaign, work that began as a "diagnostic program" testing whether rural voters could be moved and grew into a full field team in September. She said the op-ed was her own work, "not within the scope of that project," and that the campaign knew she was writing it, though she could not confirm whether the campaign reviewed it before submission. She also said she did not tell the Morning News about the $57,000, saying, "I'm assuming that they knew," and adding, "I did not even see it as an issue." She herself corrected the total to $57,000 on a second call.
The Morning News told Current Revolt: "We were unaware Suzanne Bellsnyder was working for the Hinojosa campaign. We believed her column to be her independent opinion as a journalist and voter. Had we been aware of her work for the campaign, we would have declined the column." The paper's editor's note now states she confirmed she is a paid consultant for the campaign and that the paper "would have declined to publish this piece." The column remains published. Current Revolt said the Hinojosa campaign did not respond to its request for comment in time for publication.
Bellsnyder edits and publishes the Hansford County Reporter-Statesman and Sherman County Gazette in the Texas Panhandle. Current Revolt notes her voting record shows twenty years of Republican primary ballots, and she previously worked to elect Republicans including Abbott. In an August 1 column in the Cleburne Times-Review about Hinojosa's pitch to rural Texas, she disclosed her support for a bill from the last legislative session but not the $6,000 her firm had already been paid by then.
Hinojosa, a five-term state representative from Austin, is the Democratic nominee challenging Abbott, who is seeking a fourth term, in Tuesday's November 3 election. Recent polling has shown a close race.