10/21/02  Their editorial board must not talk with their reporters because the Austin American-Statesman endorsed Kirk.  Of course, that was before The Dallas Morning News released their poll.

Candidates seek to take their Texas triumphs national; State's attorney general, former mayor of Dallas stand by records By Gary Susswein, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF  Monday, October 21, 2002

. . .Kirk's foes are equally unenthused.     "If it's difficult to have access to him as mayor, we don't expect ready access as a senator," said Mike Buehler, president of the Dallas Firefighters Association. "We hope the citizens of the state of Texas understand that." . . .Cornyn's priorities as attorney general . . .Weeks after he took office in 1999, the former Supreme Court justice persuaded skeptical lawmakers to allow his office to continue to oversee child support collection and to provide extra state money for it. His office soon increased efforts to automatically withhold child support from paychecks, doubled the number of children who receive payments and helped increase yearly collections by 86 percent, from $750 million in 1998 to $1.4 billion last year. . . ."The office has made some significant steps over the past five years towards improving their work in recognition of the need of low-income fathers," said Carlos Romo, coordinator of Texas Fragile Families Initiative, which tries to educate fathers about child support.      Romo said Cornyn's office is one of the few state agencies that has recognized the difference between "deadbeat dads" and "dead broke dads" and tried to help the second group join the work force and pay what it owes.     Cornyn's efforts to eliminate race as a factor in deciding whether to implement the death penalty also drew praise from groups that don't usually like Republicans. So have his actions against nursing homes that provided poor care and his defense of Texans' right to sue their HMOs. . . . "Our work with his office, on balance, has been pretty positive," said Reggie James, director of Consumers Union, a nonprofit group that regularly requests public documents to monitor state agencies and officials. . . .Kirk's track record as mayor of Dallas . . .Although some critics say he did little more than blow hot air as mayor, others said he did, indeed, bring a new spirit to City Hall.  . . . "I can't tell you anything about me that your relatives, your kinfolk, your `peeps' in Dallas can't," Kirk recently told supporters in East Texas. "Whatever they tell you about Ron Kirk is going to be more persuasive than what I can." . . . Kirk's confidence notwithstanding, not everyone says good things about him or his projects.      "Local environmentalists were not as impressed as we would have liked," said David Griggs, political chairman of the Dallas Sierra Club . . . .  Environmentalists were hardly the only group to complain of being left out of Kirk's much-ballyhooed efforts to work with everyone. Police officers and firefighters accused Kirk of ignoring them and public safety.     "He was looking for big-ticket items to show as feathers in his political cap, and public safety issues are not something that show up as big-ticket issues," said Buehler, of the firefighter's association.     Although police salaries went up 34 percent while Kirk was mayor, law enforcement officers say that was in spite of him. Former City Council member and Kirk adversary Donna Blumer said the promise to "end the blame game" was little more than election-year rhetoric.     "What it actually ended up meaning was just stifling dissent. It sounded good, but nobody knew what it meant. Kirk was ruthless in keeping his minions in line," she said.     Blumer, a Republican, said Kirk watered down a new ethics law for city officials. And she said Kirk, who remained a partner at a law firm while he was mayor, and his wife, who served on several corporate boards, benefited personally from the construction of a new arena -- a charge Kirk has vehemently denied.    Blumer also blames Kirk for the $95 million shortfall that has developed since he left office.   "He went ahead with these big-spending projects, doling out tax breaks to his friends and left us holding the bag," she said.      The current mayor, Laura Miller, defeated Kirk's heir apparent . . . .gsusswein@statesman.com; 445-3654