Who is David Alameel and what is he hiding? Is he a closet pro-lifer?

Note: Welcome to any Maxey Scherr campaign followers. If any of you have more info on Alameel's stances, please let me know!

Given the stunning endorsement of David Alameel in the Democratic Senate primary in Texas by presumed Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wendy Davis, which I blogged about yesterday, these are serious questions.

(Update, Jan. 22: He has, per P.Diddie, gone on the record as being expressly pro-choice. That said, what took so long? A week is an eternity in a political campaign. And, as a dentist with a chain of clinics whose likely worth more than $50 million, I'm still skeptical he's an economic liberal.)

Given Davis shot to fame over her filibuster of the Texas Senate's first special session on abortion last summer, it would be nice to know what Alameel's stance on reproductive rights is.

I can't even figure out what Alameel's position on abortion IS! 

When doing my previous post, I did a Google search. Twenty-four  hours ago, it showed no Senate website. 

He now has a Senate campaign website. Part of me wondered if it didn't show up on Google before, like when I searched for one last night, due to some indexing issue. Then I thought, with the Davis endorsement splashed across the top, that it might be new.

But, no. A Whois says it was created Nov. 2011. So, he was either going to challenge Ted Cruz, Craig James and David Dewhurst, or else run Democratic against Paul Sadler and Grady Yarbrough, in the previous go-round, I guess, but then backed out.

Why?

And, are we looking at a career amateur politician? Somebody trying to make up lost ground to this on Michael Fjetland? Or even worse cases of candidates who decide to run, and run, and run, and run?

He would seem to have something to hide. When I first did serious Googling on Jan. 14, his old Alameel for Congress website from two years ago showed up as "dead." Today? It redirects to his Senate website.

Anyway, back to that Senate website.

Whois shows last updated this Jan. 8 ... just in time for the Davis endorsement, and presumably brought out of mothballs at that time. 

And, it says zip, zilch, nada about his positions on any campaign issue.

I found similar last night.

He refused to answer campaign questions from Project Vote Smart, per its page on him, which showed up in my Google search because his Senate website didn't. Maybe his Senate site was being indexed, but it was not on the first page of hits, which makes sense if it was just reactivated.

Also "interesting"? But, of course, unsurprising? He's got pictures of him with Bill and Hillary Clinton. And Davis. But none of him with any of the Republicans' whose campaigns he's funded. Including John Cornyn.

Speaking of ...

Per my second rhetorical question?

His campaign contributions page on the Federal Election Committee website doesn't show donations to explicitly right-to-life organizations. Sorry, no URL from the FEC; when one does a search for a particular donor with the FEC, it doesn't create a URL, but here's a similar list. It does, though, show that outside Texas as well as inside, he's given as much money to Republicans as Democrats in the past, including conservative bastions like the Utah Republican Party, Orrin Hatch, Mike Pence, George Allen and Conrad Burns, not to mention, as noted, all his Texas Republican contributions.

And, his primary opponent, Maxey Scherr, who, by policy, is the candidate Davis should have endorsed (getting beyond the presumptiousness of a person not holding a statewide office endorsing a candidate for statewide office in a primary) points out just what some of these donations mean, vis-a-vis reproductive rights, in a campaign email:

David Alameel, the alleged Democrat running for the US Senate, has bankrolled the anti-choice Republican agenda for years.  I'm not talking about a couple thousand dollars here.  He has given $1.6 million dollars to the Republicans who oppose Roe v. Wade and vote to erode a woman's right to choose at every turn.

Here are a few specifics on Alameel's record on supporting the Republican agenda:

• Alameel gave $150,000 to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst who led the charge to pass anti choice legislation and called women who went to protest in the Capitol an “unruly mob;”
• Alameel gave $4,200 to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who voted to allow any employer to refuse to cover contraception or any health service required under the health reform law for virtually any reason;
• Alameel gave $8,400.00 to Senator Orin Hatch who sponsored an amendment that “would ban any organizations that provide abortions, including hospitals, from receiving Medicaid family planning funds -- even if those abortions are to save a woman's life”;
• Alameel gave $25,000.00 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee who defended the comment that abortions should not be legal even in the case of rape;

So I have a big question that we Democrats need to resolve before the March 4th primary:

If Texas Democrats care about women’s rights and protecting choice, then how can we possibly nominate a candidate who has a long track record of funding the Republicans who are anti-choice?

Boom. Can't put it more succinctly than that. 

There's rumors that Alameel had an anti-choice vid on his 2012 Congressional race website. No wonder he scrubbed that.

The flip side of this is that his campaign contribution record also doesn't show any donations to pro-choice organizations. And, I'll make the assumption that he didn't have a pro-choice stance in his 2012 Congressional primary race. Conservative, and Catholic? He may be quietly pro-life on the personal side while trying to hedge his political bets through silence, with a list of GOP donations like those. 

So, if some people think the second rhetorical question is envelope-pushing, that's fine. There's one person who can "unpush" that envelope.

If not?

Trust me, if I find, or someone sends me, more damning evidence about him, especially on the pro-choice/pro-life issue, I will get it in here. 

And, did Davis ask him about his stances on any issues before, or other than, saluting his "business excellence" and endorsing him? 

On the other hand, Ted McLaughlin, proprietor of Jobsanger, notes this related fact. He says Davis' own website mentions nothing about her stance on reproductive choice. In turn, that would square with my latest speculation as to why she endorsed him.

Was she that directly about tapping into his money train?

Besides, business excellence, even if its real and not fake, is no guarantor of political excellence.

Texas Example A? Ross Perot. Texas Example B? Clayton Williams.

Beyond that, if anything, the lack of transparency from a Daddy Warbucks, or a would-be BMOC, trying to buy his way into politics infuriates me. As it does with Wendy Davis endorsing him.

Even if he's not a closet pro-lifer, beyond saying "I'm conservative," what the hell does that mean on specific issues? Are you against empowering unions? As a dentist, are you against expanding Obamacare to dentistry? Are you against gay marriage, or even gay civil unions?