Cornyn Builds on Rogers' Criticism of Alameel

As Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kesha Rogers continues to take aim at her primary runoff opponent, David Alameel, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is joining in the criticism of the Dallas businessman.

Cornyn will face off against either Alameel or Rogers in November. This week, Cornyn devoted an entire campaign fundraising email to criticizing Alameel, which suggests he expects Alameel will win this month's Democratic primary runoff. The email included an image originally created by Rogers' campaign. 

"Even fellow Democrats have called out the hypocrisy of Wendy Davis and David Alameel by posting this graphic on Facebook," Cornyn's outreach director, Amanda Shell, wrote, before featuring an image of Davis that mocked her endorsement of Alameel. The image was created by Rogers' campaign.

Cornyn's email was focused on a recent Houston Chronicle article outlining a now-closed legal fight between Alameel's dental clinics and four workers who claimed the clinic's chief financial officer had sexually harassed them. Alameel was never a target of the sexual harassment claims, and he has always denied wrongdoing. A subsequent complaint brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was settled in 2008 "through a consent decree that involved no admission of wrongdoing but required Alameel's clinics to publish a non-harassment policy and conduct training for all his employees and managers," according to the Chronicle.

"Wendy Davis and David Alameel might claim to speak for women, but neither has the track record to back it up," Shell wrote.

Alameel campaign spokesman Sergio Cantu described Cornyn's email as "a little mud ball." 

"This is a rather desperate dishonest attempt by John Cornyn to distract voters from his anti-woman voting record — his hostility to equal pay for equal work — his position on military sexual assault cases which made it more difficult for women to have protections from sexual assault in the military and where he differs from Senator Ted Cruz," Cantu said.