Candidate's cross-dressing adds to GOP race in Texas

By Jay Root and Martha Deller
Knight Ridder Newspapers

	KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS Kay Walls left, and her husband, Sam Walls, a Republican candidate in Texas, who has acknowledged dressing up like a woman.
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But folks in Johnson County — and staunch conservatives at that — don't appear to be rushing to throw stones at Sam Walls, who has acknowledged dressing up like a woman but won't say much else.

On the eve of today's hotly contested Republican runoff for a state House seat, Walls continued to shoo away the media, but his friends and supporters rushed to his defense, highlighting a lifetime of philanthropy and brushing off the controversy as irrelevant.

"It's not like he murdered somebody," said Peter Svendsen, a country-music promoter in Cleburne, who has been a friend and neighbor to Walls since the 1970s.

Svendsen notes that Walls has given thousands of dollars to a charity that helps abused children, that his family founded Harris Methodist Walls Regional Hospital, and that he was a GOP activist back when the party could hardly fill a church pew in Cleburne.

"He's never been profane. I'd say the worst thing I've seen Sam Walls do is chew on a cigar," Svendsen said. "I've never seen him drunk. He's always been a gentlemen, a class act."

	Sam Walls

The Sam Walls that appears in photos wearing dresses, earrings and lipstick is not the Cleburne investor and philanthropist his supporters say they know. But rather than condemn Walls, they are expressing anger at his critics and blame his Republican opponent, real-estate agent Rob Orr, for helping to fuel the effort to get Walls to withdraw from the race.

Orr's campaign denies any involvement in the controversy.

"When you're a giant, people try to cut you down," said Cleburne Mayor Thomas Hazlewood, who has known Walls for more than 20 years. "They're not going to kill the giant Sam has made of himself."

Walls, whose family made a fortune selling men's work clothing, is the kind of guy who makes things happen in Johnson County, Hazlewood said.

"He can call George Bush. He can call (U.S. Sen.) Kay Bailey Hutchison," Hazlewood said. "He has access across the board."

Campaign records show that Walls has given generously to a variety of candidates, including the state representative he wants to replace: Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, a Republican from Burleson, Texas, now running for a seat in the U.S. Congress.

Walls' wife, Kay, was appointed by then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1999 to the North Texas Tollway Authority. She gave his presidential campaign $1,000 the same year, and Sam Walls gave the Republican National Committee $2,000 a year later.

His supporters say they knew nothing of Walls' cross-dressing and accept his explanation that the cross-dressing occurred "long ago." What "long ago" means is not clear.

The photos came from a mobile home, registered in Walls' name, that was repossessed in 2002.

The singlewide trailer was once anchored at Chalet City, a subdivision of modest mobile homes in Crowley in North Texas.

A resident of the subdivision, who would give only his first name, Johnny, said he had lived catercorner from the lot where Walls' trailer was parked for more than 12 years. It had bars on the doors and windows, but he said he never saw anybody come or go.

"I never actually saw a human being," he said.

While Walls' supporters are circling the wagons in his southern Johnson County stronghold, voters in Burleson, the home of opposing candidate Orr, appear less accepting of his cross-dressing. District 58, which contains both Johnson and Bosque counties, is one of the most conservative House districts in Texas.

Jim, a farmer in his late 60s who lives just south of Burleson, said he couldn't vote for a cross-

dresser.

"You couldn't get a dress on me if you hog-tied me, and I might hold a woman's purse for a minute but I wouldn't carry it around very long and most men feel the same way," Jim said.

But in a town made famous for its prosecution of Joanne Webb, who is awaiting trial after selling banned sex toys to undercover police, what's striking is the tolerance voters are showing.

"Everybody has their past. (Bill) Clinton smoked pot. Bush had his problems with the military," said Casey King, of Burleson. "But if I thought he was still cross-dressing, I wouldn't vote for him."

Even the Republicans who want Walls out of the race go out of their way to describe the former GOP county chairman as a pillar of the community.

Bob Alford, a Republican sheriff who urged Walls to withdraw, choked back tears when he described how he told the man he described as his mentor that he could no longer support him.

"I've lost a lot of sleep. I've been praying over this thing," Alford said. "Sam has a moral issue that he's got to deal with."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company