Did Jim Bowles “Split His Britches” Or Not?

The ladies of the Park Cities Republican Women’s club got more than they bargained for at their Tuesday afternoon meeting. According to some in attendance, Jim Bowles experienced a good old-fashioned 500 Internal Error.

The setting was a meeting room at the Meadows Museum. The Park Cities Republican Women — who I hear know how to party — had invited Sen. John Carona to address their group. Before the official program got underway, Peggy Lundy got up to say a few words about how folks could volunteer to man the phones for Lowell Cannaday, toward getting him the GOP nod in the runoff election to face Lupe Valdez. That’s apparently when the trouble started.

Former sheriff and current candidate Jim Bowles felt that Lundy was stumping for her man (so to speak), so he asked for equal time. Whereupon he took the dais and launched into a rambling jeremiad. Though that’s my word. Lundy described Bowles to me as “emotionally uneven.” She also said he was loud, shouting in fact. About how the Dallas County commissioners didn’t want to see him re-elected, about how Cannaday hadn’t been a Republican very long, etc. Lundy had a difficult time reconstructing what Bowles said.

So did Commissioner Ken Mayfield, who felt he was the subject of Bowles’ attack. Mayfield said Bowles was “blaming his woes and ills on the commissioners, saying there was a conspiracy.” So when Bowles was finally told by an official of the PCRW that he’d spoken long enough, Mayfield stood up to tell the ladies, “What [Bowles] said was a pack of lies.” Mayfield also brought up the fact that Bowles had a Lupe Valdez sign in his yard back when she ran against Danny Chandler.

At which point, Bowles left the dais and approached Mayfield with a bearing that both Lundy and Mayfield described as “out of control.” Lundy compared it to a standoff between a baseball manager and an umpire. Mayfield said Bowles actually put both his hands on Mayfield’s waist while he shouted at him. Mayfield said he had to ask Bowles twice to take his hands off his waist.

(Major aside: Talking to a Dallas County GOP official about the incident, I said, “You kidding me? We don’t have pictures of this? Why didn’t anyone get out a cellphone and capture the magic?” The official’s response: “It wasn’t what you’d call a young, technologically advanced group of people.”)

The whole thing was over in about three minutes. Surely Senator Carona was impressed.

I called Bowles to get his side of the story. When I asked him what happened at the PCRW shindig, he asked me what I was talking about. I told him I’d heard things had gotten pretty heated. “Aw, no,” Bowles said comfortably. “It’s just politics. I’m not going to split my britches in front of people who I’m asking to support me.” According to him, nothing out of the ordinary went down.

Me, I’m betting that the FrontBurner Nation includes a few Park Cities Republican Women who were in attendance. Comments are open.