Orlando Sanchez thinks the Houston Independent School District (HISD) should be taken over and run by our state government. The former Harris County treasurer said so late last year during a press conference at Northwest Mall across from HISD HQ.
“Taxpayers are fed up and it’s time for the governor and the Texas Education Agency to step up and make sure that children in HISD . . . get an education,” Sanchez declared.
Not everyone attending the press conference agreed with Sanchez. Some were quite vocal in expressing their opinion that he was all wet – which he was in due course when a man in the crowd dumped water on him.
Sanchez is now seeking to soak his assailant, Steve Striever, with a $1 million lawsuit filed last week in Harris County District Court.
We can understand his distaste for being doused unexpectedly and have to agree, judging from a video of the incident, that Sanchez doesn’t look good as a wet head, but one million dollars in damages for a mere sprinkling?
“Defendant’s conduct was outrageous, malicious, or otherwise morally culpable conduct that should be penalized by having exemplary damages awarded against him,” Sanchez’s suit asserts.
Outrageous? Not really. Politicians speaking in public have things thrown at them all the time. Maybe they don’t deserve it. Maybe they do. Maybe the person throwing something is intemperate or unhinged, or maybe he’s just sick and tired of public servants acting like tinpot dictators.
It was only water, right? There are plenty of politicians who would prefer to have water thrown at them in lieu of cream pies and worse.
Malicious? No doubt. Dumping water on another person’s head is never a friendly gesture, except when done to babies and converts in religious rites and to winning coaches after championship games.
Maybe Striever’s defense will be that he wanted to baptize Sanchez, or subject him to the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Pending adjudication, maybe some progressive litigator could have Sanchez’s damp dome be declared a body of water or a navigable waterway, subject to EPA restrictions.