The Democratic primary race in the newly created Congressional District 35 has taken some unpredictable turns in the last few months, but few have been as strange as the new mini-controversy over the age of Sylvia Romo, Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector and a candidate for the seat.
Romo, who is striving to be the first Latina in this state to make it to Congress, recently met with the editorial board of the Austin American-Statesman. During the interview, Statesman reporter Tim Eaton asked Romo for her age. She dodged the question by saying, "I never discuss that," according to a column by Ken Herman that appears in Wednesday's Statesman. Herman writes that after follow-up questions from Eaton yielded no answer, Romo explained that at the age of 10 she made the "conscious decision" that "age should not be important."
A simple rule of politics, however, is that the more you try to deflect attention from an issue, the more you end up putting a spotlight on it. In his column, Herman not only revealed that Romo is 69, he devoted an entire column to her reticence to talk about age. The column's headline is the final cut: "Candidate, nearing 70, won't divulge her age."
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