Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Perry's office released four days of communication from November, offering some glimpses of how top Perry aides and supporters deal with daily crises, events and criticism.

E-mails released by Gov. Rick Perry's office to an open government activist reveal candid and sometimes heated exchanges among staffers, other state officials and political power brokers in which current and former lawmakers are referred to as racist and evil. 

The e-mails were first obtained by John Washburn, a computer consultant who lives near Milwaukee, Wis. They were obtained Wednesday by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In early November, Washburn launched twice-weekly computer-generated requests to Perry's office, asking for several days' worth of government e-mails. Perry's office destroys its routine e-mails weekly, following a policy started by former Gov. George Bush, but must save them once a records request is filed.

Perry's office released four days of communication from November, offering some glimpses of how top Perry aides and supporters deal with daily crises, events and criticism.

Perry spokesman Robert Black, whose biting comment about a Democratic state lawmaker is included, described the e-mails as "transitory," comparing them to communications such as paper notes that don't have to be retained as government records.

One e-mail from former Secretary of State Jack Rains sparked a discussion about the possibility that former state Rep. Ron Wilson, D-Houston, could be appointed by Perry to a high-level state post, such as the Texas Department of Public Safety oversight commission or the University of Texas Board of Regents.

"I cannot imagine a worse Republican appointment," Rains wrote Perry's office Nov. 2. "I would hope every Republican will urge the governor to never consider this racist for any office."

Wilson is black. After receiving a copy of the e-mail, Perry's appointments secretary, Ken Anderson, wrote in an e-mail that Rains, a veteran power broker in Texas Republican circles, had been drinking when he wrote the message.

"Ron might be called many things, but racist is NOT one of them," Anderson wrote. "Jack must have written that late in the afternoon after coming back from one of his long liquid lunches."

Rains told the Star-Telegram that he wanted Anderson to apologize.

"I don't know Mr. Anderson. I don't drink at lunch, and he doesn't know me very well or he wouldn't say something stupid like that," Rains said.

In one series of e-mail exchanges, aides passed around a news article about state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo.

In the Texas Weekly article, one of Zaffirini's opponents, former Webb County Judge Louis Bruni, calls the longtime senator an "evil, vindictive, mean woman."

"Can you believe this quote?" Kathy Walt, Perry's deputy chief of staff, wrote in an e-mail to fellow top aides.

"Truth can be mean," Black responded.

Zaffirini told the newspaper Black's comments were outrageous and suggested he was angry that she helped lead a successful drive to restore millions of dollars in community college funding that Perry had vetoed last year.

Black declined to discuss the specifics of the exchanges or to say whether apologies would be forthcoming.