WASHINGTON – Sometimes you have to wonder how much Texas' governor and its senior senator could have accomplished if they'd managed to set aside rivalry and actually, you know, cooperated.

Case in point: cellphones in prisons.

Does anyone like the idea of inmates using smuggled phones to threaten state officials, coordinate drug deals and gang attacks, and intimidate witnesses?

Last week, aides to Gov. Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison were throwing elbows and rummaging through files to prove who got to the issue first.

On Thursday, Hutchison released a letter from 20 governors, Democrats and Republicans, who support the cell jamming bill she has pushed since January. Perry's name was notably absent.

"If another senator's name was on it, maybe he would have signed it," said the senator's spokeswoman, Lisette Mondello.

The governor's aides said he had sent an earlier, separate letter on the issue, which Hutchison's office said it never received.

The legislation has obvious political appeal, especially in a GOP primary, and it's on the senator's short list of goals for the final weeks of her 16-year Senate career.

The governor's side countered that Hutchison – who plans to resign by December to focus full time on ousting Perry in the March primary – may have taken it up only after Perry asked Texas lawmakers for help.

Perry aides provided a letter dated Nov. 25, 2008, addressed to the senator and the other 33 Texans in Congress, in which he asked for help in loosening the ban on phone jamming.

Inmates nationwide have committed crimes using smuggled phones. But the FCC says that even prisons can't get around the 1934 law that forbids intentional interference with radio transmissions, until Congress says otherwise.

"The governor had already sent a letter to the delegation asking them to address the issue ... almost a year ago," said Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle, explaining why the governor felt no need to join the other 20 governors who embraced his rival's legislation.

"We're pleased that Congress is now addressing this issue," Castle said, carefully avoiding any praise for Hutchison's championing of the cause and adding that Perry still needs to thoroughly review the bill for loopholes and undue bureaucratic burdens.

Both Perry and Hutchison focused on the issue last fall, but not in concert, after a death row inmate made threatening calls to state Sen. John Whitmire of Houston.

Perry ordered a systemwide lockdown so guards could search for contraband phones, and wrote Texans in Congress asking for the jamming authority.

Hutchison conferred with prison officials in Texas and other states and with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, and began drafting a bill that she filed in mid-January. (A House version filed at the same time by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, remains stuck in a subcommittee.)

Hutchison, as senior Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, arranged for Whitmire to testify in July. The committee approved her bill Aug. 5. The full Senate may vote this month.

As for Perry's Nov. 25 letter, Mondello said Hutchison's aides keep meticulous files and conducted an "exhaustive search" that uncovered no trace of it.

"We sent it," insisted Castle.

She also provided an e-mail dated Nov. 25 from the state's chief lobbyist in Washington, Ed Perez, to Hutchison's chief of staff (and top aides to other Texas lawmakers) offering a heads-up about the letter.

Either way, Mondello called it "unfathomable" for Perry to withhold an endorsement now for a bill that accomplishes a mutual goal.

But really, it is fathomable. This friction has persisted for years between Texas' two senior politicians – even, we know now, when they agree both on a problem and its solution.

Todd J. Gillman is Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News.