From Capitol Inside, a charge by Rep. Hubert Vo that the Talmadge Heflin campaign is breaking the electoral code by making a phony robocall:
The attorney who defended State Rep. Hubert Vo in an election contest that Heflin filed after a close loss the last time they met has asked the Harris County District Attorney's office to investigate automated phone calls that invited some House District 149 voters to block-walk for the Democrat.The caller or callers claimed to be representing the local gay caucus. But caucus officials say they never authorized the robo-calls or had anything to do with them. While Vo's campaign had planned to have volunteers going door-to-door through neighborhoods in the district to promote his re-election bid on the same day and time that the recorded message mentioned, the legislator and his team say they did not place the calls, authorize them or know about them until contacted by supporters who'd been on the receiving end.
In a terse letter to Donna Cameron Goode, the public integrity division chief in Harris District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal's office, Houston lawyer Larry Veselka requested an investigation into possible violations of Texas Election Code provisions pertaining to political advertising . Veselka specifically pointed to sections in the law that prohibit campaign-related communications that disguise or misrepresent their true source.
"Since these are ongoing violations of the law, I ask that your office investigate and take all necessary action to prevent any further political dirty tricks violating Texas law attempting to interfere with the re-election of Rep. Vo," the lawyer wrote.
Vo's allies suspect the Heflin campaign of being behind the auto-calls as part of a push to make the incumbent look out of step with district residents who voted by a substantial margin for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages in Texas last year. Vo voted against the measure that authorized the statewide vote on the constitutional revision - and his opposition to the gay marriage ban has been an issue in the rematch with Heflin.
But Heflin's campaign denied having any advance knowledge of the calls in question and suggested that the incident was the result of a miscommunication between Vo's campaign and some of its supporters. Heflin Campaign Director Court Koenning suggested that the GOP nominee is too busy noting Vo's votes on issues such as education, immigration and crime to spend time cooking up schemes like Democrats envision.
Hi this is Richard with the Hubert Vo campaign. I'm calling on behalf of the Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Political Caucus. This weekend we'll be walking door to door in your neighborhood for Hubert Vo. We want to thank Hubert Vo for voting for gay rights in the last legislative session. If you would like to join us in walking for Mr. Vo please call us at 713-521-1000. If you see us in your neighborhood come say hi. If you can't join us this weekend, we hope you will join us in voting for Hubert Vo because Vo votes for gay rights. Thank you. Bye-bye.
That leads to reason number two, which is that if the GLBT Caucus were organizing a blockwalk, they wouldn't do it via a shotgun robocall. They'd most likely do it via email, but even if it was a robocall, it'd be to a very targeted list. You want to have some idea of who you're getting for a blockwalk. It's not at all the same as a get-out-the-vote call.
All of that is suggestive, but certainly not conclusive. Surely the Harris County DA's office, if it cares to take any action, will be able to determine the origin of the call, and from there the rest will follow. This is the relevant statute.
ยง 255.005. MISREPRESENTATION OF IDENTITY.(a) A person commits an offense if, with intent to injure a candidate or influence the result of an election, the person misrepresents the person's identity or, if acting or purporting to act as an agent, misrepresents the identity of the agent's principal, in political advertising or a campaign communication.
(b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.
Vo was one of only 29 no votes on the emotion-charged proposal, which seven other Democrats and one Republican refused to touch while registering as present but not voting when it came up. The constitutional amendment was approved by 76 percent of Texas voters statewide including 72 percent of those who cast ballots in Harris County. The ban passed in every county of the state with the exception of Travis County where state government is based. Voters in only one state House district in Houston and one in Dallas turned thumbs down on the measure. Those districts are represented by Republican State Reps. Martha Wong of Houston and Dan Branch of Dallas. Wong punched a white light to signify that she was present but not voting while Branch was in the majority that voted to send the question to voters. While Vo opposed the gay marriage prohibition as a representative from a district that favored it, Wong's decision to not vote against it has come back to haunt her in a part of Houston where the gay population is concentrated.While Vo doesn't go out of his way to trumpet his support from gay groups, he doesn't try to hide it either. The first-term lawmaker lists the Houston GLBT Political Caucus as one of about two dozen organizations that have endorsed his re-election campaign. The list includes representatives for teachers, doctors, police officers, realtors, labor, Latinos, the Farm Bureau and other Democrats.