Off the Kuff Rotating Header Image

Tiffany Thomas

Please shut up, CM Travis

Dec 31st, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
23 comments

And delete your Facebook account while you’re at it.

CM Greg Travis

The mayor, city activists and some of District G Councilmember Greg Travis’ colleagues are denouncing offensive comments he made online about former first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

On Facebook, Travis posted a meme that shows a photo of Obama, speaking demonstratively while sitting down, next to a photo of current First Lady Melania Trump, who has her legs crossed. Travis wrote, “Yep. Just saying,” on the post. In comments, he said affirmative action, the program that gives minorities preference in university admissions, was the reason Obama was admitted to Harvard Law School.

“It’s called Affirmative Action. Doesn’t take much—she was born with her qualification,” Travis wrote. “She isn’t the brightest bulb in the lot.”

Travis also wrote that Harris’ career was owed to a former romantic partner. Without him, Travis said, “she’d be working in an office cubicle.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “would be nothing without Bill,” he wrote.

Ashton Woods, a founder and leader of Houston’s chapter of Black Lives Matter, said on Twitter the comments are evidence Travis “hates black women” and wrote: “DEMAND HIS RESIGNATION,” with a call for people to sign up to speak at the next city council meeting on Jan. 5.

“It’s enough. We don’t need to talk representation at city council, because if he says things like this what other ideologies is he taking with him to work… with the most women ever elected to Houston city council,” Woods said. “It says to me that he has a problem with well-educated Black women.”

Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office said he asked Travis to take down the post and comments, which it described as “offensive.”

“The mayor is disappointed by the post and has no other comment at this time,” Mary Benton, Turner’s communications director, said.

Travis is unapologetic. He said the post was a meme that has circulated for years, and the comments represented his opinion. He only deleted them because the mayor asked him to do so “as a friend.”

The Press has screenshots, if you missed seeing the posts in question. No question that CM Travis is an idiot and a waste of space on Council, but there’s literally nothing anyone can say or do that will get him to resign, and he’s in his second term so he won’t face the voters again. CM Tiffany Thomas called for Travis to be censured, citing the precedent of then-CM Jim Westmoreland, who was censured in 1989 for his egregiously racist statements about the late Congressman Mickey Leland. I’m fine with that, but we should recognize that things like censure only work on people who are capable of feeling shame and remorse. Maybe the Council members who are justifiably angry about this can find a way to shun CM Travis until he expresses some regret for his actions. I’m not exactly sure how that would work, but it’s a thought.

Five things we could do now for police reform in Houston

Sep 2nd, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
12 comments

Seems like a good list to me.

Five city council members on Monday sent a letter to Mayor Sylvester Turner outlining police reforms they said Houston can implement immediately, including a “complete overhaul” of the Independent Police Oversight Board, a cite-and-release ordinance and incentive pay for officers who live within city limits.

In the letter, Councilmembers Edward Pollard, Tiffany Thomas, Jerry Davis, Martha Castex-Tatum, and Carolyn Evans-Shabazz say the oversight board, which reviews probes by the Houston Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, needs a reboot.

“We are convinced there must be a complete overhaul of the Independent Police Oversight Board (IPOB),” the letter says. “We have no confidence in the current format. We must create a structure of guidelines that governs the function of the new board to restore public trust with public input.”

They recommended the board have complete autonomy and investigative authority, with full access to all unclassified information from HPD.

The council members also say the city could implement an online, independently-maintained dashboard showing complaints of police misconduct, HPD policies, guidelines, “and other relevant information.”

“This platform will be an innovative measure to not only hold officers accountable for misconduct, but will increase police community relations by being transparent in a data driven fashion,” the letter said.

The letter outlines 25 items they asked be included in the next contract between the city and the Houston Police Officers’ Union.

See here and here for some background. There’s a copy of the letter embedded in the story, or you can see it here. The letter does not mention any budget items and also does not contain the signature of CM Letitia Plummer, who unsuccessfully introduced an amendment to this fiscal year’s budget to redirect some funding for HPD to other services, as well as other reforms. I honestly don’t know what capacity exists to amend the city’s budget during the fiscal year, so it may be that that’s a moot point. As for who did and didn’t sign this letter, in the absence of any Council members commenting on it all we can do is speculate.

As we know, individual Council members cannot introduce an ordinance for debate on their own, so whether or not anything happens here is up to Mayor Turner. We are due to get the vaunted Task Force recommendations in the next week or two, and I’m guessing Mayor Turner will prefer to use that as a starting point for whatever he wants to achieve. You can always call his office, as well as your district Council member and the five At Larges to let them know what you think.

Rental assistance

Aug 7th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

We’re going to need a lot more like this.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Houston on Wednesday added another $20 million to its rent relief program, aimed at helping thousands of tenants catch up on late rent payments.

City council voted unanimously to add the money Wednesday, more than doubling the initial program the city launched in May. Private donors, including Texans owner Janice McNair, gave $5 million toward the effort, and the city devoted another $15 million from the federal money it received from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The program requires concessions from landlords for them to receive the funds. They must forego eviction proceedings through September for all of their residents, even if only one of them is set to receive assistance. They also must waive late fees and interest on late payments, and agree to a payment plan for residents that are behind.

“The concern was, you took the money, and then a month later, you’re still trying to get them out,” said District F Councilmember Tiffany Thomas, who chairs the council’s housing committee.

The application window will open first for landlords, and then their tenants will be able to apply. Thomas said that will open some time in the next two weeks.

Mayor Sylvester Turner, who has rejected calls for a grace period ordinance that would give residents more time to catch up before getting evicted, said the assistance and resulting concessions provide for a more fruitful approach. He said a grace period worsens the financial liability those tenants will have to cover later down the road.

“When their grace period comes to an end, they are facing a tsunami of a situation where the financial obligation has not been eliminated,” Turner said of cities that have implemented similar policies. “What will happen is that at the end, the hole is so much bigger.”

Advocates have said a grace period would provide blanket coverage to residents who will not get access to the city’s relief funds, which Turner and others have acknowledged cannot meet the overwhelming demand.

See here for the city’s press release. I’m not sure why the city preferred this approach, but I do know that it’s in everyone’s interests to keep people in their apartments if at all possible. Losing their homes, especially at a time like this, will have devastating and long-term consequences, and not just for the newly homeless people – there will be more strain on the city’s social services, and it’s not like there will be a long line of other folks waiting to take the now-vacant apartment. We really need the Senate to act on the bill that the House passed months ago, because there are millions of lives at stake. If nothing else, surely we can all agree that putting a bunch of people out on the street is not going to help the economy. Keeping folks in their homes is the right answer no matter how you ask the question. All levels of government need to do their part.

Budget amendments and a fight over police reform

Jun 10th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

That’s your City Council agenda for today.

City council members have authored more than four dozen amendments to Mayor Sylvester Turner’s proposed budget to trim spending, create new sources of revenue and expand police accountability measures.

Council members will take up the proposals Wednesday when they consider the mayor’s $5.1 billion budget plan, which is coming forward at an especially fraught moment. The city’s usual budget challenges have been aggravated by the economic crisis tied to COVID-19, while activists are gaining traction around the country in their calls to defund or scale back police departments after the death of Houston native George Floyd.

Many of the 50 budget amendments are a direct response to those topics, including one from Councilwoman Amy Peck that would establish a group to audit all city departments and programs, then recommend whether they should be continued with certain changes, folded into another program or dissolved altogether.

The process would in some ways parallel the zero-based budgeting process used for Turner’s spending plan, which required department heads to analyze every function and justify each dollar spent rather than adding to existing budgets. Peck said Turner’s administration never showed council members the detailed results of zero-based budgeting — and her so-called sunset review commission has a broader scope.

“With the sunset review, it’s looking at every line item, but it goes past that,” she said. “It involves citizens and stakeholders and really gets into whether (the program is) serving the constituents, whether there are ways to consolidate, if there are technology advances to make. There could be some program within a department that’s just not needed anymore.”

Other cost-cutting amendments include Councilwoman Sallie Alcorn’s proposal to study where Houston and Harris County can join forces instead of providing duplicate services, and a program suggested by Peck and Councilman Robert Gallegos that would allow city workers to voluntarily take unpaid time off. Councilman Greg Travis also proposed letting private firms compete with city departments for certain contracts, or studying whether it would save money to do so.

[…]

The mayor has expressed opposition, meanwhile, to a sweeping police reform amendment introduced by Councilwoman Letitia Plummer that would eliminate nearly 200 vacant positions in the Houston Police Department. The funds saved by getting rid of the positions and a cadet class would go toward beefing up de-escalation training and the police oversight board, among other proposals sought by those pushing for police department reform around the country.

Turner repeatedly said during last year’s mayoral campaign that he wants to grow the police department by several hundred officers, and he rejected the idea of reducing the police department’s budget during an appearance on CNN last week.

With a budget of over $900 million that is devoted almost entirely to personnel, HPD is by far the city’s largest department and would have little room to cut spending without diminishing the police force. The police union previously negotiated a 3 percent pay bump from July 1 through the end of the year, accounting for much of the department’s proposed budget increase.

On Monday, five black Houston council members released a series of proposed HPD reforms that include many of the measures contained in Plummer’s plan, but without the spending cuts. The letter included every black member of council — Martha Castex-Tatum, Jerry Davis, Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, Edward Pollard and Tiffany Thomas — except Plummer.

In a statement, Plummer said, “After reading my colleagues’ open letter, it appears we all want the same things. I look forward to having their support for my amendments on Wednesday.”

See here for some background, and here for the five Council members’ proposals. Here it must be noted that the police union was a big supporter of Mayor Turner, and they were the instigators of the lawsuit that killed the firefighter pay parity referendum. He campaigned on hiring more police, and that’s where he is. That said, nine votes on Council can pass a budget amendment, and in addition to those six black Council members there are five other Democrats – Abbie Kamin, Robert Gallegos, Karla Cisneros, David Robinson, and Sallie Alcorn – who should be open to persuasion on this matter. Maybe some of the Republican Council members might be willing to trim some budget as well – CM Dave Martin received no money from the HPOU PAC in 2019, for instance. Point being, there’s plenty of room to get at least the group of five amendments passed, if not the Plummer amendment. There’s a rally this morning at City Hall to build support for that. There won’t be any better opportunities anytime soon.

Time for a task force

Jun 7th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

A good step, but it needs to be followed by real action.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Mayor Sylvester Turner plans to appoint a task force to review Houston Police Department policies amid growing calls for reform following local and nationwide protests over the death of former Houston resident George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

Turner’s office said the task force would focus on ensuring accountability and transparency within the department. He announced the task force Thursday night during an hourlong ABC13 town hall on police and community relations.

“It’s so important to hold onto the trust between the community and police because the two have to work together, not be against one another,” Turner said. “Establishing that confidence and that trust is a critical component. That’s why it’s important for all of us to listen, to listen to what people are saying, to listen to the reforms that people want to see put in place, and then to act on those reforms. And we’re going to seek to do that.”

It was not clear Friday when the mayor would appoint people to the task force or when it would begin meeting.

Turner publicly has not endorsed any specific reform, though he consistently has emphasized the importance of police training in television appearances this week.

[…]

Conversations about potential reforms began before Floyd’s death, Councilwoman Tiffany Thomas said. After a string of six fatal police shootings here in Houston, several council members met privately with Police Chief Art Acevedo to address the deaths.

Thomas said she would favor strengthening the oversight board; ensuring there are public and readily available records of complaints made by both citizens and officers against their colleagues; and having some sort of research arm — either within the city or with an external partner, such as Texas Southern University — that could parse through data to illuminate other options.

Councilman Ed Pollard has offered a budget amendment to create an online database where residents can view complaints made to the police department. Pollard said the information would boost transparency and give the public and policymakers data to inform future reforms. His amendment calls for building off an existing platform, called Project Comport, that is free and already used in other cities, though Pollard said it would carry some costs to set up.

“We (would) have a public, online platform that is able to compile the data and put it out in real time on different complaints,” Pollard said.

Councilwoman Letitia Plummer has proposed the furthest-reaching budget amendment. It would eliminate 199 vacant HPD positions in the budget and one of five planned police cadet classes. Plummer seeks to redirect about $11.8 million of the proposed police funding toward a package of reforms, including subpoena-empowered oversight board probes; increased spending on re-entry and My Brother’s Keeper programs; and creation of a mental health unit to respond to some low-risk calls instead of regular patrol officers.

See here for more about CM Plummer’s budget amendment and plenty of other reform ideas, some of which are within Councils’ power and others of which are not. The formation of a task force or blue ribbon committee is always the first thing done when there’s a serious problem that demands actions that some people are very much going to not like. It buys time, it diverts energy, and if you’re not careful the formation of the task force can end up being the sum total of action taken. Look to see who’s on the task force (and how long it takes for it to be named), what their timeline and mandate are, and who does or does not commit to take specific actions based on their recommendations. Then remember that it exists, and that we’re waiting for it to do its job, and that the longer it takes the less momentum there is.

Mayor Turner and others test negative for COVID-19

May 15th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

They were tested following the news about CM Plummer’s infection.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and two of his top aides have tested negative for COVID-19, the mayor’s office announced Thursday.

Turner was tested for the novel coronavirus Tuesday by Kelsey-Seybold, the health care provider for most city employees. Turner’s chief of staff, Marvalette Hunter, and one of his aides also tested negative Thursday, while another aide and members of Turner’s security detail were awaiting test results.

The mayor urged Houstonians to get tested even if they are not exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19.

“The results will help you take better control of your health during the pandemic,” Turner said. “While my test result was negative, I will continue to practice social distancing and wear a face covering to do my part to stop the virus from spreading in our community.”

Several city council members also got tested Tuesday, according to Turner’s office, a day after Councilwoman Letitia Plummer learned she had tested positive for the virus. At least two council members — Sallie Alcorn, who sits next to Plummer, and Tiffany Thomas — are quarantining and skipped Wednesday’s council meeting. Alcorn tested negative for COVID-19, one of her staffers confirmed Thursday.

Plummer’s staff members also were tested for COVID-19 earlier this week. She began quarantining at home last Thursday, one day after attending a city council meeting.

See here and here for the background. At least now we know who else had been self-quarantining; that detail was not in the previous story. I presume none of CM Plummer’s staff tested positive, though we don’t know that for sure. Not much else to say except I hope this is the extent of it.

January 2020 campaign finance reports: City of Houston

Feb 8th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

We’re done with the 2019 Houston election cycle, but there are still things we can learn from the January 2020 campaign finance reports that city of Houston candidates and officeholders have to file. Other finance report posts: My two-part look at the State House was here and here, Harris County offices were here, statewide races were here, and SBOE/State Senate races were here.


Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
====================================================
Turner       359,567    780,735        0     293,503
Peck           1,075     17,435    5,000          72
Davis          4,000     14,164        0     139,068
Kamin         24,158     93,810        0      18,717
E-Shabazz     14,394     18,965        0       2,145
Martin        14,600     48,754        0     148,989
Thomas        20,263     21,642        0      11,675
Travis         9,850     70,904   21,000      51,484
Cisneros      15,050     44,687        0      24,169
Gallegos      16,850     46,055        0      76,776
Pollard        4,525     25,007   40,000       1,882
C-Tatum       16,250      8,520        0      71,747
Knox           6,900     29,075        0       4,302
Robinson      11,625     82,515        0      40,735
Kubosh        14,770     31,570  276,000      94,540
Plummer       71,168     83,491   21,900      11,068
Alcorn        21,535     76,313        0      16,374
Brown          1,650    102,340   75,000      14,128

Bailey             0      2,400    2,600          70
Jackson       43,845     18,338        0      28,343

Buzbee         1,903    460,888        0      63,531
King          29,925    161,047  420,000      11,567
Parker             0     38,750        0      26,184
Laster             0     12,579        0     162,209
Salhotra      24,010     75,837        0       9,060
Sanchez       40,056     92,678        0      10,636
Edwards          499    109,812        0      89,987

HouStrongPAC       0     10,000        0      51,717

Nominally, this period covers from the 8 day report before the November election (which would be October 27) to the end of the year, but for most of these folks it actually covers the 8 day runoff report to the end of the year, so basically just the month of December. In either case, this is the time when candidates don’t raise much but do spend down their accounts, as part of their GOTV efforts. For those who can run for re-election in 2023, they will have plenty of time to build their treasuries back up.

Mayor Turner will not be running for re-election again, but it’s not hard to imagine some uses for his existing (and future) campaign cash, such as the HERO 2.0 effort or the next round of city bonds. He can also use it to support other candidates – I’m sure he’ll contribute to legislative candidates, if nothing else – or PACs. That’s what former Mayor Parker has done with what remains of her campaign account. Nearly all of the $38,750 she spent this cycle went to the LGBTQ Victory fund, plus a couple of smaller contributionss to Sri Kulkarni, Eliz Markowitz, and one or two other campaigns. Tony Buzbee has restaurant bills to pay, and those endless emails Bill King spams out have to cost something.

Others who have campaign accounts of interest: As we know, Jerry Davis has transferred his city account to his State Rep campaign account. I’ve been assuming Mike Laster is going to run for something for years now. The change to four-year Council terms may have frozen him out of the 2018 election, when he might have run for County Clerk. I could see him challenging a Democratic incumbent in 2022 for one of the countywide offices, maybe County Clerk, maybe County Judge, who knows. It’s always a little uncomfortable to talk about primary challenges, but that’s what happens when there are no more Republicans to knock out.

Other hypothetical political futures: Dave Martin could make a run for HD129 in 2022 or 2024, or he could try to win (or win back) Commissioners Court Precinct 3 in 2024. If Sen. Carol Alvarado takes my advice and runs for Mayor in 2023, then maybe State Rep. Christina Morales will run to succeed her in SD06. If that happens, Robert Gallegos would be in a strong position to succeed Morales in HD145. Michael Kubosh wasn’t on my list of potential Mayoral candidates in 2023, but maybe that was a failure of imagination on my part. As for Orlando Sanchez, well, we know he’s going to run for something again, right?

You may be wondering, as I was, what’s in Amanda Edwards’ finance report. Her activity is from July 1, since she wasn’t in a city race and thus had no 30-day or 8-day report to file. Her single biggest expenditure was $27K to Houston Civic Events for an event expense, and there were multiple expenditures categorized as “Loan Repayment/Reimbusement” to various people. Perhaps she has transferred the balance of her account to her Senate campaign by this time, I didn’t check.

Most of the unsuccessful candidates’ reports were not interesting to me, but I did want to include Raj Salhotra here because I feel reasonably confident that he’ll be on another ballot in the short-term future. The HISD and HCC Boards of Trustees are both places I could see him turn to.

Last but not least, the Keep Houston Strong PAC, whose treasurer is former Mayor Bill White, gave $10K to Move to the Future PAC. That’s all I know about that.

Council results

Dec 15th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

With one race still up in the air as I draft this:

With early voting tallies and most of Saturday’s Election Day results posted, Houston’s three incumbent at-large council members facing runoffs had won, while District H incumbent Karla Cisneros held the slimmest of leads over challenger Isabel Longoria. Four other incumbents already have reclaimed their seats, having won outright on Nov. 5: Dave Martin (District E), Greg Travis (District G), Robert Gallegos (District I) and Martha Castex-Tatum (District K).

At least half of the 16-member council will be new — five current members are term-limited and three vacated their seats: Dwight Boykins (District D) made a failed bid for mayor, Amanda Edwards (At-Large 4) is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, and Steve Le (District F) decided not to seek re-election.

One council race will not be decided Saturday: The third-place finisher in District B has filed lawsuits contesting the election and challenging the second-place finisher’s eligibility, citing her 2007 felony theft conviction and a state law that appears to bar candidates with such convictions from running for office. No election date has been set.

The simplest way to summarize what happened is this tweet:

With 367 of 385 voting centers reporting, Karla Cisneros had a 25-vote lead over Isabel Longoria. It had been a 14-vote lead with 323 centers reporting. Longoria had chipped away at Cisneros’ lead all evening. I have to think this one is going to get recounted, so whatever the final numbers are, expect this to remain an unsettled question for a little longer.

The At Large results could have been better, but they were sufficiently close in #4 and #5 that they also could have been a lot worse. When Mayor Turner puts forward a new version of HERO, he should have ten of sixteen Council votes in his favor. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, congratulations to all the winners.

8 Day runoff 2019 campaign finance reports

Dec 10th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

We start with a Chron story.

Mayor Sylvester Turner raked in more than $1.7 million from late October through early December and spent roughly the same amount, leaving him with almost $600,000 for the final days of the runoff, according to a campaign finance report filed Friday.

The total marked a fundraising surge for Turner, who was aided by newly reset donor contribution limits for the runoff, though he still was outspent by Tony Buzbee, a millionaire trial lawyer and the mayor’s opponent in the Dec. 14 contest.

Buzbee, who is self-financing his campaign and refusing all campaign contributions, put $2.3 million of his own money into the campaign last month and spent almost $3.1 million between Oct. 27 and Wednesday, leaving him with about $524,000.

With a week to go in the election, Buzbee and Turner have now combined to spend about $19 million in what has become easily the most expensive Houston mayoral race yet. Buzbee has spent $11.8 million of the $12.3 million he has put into his campaign account, while Turner has spent $7.2 million since the middle of 2018.

As an earlier story notes, self-funding has only occasionally been a winning strategy in Houston. I don’t expect it to be any different this time, but I do note that Buzbee’s basic strategy has changed. I still haven’t seen a Buzbee TV ad since November, but we’ve gotten a couple of mailers (someone needs to clean up his database if he’s mailing to me), I’ve seen a bunch of web ads, and he’s been littering the streets with signs. Gotta spend that money on something.

Here’s a summary of the 8 day reports for the runoff:


Race   Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
===========================================================
Mayor  Turner     1,741,906  1,722,625        0     597,624
Mayor  Buzbee     2,300,000  3,076,360        0     524,420

A      Peck          38,075     39,252    5,000      15,373
A      Zoes           6,600      7,562    4,000       3,723

B      Jackson
B      Bailey           355        284      200          70

C      Kamin        180,528    137,396        0     173,370
C      Kennedy       35,160     18,343        0      25,995

D      Shabazz       31,490     28,575        0       5,009
D      Jordan        28,190     11,688        0      53,724

F      Thomas        
F      Huynh         

H      Cisneros      54,700     75,012        0      41,632
H      Longoria      36,945     32,906        0      20,946

J      Rodriguez
J      Pollard       38,016     47,147   40,000      22,864

AL1    Knox          69,710     49,857        0      16,073
AL1    Salhotra     128,672    121,736        0      64,150

AL2    Robinson     111,280    199,791        0     189,649
AL2    Davis         27,725     10,367        0      19,816

AL3    Kubosh        72,215     69,164  276,000     113,500
AL3    Carmouche     17,570     11,757        0       5,812

AL4    Plummer       41,915     44,501   21,900      12,443
AL4    Dolcefino     19,215     17,482        0       6,478

AL5    Alcorn       195,105    154,757        0      49,463
AL5    Dick           1,100     65,205   75,000       2,545

I think there must be some reports that have not been uploaded – the Chron story mentions Sandra Rodriguez’s numbers, but there was no report visible on Saturday. It and the others may be there on Monday. In the Council races, what we see here is a continuation of what we had seen before. Big fundraisers raised big money, others didn’t. Eric Dick did his spend-his-own-money-and-file-weird-reports thing. Most of the spending has not been particularly visible to me – I’ve gotten a mailer from Robinson and Turner, and that’s about it.

How much any of this moves the needle remains to be seen. As we know from the Keir Murray reports, the runoff electorate is very similar in nature to the November electorate. That’s obviously better for some candidates than for others. If you think of fundraising in runoffs as being like the betting markets to some extent, then we’re probably headed towards the expected results. We’ll see if there are any surprises in store.

Chron overview of the District F runoff

Nov 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Here’s one with a very clear choice.

Tiffany Thomas

District F residents have two distinct choices in the City Council runoff election — stay the course with an aide to the incumbent councilman or choose a fresh start with a former Alief ISD trustee.

Tiffany D. Thomas, 38, finished in first place in Election Day balloting, ahead of six other candidates. The Prairie A&M University assistant professor of community development said she wants to change F’s reputation as the “forgotten district,” and said the area has lacked a strong advocate in City Hall.

“There’s a huge opportunity for us to revitalize our neighborhoods, and remind people that this is one of the best places to live in Houston,” Thomas said.

Van Huynh, chief of staff to current District F Councilman Steve Le, said his platform centers on reducing burglaries and robberies, ensuring timely trash pickup, improving flood control and cracking down on nuisances like speeding and illegal dumping.

An immigrant from Vietnam who came to Houston in 1991, Huynh said he would work to help the high number of non-U.S. born District F residents connect to government services of which they may be unaware.

“A lot of people living in my district are newcomers to the country and the city,” Huynh said. “They don’t really feel connected to local government, and there is a lot of opportunity the city can bridge with the community.”

The candidates are running for a four-year term to replace Le, who has represented District F since 2016. Le in July announced he would not seek re-election, two months after the Houston Chronicle reported his then-top aide continued to collect his salary while out of state at military training.

My interview with Tiffany Thomas is here. She’s brought a little heat to the runoffs, and she’s got some material to work with. Steve Le was not a good Council member, and the case for a clean break and a new direction is clear. Thomas led the field in round one, and I’m rooting for her to win.

About those Council runoffs

Nov 10th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
9 comments

All of a sudden there’s many fewer candidates to keep track of.

Tiffany Thomas

Some candidates said they were happy simply to have made it to a runoff. Several races had more than a dozen people vying for the top two vote counts, resulting in razor-thin margins that decided who moved forward.

Brad “Scarface” Jordan said he was still in shock Wednesday. The former member of the Geto Boys hip hop group hadn’t expected to advance, but ultimately took second in a 16-candidate field for District D.

“This is unbelievable bro,” he said. “I’m just as shocked as you are.”

Others, like incumbent Michael Kubosh in At-Large 3 (47.8 percent), Amy Peck in District A (45.4 percent) and Tiffany Thomas in District F (38.9 percent), enter their runoffs with commanding leads.

“We could have won outright last night if those clowns weren’t on the ballot,” Thomas said of the candidates eliminated Tuesday, most of whom polled in the single digits. “They didn’t work at the polls, they weren’t at early voting.”

Peck said her level of support indicated that voters want a continuation of the service they have seen under incumbent Brenda Stardig. Peck is Stardig’s chief of staff, and she has pledged to work towards finishing drainage and infrastructure projects already underway.

“Being that far ahead, it’s a clear message of what the voters want,” Peck said.

[…]

Thomas, the top vote-getter in District F, raised questions that her opponent, Van Huynh, has faced about his residency. He is incumbent Steve Le’s chief of staff.

Three of the last four District F council members, including Le, have faced questions about whether they live in the southwestern district, as required by city charter and state law.

“I don’t run nasty races, but I do think it’s a valid point that I’m in a runoff with someone who doesn’t live here,” Thomas said.

Huynh, who did not return calls for comment Wednesday, listed his address in campaign filings as a house he rents just off Brays Bayou, but he and his wife claim a homestead exemption on a home they have owned for two decades that sits outside District F.

The council aide has said he stays in the rental he listed on his filing form two to three nights a week, and last month provided a copy of his lease that lists his “main address” at his home outside the district.

Huynh said he and his family are in the process of moving to a new home in the district, but they did not purchase that home until July of this year. City rules require candidates to live in the district they hope to represent for 12 months before election day, but experts say the dictate is hard to enforce.

I must say, I appreciate Tiffany Thomas bringing a little spice to the conversation. She’s also right – an awful lot of those 124 candidates never bothered filing a campaign finance report, which is a pretty minimal Serious Candidate Thing to do. Now that we’re down to two candidates per race, we can get some focus. As I said before, all of the At Large races involve one Democrat and one Republican, which allows for some clarity of choice. Some of the candidates still on the ballot have done interviews with me, either this cycle or a previous one, and others I will try to get to between now and the start of December. Everyone will have either six or seven city candidates on their runoff ballot, depending on what happened in their district, so everyone has plenty of reason to vote again. Figure out who you want to support and make sure you show up.

Initial thoughts on Election 2019

Nov 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

All bullet points, all the time…

– Here’s my opening statement on the election returns debacle. We have more information about this now, but we still need more before we can go anywhere else with it.

– All incumbents want to win without runoffs, but for an incumbent that was forced into a runoff, Mayor Turner did pretty darned well. Including Fort Bend, he got about 12K more votes than Buzbee and King combined, and missed by about 2K outscoring Buzbee plus King plus Boykins. Suffice to say, he’s in a strong position for the runoffs.

– We are going to have a cubic buttload of runoffs. In addition to the Mayor, there are seven district Council runoffs, all five At Large Council races, two HISD races, two HCC races, and HD148. We might have had pretty decent overall turnout without the Mayor’s race included, but with it at the top it will be a lot like a November election. I’ll put the initial over/under at about 175K, which is roughly the 2009 Mayoral election runoff total.

– Among those Council runoffs are districts B and D, which along with HISD II and IV and HCC 2 will favor Turner. There are no runoffs in E or G, which would have favored Buzbee, and the runoff in A is almost certain to be a serene, low-money affair. Districts C and J went for King in the 2015 runoffs, but the runoffs in those districts involve only Democratic candidates. Turner has a lot more wind at his back than Buzbee does.

– For a more visual representation of the above, see this Mike Morris tweet. Nearly all of those Buzbee areas are in districts A, E, and G.

– In a sense, the main event in November is the At Large runoffs, all five of which feature a Republican and a Democrat. A Council that includes Mike Knox, Willie Davis, Michael Kubosh, Anthony Dolcefino, and Eric Dick is a Council that (including the members in A, E, and G) is fully half Republican, and could thus throw a lot of sand into the gears of the second Turner administration (or really grease the wheels of a Buzbee administration, if you want to extend the metaphor). Yes, I know, Council doesn’t really work like that, but the difference between that Council and one that includes three or more of Raj Salhotra, David Robinson, Janaeya Carmouche, Letitia Plummer, and Sallie Alcorn, is likely to be quite large. You want to have an effect on the direction Houston takes over the next four years, there you have it.

– Council could have been even more Republican, but at the district level it looks to remain at least as Democratic and possibly a little more so than it is now. Districts C and J may have gone for King in 2015 as noted, but Democrats Abbie Kamin and Shelley Kennedy are the choices in C (Greg Meyers and Mary Jane Smith finished just behind Kennedy), while Ed Pollard and Sandra Rodriguez are the contenders in J. (Yes, Pollard is considerably more conservative than most Dems, especially on LGBT issues. He’ll be the next Dwight Boykins in that regard if he wins.) District F has been (with a two-year break from 2013 to 2015) Republican going back to the 90s, but Tiffany Thomas is in pole position. She will no doubt benefit from the Mayoral runoff.

– I should note that in District C, the four candidates who were on a Greater Heights Democratic Club candidate forum I moderated in September – Kamin, Kennedy, Candelario Cervantez, and Amanda Wolfe; Kendra Yarbrough Camarena was also in the forum but switched to the HD148 race – combined for 55% of the vote in C. That’s a nice chunk of your HD134, CD02 and CD07 turf, and another illustration of how Donald Trump has helped kill the Republican Party in Harris County.

– Speaking of HD148, 69% of the vote there went to the Democratic candidates. Jessica Farrar got 68% in 2018, and she was on the high end.

– Remember when I said this about HD148 candidate Adrian Garcia? “It’s certainly possible some people will think he’s the County Commissioner, but whether they’d be happy to vote for him or confused as to why he’d be running for another office is a question I can’t answer.” I would say now the answer is “happy to vote for him”, because with all due respect I cannot see how he finishes third in that field if he was differently named. Low profile special elections are just weird.

– To be fair, name recognition also surely helped Dolcefino and Dick, neither of whom had much money. One had a famous name, and one has been a candidate multiple times, while littering the streets with his yard signs, so there is that.

– I’m just about out of steam here, but let me say this again: We. Must. Defeat. Dave. Wilson. Tell everyone you know to make sure they vote for Monica Flores Richart in the HCC 1 runoff. We cannot screw that up.

– If you still need more, go read Stace, Nonsequiteuse, and Chris Hooks.

Final results are in

Nov 6th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
9 comments

Here they are. Refer to my previous post for the initial recap, I’m going to be very minimalist. Let’s do this PowerPoint-style, it’s already been a long day:

Mayor – Turner fell short of 50%, landing up a bit below 47%. He and Buzbee will be in a runoff. Which, if nothing else, means a much higher turnout for the runoff.

Controller: Chris Brown wins.

District A: Peck versus Zoes.
District B: Jackson versus Bailey.
District C: Kamin versus Kennedy. Gotta say, it’s a little surprising, but quite nice, for it to be an all-Dem runoff. Meyers came close to catching Kennedy, but she hung on to second place.
District D: Brad Jordan had a late surge, and will face Carolyn Evans-Shabazz in the runoff. If Evans-Shabazz wins, she’ll need to resign her spot on the HCC Board, so there would be another new Trustee if that happens.
District F: Thomas versus Huynh. Other than the two years we had of Richard Nguyen, this seat has pretty much always been held by a Republican. Tiffany Thomas has a chance to change that.
District H: Cisneros verusus Longoria.
District J: Pollard versus Rodriguez. Sandra Rodriguez had a late surge and nearly finished ahead of Pollard. Very evenly matched in Round One.

At Large #1: Knox versus Salhotra. Both candidates will benefit from the Mayoral runoff, though I think Raj may be helped more.
At Large #2: Robinson versus Davis, a rerun from 2015.
At Large #3: Kubosh slipped below 50% and will face Janaeya Carmouche in overtime.
At Large #4: Dolcefino versus Plummer. We will have somewhere between zero and four Republicans in At Large seats, in case anyone needs some non-Mayoral incentive for December.
At Large #5: Alcorn versus Eric Dick. Lord, please spare me Eric Dick. I don’t ask for much.

HISD: Dani Hernandez and Judith Cruz ousted incumbents Sergio Lira and Diana Davila. Maybe that will make the TEA look just a teeny bit more favorably on HISD. Kathy Blueford Daniels will face John Curtis Gibbs, and Matt Barnes had a late surge to make it into the runoff against Patricia Allen.

HCC: Monica Flores Richart inched up but did not make it to fifty percent, so we’re not quite rid of Dave Wilson yet. Rhonda Skillern-Jones will face Kathy Lynch-Gunter in that runoff.

HD148: A late surge by Anna Eastman gives her some distance between her and Luis La Rotta – Eastman got 20.34%, La Rotta 15.84%. The Republican share of the vote fell from 34% to 32%, right on what they got in this district in 2018.

Now you are up to date. Go get some sleep.

2019 election results: Houston and Metro

Nov 6th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Unfortunately, we have to start with this:

Results of Tuesday’s election could take until 2 a.m. Wednesday after the Texas Secretary of State issued a new regulation that upended plans by the Harris County Clerk’s Office to speed vote counting.

The first tubs containing electronic ballot cards from across Harris County arrived at central count just before 9:30 p.m., where election judges and poll watchers waited to see the vote count in action.

Dr. Diane Trautman said she had hoped to have votes come in from 10 countywide drop-off locations, fed in through a secured intranet site, leading to faster results on election night.

Instead, Secretary Ruth R. Hughs ordered on Oct. 23 that law enforcement officers would instead escort the ballot box memory cards from each of the 757 polling sites to the central counting station.

That change, made nearly two weeks before Election Day, led to a major delay that left voters wondering for hours how races up and down ballot would turn out.

Early election results trickled in shortly after 7 p.m., but remained virtually unchanged for hours Tuesday.

Here’s the County Clerk’s statement about that order. I don’t know what was behind it, but it sure did gum things up. In the end, final results were not available till quite late, with no more partial results after midnight because producing those was slowing down the input process. Here’s the later statement on when results would be expected. Suffice to say, this was a mess, and no one is happy about it all. Expect there to be an extended fight between the County Clerk and SOS offices.

Anyway. I’m still groggy from a late night, so I’m going to hit the highlights, and we’ll get final results later. Here we go.

Mayor: Turner leads, is close to a majority.

Mayor Sylvester Turner held a wide lead over Tony Buzbee in limited early returns late Tuesday and was within striking distance of an outright re-election win, though it was unclear at press time if he would secure enough votes to avoid a runoff.

Buzbee, a millionaire trial lawyer, jumped out to an early second-place lead that he appeared likely to retain over Bill King, an attorney and businessman who narrowly lost a 2015 runoff to Turner but struggled this time to compete financially with Buzbee, his main rival for conservative votes.

With a small share of Election Day precincts reporting, Turner remained a shade under the majority vote share he would need to avoid a December runoff against Buzbee.

Councilman Dwight Boykins, who competed with Turner for the support of Democratic and black voters, trailed in fourth place, while former councilwoman Sue Lovell was further behind in fifth. Seven other candidates combined for the remaining share of the vote.

Adding in the Fort Bend results, and we get the following:


Turner     63,359  47.28%
Buzbee     39,361  29.37%
King       17,878  13.34%
Boykins     7,848   5.86%
Lovell      1,433   1.07%
The Rest    4,121   3.08%

Three things to think about: One, Turner has at this point more votes than Buzbee and King combined, so if we do go to a runoff that’s not a bad position to start with. Two, the Election Day results reported so far came mostly from Districts A, C, E, and G, so they would be more favorable to Buzbee and King than the city as a whole. And three, the election polling was pretty accurate, especially at pegging the support levels for Boykins and Lovell.

Oh, and a fourth thing: Tony Buzbee’s drunken Election Night speech. Yowza.

Controller: Incumbent Chris Brown leads

It’s Brown 62,297 and Sanchez 54,864 adding in Fort Bend, and again with mostly Republican votes from yesterday (Sanchez led the Election Day tally by about 1,700 votes). Barring a big surprise, Brown has won.

City Council: Most incumbents have big leads, and there’s gonna be a lot of runoffs. To sum up:

District A: Amy Peck has 44.3%, George Zoes 16.8%
District B: Tarsha Jackson 21.0%, Renee Jefferson Smith 15.1%, Cynthia Bailey 13.7%, Alvin Byrd 10.7%
District C: Abbie Kamin 30.8%, Shelley Kennedy 15.8%, Greg Meyers 14.4%, Mary Jane Smith 14.0%
District D: Carolyn Evans-Shabazz 19.0%, Carla Brailey 12.3%, Brad Jordan 11.9%, Rashad Cave 11.4%, Jerome Provost 10.4%, Andrew Burks 10.3%
District E: Dave Martin easily wins
District F: Tiffany Thomas 39%, Van Huynh 24%, Richard Nguyen 18%
District G: Greg Travis easily wins
District H: Karla Cisneros 38.9%, Isabel Longoria 27.5%, Cynthia Reyes-Revilla 24.0%
District I: Robert Gallegos easily wins
District J: Edward Pollard 32.4%, Sandra Rodriguez 26.4%, Barry Curtis 19.7%
District K: MArtha Castex-Tatum easily wins

At Large #1: Mike Knox 38.1%, Raj Salhotra 21.1%, Yolanda Navarro Flores 16.3%, Georgia Provost 14.7%
At Large #2: Davis Robinson 38.9%, Willie Davis 28.8%, Emily DeToto 18.8%
At Large #3: Michael Kubosh 50.8%, Janaeya Carmouche 20.6%
At Large #4: Anthony Dolcefino 22.9%, Letitia Plummer 16.4%, Nick Hellyar 12.8%, Ericka McCrutcheon 11.3%, Bill Baldwin 10.5%
At Large #5: Sallie Alcorn 23.2%, Eric Dick 22.0%, no one else above 10

Some of the runoff positions are still very much up in the air. Michael Kubosh may or may not win outright – he was only at 46% on Election Day. Name recognition worth a lot (Dolcefino, Dick) but not everything (both Provosts, Burks). Not much else to say but stay tuned.

HISD: Davila and Lira are going to lose

Dani Hernandez leads Sergio Lira 62-38, Judith Cruz leads Diana Davila 64-36. Kathy Blueford Daniels is close to fifty percent in II but will likely be in a runoff with John Curtis Gibbs. Patricia Allen, Reagan Flowers, and Matt Barnes in that order are in a tight battle in IV.

HCC: No story link on the Chron front page. Monica Flores Richart leads the execrable Dave Wilson 47-34 in HCC1, Rhonda Skillern-Jones leads with 45% in HCC2 with Kathy Lynch-Gunter at 26%, and Cynthia Lenton-Gary won HCC7 unopposed.

Metro: Headed to easy passage, with about 68% so far.

That’s all I got for now. Come back later for more.

30 day campaign finance reports: Open City Council seats, part 2

Oct 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Finishing up with City Council candidates. Part One, for the other open seats, is here. July reports for F, J, and At Large #5 are here, and for At Large #4 are here. All of the finance reports that I have downloaded and reviewed are in this Google folder. Except for the reports that were filed non-electronically, which you can find here. Erik Manning’s invaluable spreadsheet remains my source for who’s in what race.


Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
====================================================
Thomas        31,040     13,401        0      28,433
Huynh         21,600     20,599    9,500           0 
G Nguyen         740      1,001        0      19,981
Nelson         2,385      3,100        0       1,678
Zamora             0        305        0           0
R Nguyen

Adriatico     27,606     25,393   22,000      19,129
Cuellar       21,300     14,297        0      36,069
Curtis        15,105     11,867        0       7,639
Pollard       13,051     30,277   20,000      17,226
Rodriguez     10,069     10,070        0      10,620
Galvan           200        695        0         200
Patterson

Baldwin      110,394     38,562        0      52,074
Hellyar       49,841     36,372        0      32,763
Dolcefino     15,355      9,002        0       7,112
Plummer        9,834     23,490        0      32,139
Hausman        5,845      8,654        0       2,098
Bastida        1,103         51      200         750
McCrutcheon        0          0   34,000         150
Joseph
Laney
Rowe
Gonzalez

Alcorn        71,421     66,284        0      258,320
Woods          9,791      7,624        0            0
McNeese        9,705     13,606   30,000        3,305
Flowers        8,015     12,471    2,987        2,157
Rivera         2,335      1,732        0          602
Dick           1,435     93,248   75,000        1,435
Bonton           200     10,005   20,000       20,000
Batteau            0          0        0            0

We know that fundraising is not destiny. Especially in races where no one raises enough money to really do effective outreach, other factors (which most definitely include random luck) will affect the outcome. Plus, not all fundraising hauls are equal. A large number of small donations beats a small number of large donations, as that indicates breadth of support, and while all candidates can and do tap their personal networks, donations from within the city or district are worth more than donations from people elsewhere. You get the idea.

With all that said, we can draw some broad if shallow conclusions here. Tiffany Thomas has been the strongest fundraising in F from the beginning. Van Huynh has done a good job since July – he entered too late to have a July report – but apparently doesn’t have any cash on hand. His report leaves that field blank, and that figure can get fuzzy when a candidate also writes his own check. As for Giang “John” Nguyen, he reported $20K raised in July with the absurd amount of $8 in expenditures. He apparently hasn’t spent much more, so despite not taking in anything significant he’s still got almost $20K in the bank. You know how baseball fans say that at any given game you’ll see something you’ve never seen before? Reviewing city election campaign finance reports is kind of like that.

District J looks pretty wide open. It’s rare to see a race where nearly everyone has at least raised some decent amount of money. I would not take any bets on who might make that runoff.

At Large #4 and #5 follow more familiar patterns. Bill Baldwin was a late entrant in #4 but has done well since then. I wouldn’t call that enough money to really get your name out citywide, but he has the potential to get there. He lives and has his office in my neighborhood so many people around here know him. I’ve seen a respectable number of Baldwin signs, and a couple of signs that say “Don’t vote for Bill Baldwin in At Large #4”, which amuses me. There are also signs for Tiko Hausman, who lives in the First Ward but has been a fixture in the PTAs at Travis and Hogg. Nick Hellyar and Letitia Plummer have gotten the lion’s share of the endorsements. Insert shrug emoji here.

Sallie Alcorn has dominated fundraising in At Large #5 from the jump, and she has the most endorsements. Ashton Woods has a few, and no one else has more than one. She’s in a similar position to Abbie Kamin in C – do you spend a bunch now to maximize your chances of getting into the runoff, or do you hold back and hope to overwhelm whoever your runoff opponent is, assuming you get there? I say fire your shot now and let tomorrow take care of itself, but there’s room for debate.

That’s it for the city elections. I will not have the capacity to review 8 day reports, but I’ll probably at least take a look at the Mayoral numbers. As always, I hope this has been helpful. I’ll have HISD and HCC reports up soon.

Endorsement watch: E and F

Oct 9th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The Chron endorses incumbent CM Dave Martin in District E.

CM Dave Martin

It’s easy to find out the biggest problem in Houston City Council District E. Ask any of its residents and most likely they will tell you a flooding story. Water invaded so many homes in the Kingwood and Elm Grove neighborhoods after Harvey and Imelda that just the sight of dark clouds makes people nervous.

That’s why District E residents have come to depend on incumbent Councilman Dave Martin. Since first being elected in 2012, and has served one two-year and one four-year term. Martin has been working hard to make their homes less vulnerable to flooding.

During an endorsement interview, Martin told the editorial board that most of the flooding is due to runoff caused by excessive development in neighboring Montgomery County. The water cascades into District E whenever there’s a big rain.

Martin, 61, said he has asked the county for more water detention and retention facilities, including a berm between Elm Grove and Montgomery County. But the task has been difficult. “Let’s talk politics. You have a predominantly Democratic body in the city of Houston and a Republican body in Montgomery County,” Martin said.

He said the politics being played includes the developer responsible for much of the runoff problem. “It’s Perry Homes and everyone knows Perry Homes is one of the largest contributors to political campaigns in Texas,” Martin said. “I know what I’m up against.”

CM Martin, whom I’ve not had the opportunity to interview, is basically the best case scenario in a district like E. He cares about governing and doesn’t exist as a roadblock. I wouldn’t want a City Council full of members as conservative as Dave Martin, but I’m happy to have a Dave Martin in District E.

In District F, the Chron recommends Tiffany Thomas.

Tiffany Thomas

In a city known for its diversity, District F still stands out for its eclectic mix of white, black, Latino and Asian residents, a place where English may be a second or even third language spoken at home. But the ward, which spreads along the Westpark Tollway toward the city’s far western edges, is also known by many in the community as the “forgotten district” — under-resourced and left out of opportunities for economic development and revitalization efforts.

Tiffany Thomas, our choice for District F, wants to make greater Houston remember.

“The current system does not work for District F,” she told the editorial board. “We are forgotten when we look at investment, when we look at leadership, and when we look at our values at City Hall.”

Thomas, 38, grew up in the area, attending Alief schools. After graduating from Sam Houston State University, she moved back home and has been active in the community, working with nonprofit groups focused on education and health care. In 2013 she won a seat on the Alief ISD Board of Trustees, where she helped shepherd the 2015 bond referendum to create a Career Technology Center.

She points to the creation of the center as a high point of her service on the board as well as why she is running for council.

“Yes, we did $300 million for a CTE center, which is the best and brightest on this side of town for high-skill, high-wage jobs,” Thomas said. “The challenge is, there are no high-skill, high-wage jobs in the district.”

She hopes to use her position on the council, including through code enforcement and working with management districts, to hold absentee landlords accountable, revitalize neighborhoods and attract businesses.

My interview with Tiffany Thomas is here, and my interview with fellow District F candidate Anthony Nelson is here. Thomas and Giang “John” Nguyen were the two leading fundraisers as of July, but we’ll see how that goes now that the 30 day reports are coming in. The Chron had nice things to say about some of the other candidates, especially Nelson, but overall I agree that Thomas is the strongest candidate.

Interview with Tiffany Thomas

Aug 19th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Tiffany Thomas

We move now to District F, a district that will have its fourth Council member since 2013 with the departure of controversial first-term member Steve Le. Six people are lined up to compete for this open seat, many of whom had entered the race when it was still a challenge against an incumbent. One of them is Tiffany Thomas, who served from 2013 to 2017 as a Trustee on the Alief ISD school board. She has been in non-profit development management for over fifteen years, working for a variety of agencies focused on education, healthcare, and direct services, and is now an assistant professor at Prairie View A&M. She is a founding member of New Giving Collective, the first Black giving circle in Houston with the Greater Houston Community Foundation. Here’s the interview:

I never did get around to creating an Election 2019 page, in part because the Erik Manning spreadsheet has it all. My roundup of July finance reports that includes District H is here, my 2015 interview with then-challenger, now outgoing incumbent Steve Le is here, and my 2015 interview with then-incumbent CM Richard Nguyen, who is also running for this seat, is here.

July 2019 campaign finance reports: Open City Council seats, part 2

Jul 30th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

We come down to the last three open Council seats to examine, all the result of term-limited incumbents. The first post, with Districts A, B, and C, is here, and the rest of the non-Mayoral races is here. As before, my look at the January 2019 finance reports for Houston candidates is here, and all of the finance reports that I have downloaded and reviewed are in this Google folder. Except for the reports that were filed non-electronically, which you can find here. Erik Manning’s invaluable spreadsheet remains my source for who’s in what race.

Anthony Allen – District D
Rashad Cave – District D
Marlon Christian – District D
Jeremy Darby – District D
Carolyn Evans-Shabazz – District D
Dennis Griffin – District D
Nissi Hamilton – District D
Brad Jordan – District D
Travis McGee – District D
Dontrell Montgomery – District D
Kenyon Moore – District D
Jerome Provost – District D

Van Huynh – District F
Anthony Nelson – District F
Giang “John” Nguyen – District F
Richard Nguyen – District F
Tiffany Thomas – District F
Jesus Zamora – District F

Nelvin Adriatico – District J
Barry Curtis – District J
Jim Bigham – District J
Federico “Freddie” Cuellar – District J
Edward Pollard – District J
Sandra Rodriguez – District J

Sallie Alcorn – At Large #5
Brad Batteau – At Large #5
Jamaal Boone – At Large #5
Catherine Flowers – At Large #5
Ralph Garcia – At Large #5
Marvin McNeese – At Large #5
Sonia Rivera – At Large #5
Ashton Woods – At Large #5


Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
====================================================
Allen
Cave
Christian
Darby
E-Shabazz     4,000       3,715        0       1,468
Griffin         500         125        0         375
Hamilton        320         120        0         200
Jordan       37,804       2,703        0      35,100
McGee
Montgomery
Moore
Provost

Huynh
Nelson         3,845      1,451        0       2,393
G Nguyen      20,250          8        0      20,241
R Nguyen
Thomas        23,441      2,381        0      21,059
Zamora           323        426        0           0

Adriatico     31,807     30,079        0      10,108
Curtis           505          0        0         505
Bigham
Cuellar       19,880      9,351   18,437      10,628
Pollard       66,208     30,774   20,000      45,406
Rodriguez     12,997      3,272        0       9,608

Alcorn       204,247     75,393        0     252,366
Batteau
Boone              0          0        0           0
Flowers       13,543      9,918        0       3,700
Garcia             0          0        0           0
McNeese       23,100     45,893   30,000       7,206
Rivera         2,260      3,895    1,695           0
Woods

Most of the District D contenders entered the race after Dwight Boykins announced his candidacy for Mayor, so it’s not too surprising that many of them have no report filed. As such, and given that they’re almost all first-time candidates, it’s hard to guess who may be viable. If you dangled me off a bridge I’d pick HCC Trustee Carolyn Evans-Shabazz and former Geto Boy Brad Jordan as the two most likely to make it to a runoff, but that’s in the absence of a lot of information. Ask me again when the 30 day reports are posted, especially if Boykins has not retreated back to this race. Jordan got a lot of press when he announced his entry into the race, and did this interview in June (which I have to say doesn’t raise my esteem for him), and has a domain with a placeholder webpage at this time.

Districts F and J are racially diverse, low-turnout places where it can be hard to get a handle on who’s actually a contender. The last four Council members in F have all been Asian Americans, with the three most recent being Vietnamese, but there’s no reason why that has to be the case. Money is a weak indicator as well, with Richard Nguyen coming out of nowhere to beat then-incumbent Al Hoang, who supplemented his own fundraising, in 2013. He was then defeated by Steve Le in 2015. Tiffany Thomas is a former Alief ISD Trustee, making her the most successful of the candidates with past experience running for office. Jim Bigham ran against term-limited incumbent Mike Laster in 2015, while Edward Pollard unsuccessfully challenged State Rep. Gene Wu in the 2016 Democratic primary. (If you click that link, you will see that there was some ugliness in that race.) Nelvin Adriatico, who filed a report in January, was one of the first candidates for any office to appear on the scene, while Anthony Nelson is among the multitude of younger candidates on the ballot this year.

For At Large #5, it sure looks like it’s Sallie Alcorn and everyone else. She put up big numbers in January as well. Money is less of an issue in district races, where you can knock on a bunch of doors and visit all the civic clubs and neighborhood associations and whatnot and put yourself in front of most of your voters that way. For At Large you need other ways to let people know that you exist as a candidate, and nearly all of them require money. The other way is to run for something every election so that people eventually recognize your name even though you don’t do any actual campaigning. This is the Brad Batteau strategy, and much like the maybe-absent (but don’t say that out loud till the filing deadline) Griff Griffin it will get you some votes. Activist Ashton Woods, the only other AL5 candidate I’m familiar with, filed a correction affidavit on July 23 attesting that server issues on July 15 caused an error the submission of his finance report. I presume that means another report will be posted, but as yet I don’t see it. Alcorn is former Chief of Staff to Steve Costello and has done a lot of other things with the city as well.

Lastly, in searching for a website relating to Carolyn Evans-Shabazz’s Council candidacy (she has a Facebook page but not a website as far as I could tell), I stumbled across this delightful interview she did with four young children when she was a candidate for At Large #5 in 2013. There are other such interviews running through the 2015 election. The BigKidSmallCity domain those were a part of is now redirecting here, so I’m guessing there won’t be more of these conversations, but let me just say that if there is one thing that we could really use right now, it’s this. Please, Jill B. Jarvis, do this again. Thanks very much.

CM Steve Le not running for re-election

Jul 5th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

We have another open seat, in District F.

Steve Le

Steve Le

Houston City Councilman Steve Le announced Wednesday he will not seek a second term in November, leaving an open race for his District F seat and ensuring the southwestern district will get a new representative for the fourth straight election.

Le, a physician who practices in Cleveland, narrowly defeated incumbent Richard Nguyen in 2015, winning a runoff by about 230 votes, or 3 percentage points. He had drawn five opponents — including Nguyen — before deciding not to run again.

Le was seen as one of the most vulnerable incumbent council members seeking re-election.

Citing questions and a city investigation into the work habits and time cards of his former chief of staff, Daniel Albert, constituents and neighborhood leaders had called on Le to fire Albert and resign his seat.

[…]

Le also faced residency questions upon taking office, as he had more formal links to a home in Kingwood than to the district address he listed in Alief. His business was registered at the Kingwood property, he was one of five people listed on the deed of trust for the property, and he, at the time, registered three of his four vehicles at that address.

Le did not return calls for comment Wednesday. In a statement to KPRC, he said he plans to return to his medical practice, and pointed to several accomplishments, contending the district’s infrastructure improved during his tenure.

“My goal when running for election was to work with the mayor and current council to implement changes that would benefit the residents of Houston, be fiscally responsible with our budget, improve street and drainage conditions of District F, (and) increase public safety,” the statement said.

In addition to Nguyen, candidates Anthony Nelson, John Nguyen, Tiffany Thomas and Jesus Zamora are seeking to represent the southwest Houston district that covers parts of Alief, Eldridge-West Oaks, Sharpstown and Westchase.

Van Huynh, Le’s chief of staff, said Wednesday he, too, will run for the seat, and has filed a report with the city secretary’s office designating a campaign treasurer.

See here for some background; Le did eventually fire Albert. To be sure, other District F Council members have had questions about their residency before, including MJ Khan and Al Hoang. For whatever the reason, that does not seem to be an obstacle to getting elected in F. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Le is the first member of Council to not run for re-election when able to do so since Peter Brown ran for Mayor instead of a third term in At Large #1 in 2009. Chris Bell did the same thing in 2001. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a recent Council member who stepped down without running for something else. Feel free to fill in the blank if you can.

As always, you can see an up-to-date list of candidates in Erik Manning’s spreadsheet. I guess I need to get an Election 2019 page going, as June finance reports will be coming in. As for the cast in District F, I know Tiffany Thomas and former CM Richard Nguyen; I’m Facebook friends with Anthony Nelson but haven’t met him. Le’s departure may lead to more candidates entering, but if there’s one thing this election has not lacked, it’s candidates.