Bay Area Houston

“It’s like a nightmare isn’t it? It just keeps getting worse and worse. Doesn’t it?” –The Color of Money

The Final Order from the Texas Ethics Commission can be found here.

After the 2019 Houston City Council elections I filed an ethics complaint against City Council candidate Eric Dick. My complaint was fairly simple. He failed to put a “Political ad paid for by….” disclaimer on a mail piece he sent out and he failed to identify who he was paying money to. Usually a complaint like this will end in a settlement with a small fine and with no admission of guilt along with a promise to not do it again. According to the final order issued by the Texas Ethics Commission I couldn’t have been more wrong….

The mailer in question looked as if prominent Black elected officials had endorsed a slate of candidates, including Dick. It was created by the Harris County Black Democratic News an organization that was also caught up in this scheme and eventually fined $6000. Unfortunately it is not against the law to publish a deceiving endorsement so that issue was not considered by the Ethics Commission.

The Final Order:

So after a couple of years of investigation and a preliminary and formal hearing, Dick was fined $30,000 and was referred to the State Bar. (Dick is an attorney) This fine was the 2nd highest fine accessed by the Commission, second to the fine of $75,000 against Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole. The Final Order sheds more light on the entire process and went far beyond what I had expected. From the order:

• The TEC offered to settle for $10,000. Dick offered to settle the complaint for $2500 with no admission of guilt. The TEC countered with a fine of $5000. A day later the printer of the mailer responded to a subpoena with data that made the TEC staff rescind the offer. Dick should have accepted the offer.
• Dick had claimed, under oath, that he had nothing to do with the mailer, yet the data provided by the printer showed that he paid over $20,000 for over 100,000 mailers and was directing the printer on every aspect of the job.
• The TEC sent a list of questions to Dick. His lawyer, Chris Carmona, offered to provide the answers at a cost of $900.
• Dick finally responded to the request and provided a document dump of over 11,000 pages. 
• After claiming his reports were accurate concerning payments of over $125,000 to PFS, the Famous Group, WS Services, and Blaze Campaign Consulting he changed his statement saying he had actually never paid anyone for any services. The original complaint claimed these entities did not exist and the addresses listed on the ethics report were storage facilities. The TEC agreed.
• Subpoenas were issued to the printer owner, Dick, and the owner of Harris County Democratic News. Neither showed to the hearing.
• Carmona claimed that Dick was under a “protective order” issued by Harris County Civil Court at Law No 1 and could not attend the formal hearing but that order had been withdrawn once the Judge learned Dick was under a subpoena. (Can this get any more weird?)
• The data provided by the printer clearly shows Dick paid for the mailers, which he denied.

We have seen this before and it’s just not cool.

An organization called the Organization to Elect Better Leaders has posted some Facebook ads against Judge Briones who is running for Harris County Commissioners Court. It seems there is only one person behind the ads and the organization, Benjamin Chou, who is running against Briones.

The Facebook account for the organization was created May 4th and was sending ads on May 10th. There is no organization listed under the Texas Ethics Commission or the County, or Federal sites. They do have a website but it is generic and offers little information.

Chou is claiming in the ad that Briones is unethical and offers an article as proof from the Houston Chronicle, an article that I could not find. I have asked Chou to direct me to a copy of the article but have not heard back. It seems like it is a made up headline and if true would be uh….unethical. The Texas Legislature passed a bill a few years ago making it a crime to doctor a video in a political ad. I’m not sure if that pertains to fake headlines such as the one promoted.

Choe is a young upcoming candidate associated with the socialist group Working Families Party, one that is supported by Senator Bernie Sanders and supports far left candidates running as “Progressives”. Many of his donations are from socialist supporters.

It is sad when candidates have to stoop to win.

From the Houston Chronicle

After the Texas Ethics Commission fined Eric Dick $30,000 (second highest fine in the history of the TEC) I thought that this Dick issue had been successfully exposed. I was wrong.

Looking at the financial reports for the GPAC Conservative Republicans of Texas I stumbled on two very interesting donations. C-ROT is the extreme right controlling wing of the Texas Republican Party led by Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill. Recently they held a ConspiracyFest fundraiser based upon the Big Lie in Houston. In the 2022 Republican Primary they published an endorsement card endorsing some of the most extreme candidates for office in the party including Don Huffines, who lost, and…..Eric Dick, who also lost.

According to the financial report filed by C-ROT Eric Dick donated $25,000 in Jan of 2022 and $25,000 again in February. At the time Dick was a candidate in the Republican Primary for Harris County Treasurer. Because he was a candidate he should have reported these expenditures on his own report especially if he was paying for the privilege of being endorsed or if the funds were being used to pay for the endorsement card.  Neither of these donations were reported on his Jan or Feb financial report filed with Harris County.

What is also interesting is his incomplete report filed on 2/22/22. His report summary claims to have expended over $208,000 from his personal funds but he only documents on Schedule G, Political Expenditures from Personal Funds, $107,750 leaving over $100,000 unaccounted for. Dick should have reported all expenditures “out of an abundance of caution.”

According to Dick’s attorney the $30,000 is nothing but a political farce:

In a statement Friday, Carmona said the Feb. 24 hearing amounted to a “political farce run by a bunch of cronies and fat cats,” and said Dick has “every intention to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Let’s see what the cronies and fat cats say about this in the coming months. BTW the Commission is composed of 5 Republicans and 3 Democrats and rarely fines a candidate or an organization any substantial amount.

In a previous post about the GPAC Conservative Republicans of Texas I mentioned the $150,000 donation from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC. Here are some details about that PAC.

Raising Campaign Cash: The Defend Texas Liberty PAC was created in 2019 with Shelby Griesinger of Willow Texas as Treasurer. Over the last two years they have raised $5,701,482 from 20 donations from 11 individuals. Timothy Dunn CEO of Crownquest in Midland Texas donated $2,590,000 more than half of the complete total. Farris Wilks, owner of Wilks Brothers LLC of Cisco Texas donated a total of $2,010,000. Phillip Huffines (related to Don Huffines running for Governor?) donated $500,000 and Hindi Grimes of Houston Texas donated $221,500 The remaining $379,982 came from 7 donors. About 94% of all donations came from just 4 individuals. The entire donation list is below.

Spending Campaign Cash: During the same period the PAC spent $5,534,614. $3,600,000 was donated to the Don Huffines Campaign who ran, and lost, for Governor. $206,500 was donated to the Shelley Luther Campaign who lost in her run for the Texas House. According the Houston Chronicle Shelley “Shelley Luther, the hair salon owner who was catapulted into political stardom after being jailed for defying a pandemic lockdown order”.Direct Texas LLC received $374,181 for printing services.

Donations:

Most of the time fines by the Texas Ethics Commission are relatively low especially when the elected official or candidate can pay the fine with their campaign money. From November 2003 through September 2021 the Texas Ethics Commission issued fines totaling $1,183,990. Of that, $1,004,071 has been collected.

The largest fine has been $75,000 for Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole in June of 2009. The complaint alleged Eversole used over $204,000 of his donors money for personal items including vintage cowboy clothing, books, and memorabilia. He had to reimburse his account $41,000. 

The second largest fine was for $30,000 against Harris County Dept of Education Trustee, Eric Dick for hiding his true expenditures for his run for Houston City Council back in 2019. His fine is not in the list below because it has not been officially posted yet. As previously posted:

Eric Dick, a Trustee on the Harris County Department of Education has been fined $30,000 by the Texas Ethics Commission for his deceptive mailer supporting his run for City Council back in 2019. Dick is an attorney and the TEC has also referred him to the Texas Bar.

The top fines over $10,000 include the following. The entire list of fines can be found here.

I’m not sure how the State Bar of Texas works or how aggressive they can be towards attorneys in Texas but nevertheless this can’t be something to brag about.

The Texas Ethics Commission has the ability to refer violations of ethics laws to various organizations such as the District Attorney’s Office or the State Bar of Texas. In a letter to the State Bar the TEC has referred Eric Dick, Harris County Dept of Education Trustee for various violations concerning his recent ethics complaint. This complaint ended in a $30,000 fine. According to the letter:

In particular, the Commission would like to notify the Bar of both the conduct at issue in the sworn complaint and in Mr. Dick’s dealings with the Commission in the course of the investigation of the complaint, for which the agency can provide further information.