Bay Area Houston

That was quick!

Judge Briones, candidate for Harris County Commissioner, responded to a negative Facebook ad posted by her opponent in the Democratic Primary Runoff, Benjamin Chou. Chou created a Facebook page, Organization to Elect Better Leaders, as well as a twitter account which has 0 followers. According to the page the OTEBL “The mission of the Organization to Elect Better leaders is to make transformative change in our political system by electing ethical leaders.” The hypocrisy makes hypocrites look bad. 

According to Briones Chou might have violated a number of Ethics Commission rules such as not putting on a “Political Ad paid for by…” disclosure on the ad, not registering as a PAC, not appointing a treasurer, and not identifying the source of donations. Now I believe if the amount spent is below $500 for the entire campaign these rules may not apply but then again I do not know about PACs. Whoever is advising him should read the rules of the Ethics Commission. His Facebook page and account was created by Human Age Digital who should also know the rules of the Commission.

This entire mess looks like a rookie campaign.

This is interesting.

A group called the Conservative Republicans of Texas published an endorsement mailer for the 2022 Republican primary with comments from Steven Hotze, the founder, and Jared Woodfill, the President of CROT and the former Chair of the Harris County Republican Party. 

The endorsements include Don Huffines who ran for Governor (lost), Money Mays Middleton who ran for Senate District 11 (won), Eric Dick who ran for Harris County Treasurer (lost) and Vidal Martinez for Harris County Judge (in a runoff). All of these candidates are considered to be extreme far right wing.

Since Jan 1, 2021, CROT raised $641,000 with Defend Texas Liberty PAC donating $150,000 (more on them in a separate post) Huffines $126,500, Money Mayes Middleton $50,000 Eric Dick and Vidal Martinez both donated $50,000. 

The largest donors of $2500 or more totaling $484,600 include:

I just couldn’t resist.

The Harris County Republican Party was expecting a win by Eric Dick to be the nominee for Harris County Treasurer. Instead he got trampled by 30 points even after being endorsed by the Houston Chronicle. According to his ethics reports, Dick spent over $208,000 of his own money for political advertising in his losing cause. 

His opponent, who has no idea of what the office actually does, raised about $78,000 including a personal loan of about $22,000. The Chronicle has this to say about him:

No doubt that plenty of voters in the Republican primary will agree with him that the expanded scope of county government is a problem. Fortunately for them, the November general election offers an opportunity to vote in new commissioners or a new county judge. But if they don’t, we don’t believe that using the treasurer’s office to shape the budget should be in the cards — no matter which party is in control.

“If you don’t follow the law, you’ll get removed from office,” said Dick, who was first elected to the Harris County Board of Education in 2016.

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.

I guess you could call this landslide a premature election. 

 The Qanon Republican Party has their candidate.

Vidal Martinez is running for County Judge against Lina Hidalgo probably because they couldn’t find a woman with the last name of Hidalgo to confuse voters. Martinez raised $514,585 with $100,000 coming from a personal loan. Of the remaining $414,585, 14 donors contributed $340,000 or 82% of all her donations. The remaining 18% donated $74585. Unlike other candidates Martinez relied on the deep pockets of every day, common, peasants donating $1000 or more. Her top 14 donors are:

Dennis Paul, a republican from Clear Lake, had to change his annual fundraiser from a Harris County park to Galveston County and we all got to listen to him whine and lie.

According to Dennis Paul, he incorrectly blames Harris County for his staff’s mistakes and lies leading up to his event being cancelled by his own staff.

“Despite having a contract in place for months with Commissioner Adrian Garcia’s office in Precinct 2, we were notified late last week that we would not be able to have any sort of fundraising activities at Clear Lake Park. I would like to think that this was a simple miscommunication, but it seems par for the course for Democrats in Harris County.”

Never liked the guy. Any attorney who has to use a tube of brylcreem isn’t getting my business.

Jared Woodfill was the Chair of the Harris County Republican Party for over a decade. In 2019 his law office was raided. Now he finds himself on one end of a strange conspiracy theory assault. From the Houston Chronicle:

Instead, according to an indictment announced Tuesday by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, the incident was a brazen attempt by a former Houston police captain to secure evidence to support a far-fetched claim that prominent local Democrats had orchestrated a scheme to harvest more than 700,000 ballots leading up to the Nov. 3 election. The ex-lawman, Mark A. Aguirre, 63, faces a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon stemming from the Oct. 19 confrontation.

So, how does Jared fit in this debacle? Turns out Jared is the president of Liberty Center for god and country. The Liberty Center paid Aguirre over $200,000 for his investigative skills. Over the years Jared has joined with religious nut job Steven Hotze and has been circling the drain with him. Liberty Center is not listed at the Texas Ethics Commission or the city or county websites. They had a GoFuckMe site that has since been removed.

Hopefully the Harris County DAs office is going to comb this shit out.

A few months ago the Harris County Commissioners Court rushed through a process creating the Office of the Elections Administrator. Many activists, including myself, were not very happy about being called to provide input, taking their time to do so, just so they could immediately make the decision. From a previous post:

The Commissioners listened to our input then voted to approve the item regardless. Their minds were made up leaving us with many unanswered questions. Why were we left in the dark on this extremely important issue? Why was this being discussed in the middle of a historic election? Why was this being discussed during a raging pandemic killing Houstonians? Why didn’t the Commission reach out for comments from the public? Why were they not being transparent about the issue?

Since then an Elections Administrator, Isabel Longoria, has been appointed by the Commission. This selection has been praised by many in the community but Tuesday’s meeting might upend this. According to an update to the upcoming agenda for Tuesday’s meeting:

Request by the County Attorney for Executive Session to consult with the County Attorney concerning claims that the Office of the Elections Administrator was improperly established and for possible action upon return to Open Session including ratification of prior acts of Commissioners Court; creation of the Office of the Elections Administrator and/or authorization for litigation concerning such claims.

Most probably the Harris County Republican Party has their panties in a wad and has challenged the process that was rushed through. The item will be discussed during executive session.

Hopefully this rush to appoint was legal and we can move on to the next election cycle.