I’ve been spending a fair amount of time covering the Larry Gonzales/John Gordon runoff for the Texas House District 52 race, mainly because I live in the district, and because of the relative paucity of local coverage. Hot on the heels of my interviews with Gonzales and Gordon, both of which covered Gordon’s attack mailers against Gonzales over getting the majority of his campaign funds from Houston developer Bob Perry, comes a two part-response from the Pro-Gonzales (or perhaps more accurately, anti-Gordon) camp: a 3-fold attack mailer and an associated website, http://www.thetruejohngordon.com, focusing on Gordon’s combative and litigious nature.
(Before we get into the meat of the matter, I’d like to clarify one point about attack ads and negative campaigning. Many a newspaper pundit wrings their hands and decries negative campaigning as ipso facto bad. I am not one of them. Negative campaigning is simply a fact of politics, defining your opponent is almost as important as defining yourself, and as long as a negative campaign is: A.) True, and B.) Effective, then it shouldn’t be shunned. Since the current round of District 52 attack ads stem from public records (campaign contribution records for the anti-Gonzales ads, court and police records for the anti-Gordon ads), they are, by definition, fair game, and simply part of the way American political campaigns in the 21st century are conducted. As Warren Zevon put it, “the name of the game is be hit and hit back.”)
The website and mailer complaints about Gordon boil down into three interrelated issues:
- That he is, to put it mildly, a hothead with an attitude problem.
“Meet John Gordon — candidate for Texas State Representative, District 52, with a cranky complexion.” [“Complexion” isn’t the word you want there, guys; try “disposition.” -LP] “John Gordon’s testy temperament is well known throughout Williamson County…the angry and arrogant trouble-maker who threatened to ‘beat to pieces’ a candidate who had the nerve to file for office against the candidate he supported…The civilly disobedient, crusty curmudgeon who doesn’t respect authority by intentionally filing his ethics reports late.”
- That he’s litigious and has filed “many frivolous lawsuits.” The mailer lists three cases in particular, and the website covers more.
- That he has had several run-ins with law enforcement.
The website supports its accusations with numerous downloadable documentation, and a particularly damning traffic stop video in which Gordon sounds both combative and incredulous at being stopped. If you plan on voting in the District 52 run-off on April 13, I suggest looking them over.
I haven’t seen any newspapers mention the story yet, and the only blogs that seem to have done so are M. J. Samuelson’s Blue Dot Blues (also here) and Holly Hansen’s Smart Girl Politics. Hansen is a Gonzales supporter, and M. J. Samuelson has been fairly critical of Gordon.
Some background: The mailer and website are funded by the Texas 1836 PAC, which Texas Ethics Commission documents state is run by a Larry Massey of Houston. Assuming it’s the same person, Massey’s public Linked-In page says that he’s Executive Vice President of the Bank of Houston. A search of his campaign contribution records shows that he’s contributed to a number of conservative Republicans over the years.
I think the website and mailer do a good job making their case against Gordon. In the interest of fairness, and since he hasn’t put up any reply to it on his website, I asked John Gordon five questions about the case via email. (I did this last night right before I headed out the door to have dinner with friends, which is why I made one factual error about Larry Massey’s current employer.) My questions are in italics below, followed by Gordon’s responses.
1. Are the allegations made by the website and/or the mailer true?
Most are half-truths – excerpts without any surrounding facts.
2. If not, which would you say are in error and how?
ALL
BOOT ISSUE – March 1996 American Statesman story (Front Page) in which the City of Austin admitted that it did not have the right to issue up to 60,000 parking tickets (1993, 1994, & 1995) to the state employees in the Capitol complex area (including putting a boot on my truck).
Randy Staudt lawsuit – he actually pleaded to a settlement which awarded me $24,000 for his failure to pay what he owed me – then further proceedings were dismissed.
Traffic ticket on my wife – FAILURE TO PUT A TURN SIGNAL ON – she was in a Controlled Left Turn Lane turning under a green arrow. Policemen stopped the car on a four lane road without shoulder in the rain in traffic – PROSECUTOR upon hearing this dismissed the ticket.
TRO against RRISD – FOR VIOLATING THE OPEN MEETINGS ACT AND VOTING ON LAND PURCHASE IN CLOSED SESSION – RRISD went back and held three public meetings and voted in open session – I had the request for TRO dismissed after the RRISD corrected its violation of the open meetings act.
TRO/administrative case challenging the residency of Alyssa Eacono – after the testimony of the initial TRO hearing became public, Primary voters took care of the issue by giving Eacono 7% of the vote making further court action mute. Only after Eacono was eliminated by the voters was the case dropped.
Leo Wood filed the suit, not me, against the Republican Party County Chair Darryl Pool. Leo Wood on his candidate application had failed to write in his address. He was suing to get on the ballot and his “excuse” was me. (I was an aide to his opponent State Representative Mike Krusee at the time.) The judge disregarded his unsupported accusations against me but put him on the ballot because he had listed a residential zip code 78626 which was completely in District 52 in 1994.
3. The PAC in question is evidently operated by one Larry Massey, a Vice President at Frost Bank in Houston*. Do you know Mr. Massey, and do you have any idea why he has involved himself in the case? (*This is in error, as Massey evidently left Frost Bank and now works at the Bank of Houston.)
Have no idea who Larry Massey is. It does appear that Houston must want to control District 52 in Williamson County with Bob Perry already having spent $90,000 on Larry Gonzales’s campaign.
4. A great deal of evidential material on that site has been obtained from Round Rock, Williamson County, and other various government agencies. Is all of it accurate? Would all of it be available on a Freedom of Information request, or do you think any of it was improperly or illegally released?
I encourage you get to all the cases and read them in detail. Only one case involved money – and I won that one because Randy Staudt had refused to pay me what he owed me. In the RRISD case, I stopped the RRISD from violating the law. The other case challenged a candidate’s lack of residence. The 1994 case was filed by a person, Leo Wood, who failed to fill out his candidate application properly.
5. The information on that website and in the mailer does not always give the disposition of the cases involved. Of the various lawsuits and legal cases they list, can you name which, if any, you’ve won?
I essential won all three of the cases that I filed.
1. Randy Staudt settled and the award to me was a little over $24,000.
2. I won the point of the TRO when RRISD went back and held three public hearings and then voted in public on purchasing the land.
3. I won on the point of lack of residency when the newspapers printed the accounts of the sworn testimony from the TRO hearing – the public then voted based on the evidence that was presented in multiple newspaper articles spurred on by my following administrative procedure of challenging in District Court – County Chairmen do not have the authority to resolve the issue.
Once again, thanks to John Gordon for answering these questions.
I plan to have more about the Texas House District 52 race next week. Previous posts about it can be found here and here.
Update: When I can back from dinner, there were two more mailers (one 2-fold and one 3-fold) from the Texas 1836 PAC attacking Gordon in my mailbox. As they cover much the same information as the first one and the website, I don’t think I need do any more than note their presence here. But based strictly on volume, the pro-Gonzales/anti-Gordon forces seem very serious about winning the direct-mail ground war.