And that is being generous. While both Houston mayoral campaigns are slinging mud now, Mayor Annise Parker has been at it all year. This morning she released another attack ad, this time targeting her opponent Ben Hall’s tax payments. That’s right his tax payments – taxes due that have been paid in full.
Meanwhile, Rome burns. AKA Houston’s pensions continue to bury the city in debt. And Parker refused to testify on a bill at the Legislature that would have helped fix the problem. But as her extra campaign staff on the Houston Chronicle editorial board noted, it is an election year and politicians cannot be expected to take a stand during an election year. No, really, they said that.
As we witnessed in 2013, there is not much appetite for that among city officials in an election year. Mayor Parker herself demurred from testifying personally in favor of bringing control of employee pensions back to Houston. Was she looking over her shoulder at a mayoral challenger? Or perhaps ahead to a statewide race in which public union voters might be crucial? We can’t say.
We do know that Houstonians deserve better from their elected city officials, not to mention the Houston delegation in Austin, which could not even be publicly shamed in the 2013 regular session into supporting legislation to change the pension arrangement.
And yet they support her. Odd.
But hey, there is a bright side to Parker’s administration. All you have to do to get a piece of the pork pie is to donate money to her campaign! Check it out.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker has doled out over $65 million in taxpayer funded city contracts and awarded powerful political appointments in exchange for campaign contributions.
Campaign Finance Reports for the first six months of 2013 show Ms. Parker accepting more than $1 million in campaign contributions from special interests, including engineering firms, law firms, general contractors, commercial developers and certain Political Action Committees (PAC’s). $774,855.00 of those contributions came from entities that received a city contract or a political appointment in return. The remaining $325,657 came from special interest PAC’s.
And if you don’t believe that because it came from the Ben Hall for Mayor campaign, perhaps a look at the contributions will help you understand the truth of it.
Annise Parker Campaign Contributions from city contractors
Keep scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling.
But hey, Ben Hall paid his taxes late.
The Parker campaign is in trouble and they know it. Whether Ben Hall or anyone else defeats her isn’t the point. The point is that she has been Mayor of the city for two terms and the best that she can do in polling is 34{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. Not good. That is why she is attacking so hard, so frequently.
I was very surprised that the Greater Houston Restaurant Association chose not to endorse anyone in this race.
Greater Houston Restaurant Association Endorsements
That’s 3,900 business owners in Houston that have been running their businesses under Mayor Parker’s administration. They might know a thing or two about her record.