I admit it, I was worried when no one showed up at the recent townhalls that Rep. Gene Green held. Like, nobody. The first one he held brought out the biggest crowd, about 20 or so voters plus his staff. I went to the third one and didn’t bother to write about it because there were only 6 people. He told me at that meeting that only 5 were at the second one. So, I was nervous, wondering if we had lost all the momentum from the previous year. I think it was Dr. Whited over at blogHOUSTON.net that told me not to worry, citizens were focused on the future, not the past. Boy, was he right or what?
An enthusiastic, overflowing crowd met last night to look towards the November elections and to learn what they could do to help. Dale Huls gave an overview of the CLTP’s work and highlighted a couple of upcoming events, which I’ll also highlight separately. Mary Huls gave an unofficial update from True the Vote, which I’ll discuss further below. Galveston County Pct. 4 Commissioner Ken Clark then talked about the importance of personal involvement in campaigns and outlined various tasks for which volunteers are needed. And then the headliner, Gallery Furniture’s Jim “Mattress Mac” McIngvale lit the crowd up and left them burning with desire to change their country.
Do you want to stop this madness? We know what we’ve got to do.
That tag was the end of Mattress Mac’s speech. And that is a fact. We know what we have to do, now let’s get out and do it. Mac gave a good speech about the “greatest generation” and how they did what they had to do to make this country about better place for their children. He urged the attendees to return to that model and to make the sacrifices necessary to return this country to its greatness.
Listen to his entire speech (click to download the mp3):
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Listen to just his ending cheer:
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Unofficial True the Vote Update
As I mentioned above, Mary Huls gave an unofficial update about True the Vote’s operation to clean up the Harris County voting rolls and insure that elections are fair, and that each qualified citizen gets one vote and that that vote is counted accurately. Obviously, she mentioned Houston Votes in the course of her update. Unfortunately, some of the information she gave to the 400 citizens was inaccurate. If there is one thing that we must do, it is that we must make certain that we present accurate information so that citizens will be fully and accurately informed. Our credibility and integrity cannot be up for question. It is in that spirit that I point this out and I do hope it is taken in that spirit.
The first inaccuracy is this: Mary stated that Houston Votes is an old ACORN group. I can find no hard connection between the groups. Yes, we can make soft connections, especially when you consider that Rep. Kristi Thibaut, ex-ACORN lobbyist is on their advisory board, but that is different from a “subset of ACORN” or “an old ACORN group”. See Fred Lewis’ response to my inquiry in yesterday’s recap of the Monday night King Street event.
Secondly, Mary stated in reference to Houston Votes: “they submitted over 26,000 applications in a one month period; over 18,000 were found to be fraudulent”. That is grossly inaccurate. As far as the public record goes, not a single one has been “found to be fraudulent”. There have been referrals made to various offices and there remains a possibility that some are fraudulent but those would number in the handful, not in the thousands. Most of the applications that Mr. Vasquez mentioned in his press release were incomplete, duplicates, unreadable, i.e., technical violations.
Thirdly, Mary stated that “we found all that and turned it over to the tax office”. While King Street Patriots and True the Vote certainly highlighted the issue with their efforts, we must be clear that they were NOT involved in the official investigation and that AT NO TIME did King Street Patriots or True the Vote have access to confidential voter registration information. Any information that they received from their Open Records Requests had all personal confidential information redacted. It would have been impossible for KSP or TTV to find duplicate drivers license numbers, social security numbers, or birth dates. It may seem that I’m being too technical here but with people suing each other left and right, it is critical to point this out.
Fourth, Mary said that shortly after Mr. Vasquez’s press conference, the SEIU announced that they would have a press conference. Obviously, she mis-spoke and meant Houston Votes.
Fifth, Mary stated that, to date, 200 registrars had been fired and some face charges ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. Once again, the public record does not support this statement. First, volunteer deputy registrars would be disqualified, not fired. Second, there is no record yet of any being disqualified. There may have been some, and King Street is filing an ORR to determine that, but no one knows. If some have been or eventually will be disqualified, it is certainly possible that they could face criminal charges of one type or another but that is unknown and certainly no one is facing charges as of today.
I asked Mr. Vasquez if he would like to comment on the information put forth last night and here is his response:
I applaud the speaker’s and audience’s enthusiasm, however, their statistics and narrative are not accurate. As announced at my August 24th press briefing, my office’s findings questioned approximately 5,500 out of 26,500 applications submitted by Houston Votes & Texans Together Education Fund through August 16, 2010. As of that time, only 7,200 of the total had resulted in apparently new voter records.
The King Street Patriots & True the Vote organization had absolutely no role whatsoever in my office’s official investigation and at no time did they ever have access to confidential voter registration applications.
On its own, separate and independently from the Harris County Tax Office, KSP has researched the database of existing registered voter records and, per the Texas Election Code, had several KSP members submit challenges to the voter registrations of approximately 468 existing voters in Harris County.
I also spoke at length to Catherine Engelbrecht of King Street Patriots and True the Vote and she stressed that this was not an official presentation from True the Vote and agreed that it is critical to put forth accurate information.
I realize that is a lot of information and hope that it does not put the meeting in a negative light because this update was but a small part of the meeting. Mary did her best to give a brief update of a complicated story to a group of interested citizens and did not intentionally present wrong information.
Back to the meeting!
Believe it or not, the Rick Perry for Governor campaign DOES have signs! Really! Wanna see?
One of the attendees took it upon herself to drive up to Perry headquarters and purchase signs. She was giving them away for free. I’m no professional campaign consultant but it does strike me as odd that the Perry campaign doesn’t have much of a presence in Harris County. Meeting after meeting, I hear the same thing: when is Rick Perry going to engage in Harris County?
There were the usual raffle drawings, t-shirt sales, cookies, and coffee. Mattress Mac gave a huge boost to the last raffle drawing by adding in a pair of luxury suite tickets to the Texans-Cowboys game. The coffers were overflowing. One interesting thing for me is that the attendees were split pretty much 50/50 between Galveston and Harris Counties.
The meeting started, after the prayer, pledges, and a stirring rendition of the National Anthem (I think by the same young woman that sang at this meeting), with a showing of Daniel McCool’s Michael Berry I’m Taking Action video. This video should be shown at every conservative meeting this year, even those with cordial invites requiring RSVP’s. Watch it again:
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A few pictures from the event.
