In the race to replace JP Bill Yeoman in Harris County JP Court Precinct 5, Place 2, there are four candidates (in ballot order): Jeff Williams, George Huntoon, Virginia S. Pittman, and Ed Seale. I’ve met all but Mr. Seale at various functions throughout the primary season. I noted here that Mr. Huntoon funded Terry Lowry’s smear machine and recommended that people vote for Virginia S. Pittman.
For the last couple of weeks, precinct chair and Williams supporter Stuart Mayper has been pushing the line that Mr. Huntoon is out of control and not qualified to be JP. I don’t know Mr. Mayper personally but have seen campaign finance reports from Judicial candidate Glenn Devlin paying him $2,000 for his “endorsement” mailer. So I pretty much took his rants about Huntoon with a grain of salt. Until I listened to the recording of a phone call that Mr. Huntoon made. Wow.
If you listen to the recording and read the blog post, it looks as though Mr. Huntoon has broken the law. Or, at the very least that he has made a huge error in judgement. So I contacted the players invovlved with the blog post, Houston DWI Attorney Paul B. Kennedy and the candidate, Mr. Huntoon.
Mr. Kennedy stands by the authenticity of the recording, which is moot because Mr. Huntoon did the same. I asked Mr. Kennedy about his involvement in politics and he stated that he has no involvement. Which piqued my curiosity: why then would you be interested in this race? He explained that it was the result of a luncheon he attended, after which he wrote this blog post and called Mr. Huntoon an “idiot who fell off the turnip truck”.
After he wrote that post, someone contacted him and told him that they had a recording about Mr. Huntoon. And other “evidence” about him. He’s not sure who it was but is confident that they were from the Williams camp. He subsequently wrote the post with the recording and another one about Mr. Huntoon’s speeding tickets that Mr. Mayper has been harping about on Facebook for quite some time.
I contacted someone on Mr. Huntoon’s advisory committee and asked him to have Mr. Huntoon call me. Hey, any response to this is better than nothing.
I don’t think I was quite prepared for Mr. Huntoon’s response. Yes, the recording is of him and he will be proud to let anyone listen to it because it is the result of his bad judgment after a Homeowner’s dispute. Turns out that, in his words, he was just trying to get an angry homeowner off his back when he made that call, suggesting that they break the law. But saying you were going to rob a bank is different than robbing a bank. Mr. Huntoon insists that he never followed through with that suggestion and that it was, again, only intended to stop the angry homeowner from calling him incessantly. One thing that Mr. Huntoon wants to make very clear: this had nothing to do with theft of City of Houston water. It was a proposal not to pay the Galveston Subsidence District for the water extracted from the ground. Which he never intended to follow through on.
The reason for the homeowner’s anger is that his property abuts the “lake” (suburban retention pond) and the lake was empty and looked bad, as most will do during the dry season. Just because you purchase a home on “Silverlake” or some other “lake” doesn’t mean that there is actually a lake there, as any Texan should know. I think there is only one natural lake in Texas, Catto, but I digress.
So Mr. Huntoon thinks that this angry homeowner, Alex, whom he described as a “cyber-terrorist”, gave this tape to the Williams campaign out of spite. And there are a couple of more players, including a “Sigh-ear” (my phonic spelling) Kahn, who was on the board after Mr. Huntoon left in January of 2006.
After these guys (Alex, Sigh-ear and Mike) heard Mr. Huntoon’s radio commercial, they called up Jeff Williams and let him know they had this secret recording. Subsequently, Mr. Williams called Mr. Huntoon and set up a secret meeting to discuss the allegations. According to Mr. Huntoon, during this meeting Mr. Williams attempted to blackmail him into pulling out of the race. Mr. Huntoon declined and told Mr. Williams that he didn’t care about the recording. And his thought when he left the meeting was that it was going to be a clean race. But he didn’t tell Mr. Williams that he recorded the meeting. When he heard later that Mr. Williams had surrogates such as Mr. Mayper attacking him, Mr. Huntoon arranged for a second meeting, which he also recorded. But that meeting apparently failed as well.
So there you have it. Listen and decide for yourself, is Mr. Huntoon a water thief that makes very poor judgments or is this a neighborhood squabble that got out of control during a political race.
I asked Mr. Huntoon how he was going to overcome this politically and he didn’t think it was important. Interesting.
As for me, I’m just glad that I recommended that you vote for Virginia S. Pittman. So, so, glad. Unlike Terry Lowry and Gary Polland, both of whom endorsed Mr. Huntoon. Or Steven Hotze, who endorsed Jeff Williams.
I’d rather take my chances on a woman of character. Is this race over because of the early voting turnout? I surely hope not. If you live in that JP precinct, do yourself a favor and go vote tomorrow for Virginia S. Pittman. You’ll be glad you did.