It looks like City of Houston mayoral candidate Steve Costello is finally, I say finally!, ramping up his campaign. At fellow candidate Bill King’s expense. From the InBox:
Will the Real Bill King Finally Stand Up?
“Waffle King” once again flip-flops, this time on pensions
HOUSTON — Democrat Republican now “unapologetically moderate” candidate for mayor Bill King has once again proven that he will say and do whatever it takes in his attempt to win over voters. This time, King dizzyingly bounced between his positions on the matter for local control over municipal pensions in just the matter of a few weeks.
Just recently, King joined other mayoral candidates, including Steve Costello, in signing a pledge issued by the group Texans 4 Local Control. Their pledge specifically binds the signatories to support efforts that give Houstonians, through their local government, control over local pensions rather than continuing to leave the matter in the hands of Austin politicians. The organization is also purchasing cable and radio ads advocating for local control.
Support for local control has been endorsed by Council Member and mayoral candidate Steve Costello, who was the only mayoral candidate to testify on behalf of State Representative Jim Murphy’s local control bill this last legislative session. Local control is supported by numerous local conservative officials, business leaders and even the Houston Chronicle. It is understandable why King would eventually join this growing chorus – albeit extremely late.
However, there is one important catch to King’s late arrival– he doesn’t believe that achieving local control is possible and in fact he thinks it is bad public policy. Throughout his campaign for mayor he has repeatedly told Houston voters across the city that he opposes the local control that the organization and their pledge specifically stand for. Here is King in his own words:
“This is the reason I do not favor merely returning the plans to local control. Term limited city administrations and City Councils have not proved themselves responsible stewards of the city’s finances generally so there is no reason to believe that in the long run they would be any more responsible for managing the pension liability if left completely to their own devices.“ — Bill King, memo submitted to the C Club on March 15, 2015 (page 5)
“The last thing I want is Houston City Council in control of our pensions. That is the worst idea I have heard tonight.” – Bill King, United Republicans of Harris County Candidate Forum, July 14, 2015 (Video)
“…an effort to simply turn over the regulation of pension to local city councils is a political hill too high to climb.” — Bill King Campaign Update, billkingforhouston.com, August 18, 2015
“This two-sided, flip-flopping approach is nothing new to the Bill King candidacy and Houston voters in every corner of our city are beginning to catch on,” said Ward Curtin, Costello for Mayor campaign manager. He added, “Houstonians deserve their next mayor to be someone like Steve Costello who will consistently lead on the issues that matter so we can get Houston moving forward again rather than Bill King who changes everything from his positions, political affiliations and overall tone depending on his audience.”
To learn more, visit www.costelloformayor.com and follow the campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
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And yesterday, he released an ad poking fun at King’s “back to basics” campaign.
The only problem I have with this is that he uses the “waffle king” term – I thought that Ben Hall’s campaign came up with that.
As I’ve said before, I think Costello would make a good mayor for Houston. And yes, I’ve gotten blasted for saying that by fellow conservatives because Costello was the driving force behind the “rain tax”. But then, these same conservatives are supporting the “waffle king”, so there’s that.
I like Costello because he is a straight shooter, or at least he seems to be. I had a chance to sit down and discuss his campaign several months ago and asked him some very tough questions. He didn’t blink an eye and answered each one of those questions in a straightforward way, knowing full well that I disagreed with his positions. For instance, when I asked him if the “drainage fee” was really a “tax”, he said of course it was but there was no way that voters would approve a tax, so they called it a fee. That honesty might come back to bite him because of the Texas Supreme Court ruling on the issue but at least he didn’t sugarcoat it. Same goes for his support of the idiotic Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). When I asked why he would vote for that, he said that he believes in equal rights for all people and that is that. No hemming or hawing, no kowtowing to my thoughts on the subject, just a matter of fact reason for his support of it.
I like honesty in ANY candidate.
The problem is that I can’t see any scenario that gets him into a runoff. There are a few west side Republicans that support him but his natural base of moderate to liberal Democrats have plenty of Democratic candidates to choose from. Same goes for his support of the HERO ordinance because the Democratic gay community has one of their own in Sylvester Turner to vote for. Bill King seems to have the Clear Lake and Kingwood Republicans locked up. Like I said, I don’t see how he gets there, which is why I think Republicans should vote strategically.
But if he somehow manages to get into a runoff, I think he could very well win the whole thing and will do a good job as mayor. In any case, it’s good to see him fighting for votes. Finally.