HERO Haters Threaten Recall Elections

The fun continues during the coming Memorial Day weekend over the HERO, and the faith-based haters have now resorted to threats and intimidation in order to try to get their way and defeat the HERO on May 28.

According to a KHOU-TV report, in addition to threatening to collect signatures to force a repeal referendum on the HERO, they are now going as far as threatening to target the mayor and any other council member who votes YES on this needed human rights ordinance.

The Houston city charter lays out the criteria for which an elected official can be recalled – incompetence, misconduct, malfeasance or unfitness for office, so it would probably be a stretch for the haters to be able to do so in the first place. 

But assuming they went to a GOP state judge and got a ruling allowing them to do so, you'd have the task of  getting 1/4 of the number of voters in the last city election that cast ballots in a particular race to sign off on petitions, and you have only 30 days to collect them.   There were 170,000 votes cast in the last mayoral race, so that translates to about 42,500 signatures the anti-HERO peeps would have to gather to recall Mayor Parker, assuming this threat is even credible.

Now for district councilmembers, in which there would be a lower signature threshold, that might be a different story. 

Let's assume you had a district council race in which 10,000 total ballots were cast.  It would take only 2,500 signatures to force a recall.

But seriously, do these conservafools really want to go there?  Did they not forget our side votes and can collect signatures to target council conservatives Michael Kubosh, Brenda Stardig and Oliver Pennington for removal from council?  

Stardig and Pennington are in district seats, so they would be subject to the low threshold.   Kubosh was elected citywide and would have a higher one, but there's enough of us in LGBT Houston pissed off at Kubosh to get the ball rolling on a recall effort targeting him, especially after that 'God put me on city council to oppose the HERO' remark he made at Sunday's Riggle hate rally.

Houston and Harris County provide 16% of the statewide votes in an election cycle.  Are the conservafools that pissed off about the HERO passing they would go there and give our liberal progressive voters another valid reason to bumrush the polls this November, especially in an election cycle in which Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte sit at the top of our statewide Democratic ticket?  

And with that juiced up Harris County turnout showing up and showing out, we'd urge those same progressive voters to handle their electoral business and cast ballots for every Democrat in down ballot race like the judicial ones.  

So please, be that politically stupid and go there.   Make my political day.

Their nekulturny behavior and Becky Riggle's expressed belief in one of the council hearings they have a right to discriminate against gays and Jews is why the HERO needs to pass May 28.