Moni's Post Houston Municipal Runoff Election Thoughts

It's been 72 hours since it because clear Houstonians took out the political trash by massively rejecting Tony Trump Buzbee and giving Sylvester Turner a second four year term as our mayor. 

Mayor Turner garnered 56% of the vote in sending Buzbee to the loss he so richly deserved after trying to inject transphobia in this race at the last minute.  A last minute robocall from Trump didn't help and had the opposite effect of boosting turnout

Buzbee spent $12 million to get that butt kicked, and has refused at this writing to concede. 

Typical.   But hey Tony, I did tell you back in August when you disrespectfully stepped to me you would never be elected to the mayor's chair in my hometown.

Don't forget it was you who said on FOX26 that you didn't need to be mayor.   Well, the wise citizens of Houston made your wish to NOT be the mayor of Houston come true for the holidays.

We also sent transphobe Dave Wilson packing from the Houston Community College (HCC) Board of Trustees by electing Monica Flores Richart.   Wilson abruptly resigned from his Position 2 seat he deceptively won six years ago by 24 votes when Rhonda Skillern-Jones filed to run against him and jumped into the Position 1 race.

Flores Richart did the Lordt's work and trounced that homohating behind twice.  She got 48% of the vote back on November 5, just missing the 51% threshold she needed to beat him outright. 

She handled her business in the runoff and spanked that transphobic behind.  Congrats Madame Trustee-elect.   Rhonda Skillern-Jones also won handily in the HCC Position 2 race.

Now that the transphobic Wilson has been bounced from the HCC board and has more free time on his hands, we Houston liberal-progressive peeps need to make sure he doesn't spend it trying to mess with Houston area trans people.

The embattled HISD board also added two more Black women on its board of trustees in Kathy Bluefield Daniels in District 2 and Patricia Allen in District 4. 

As for the Houston City Council elections, we had some problematic people running for city council in this cycle as well.   The 180 people that filed to run meant that while we stopped some of the bad ones, others got through like conservative incumbents Mike Knox and Michael Kubosh.

One that didn't get through was White supremacist Anthony Dolcefino.  He made it to a runoff for the At Large 4 seat in large part because the Houston media tried to softpedal his white supremacist activities at UT 

Thank goodness Dr. Letitia Plummer won that seat and blocked him from getting a nice leather chair in The Horseshoe.    But we will have to worry about Dolcefino running for a future office.

This transphobe, Edward Pollard, also slipped through and got elected to City Council in District J, beating Sandra Rodriguez.    Pollard, a so called 'conservative Democrat', AKA a Republican ashamed to claim the label, opposed the HERO ordinance back in 2014, and is an on the record transphobe.   Unfortunately I have to look at his azz in The Horseshoe for the next four years.

I also wasn't happy to hear about some of Rodriguez's signs mysteriously disappearing in this southwest side district during this race.

Many Houston Black women are not happy Abbie Kamin won her District C race against Shelley Kennedy, especially after a photo surfaced of her wearing an antebellum dress at a Kappa Alpha collegiate frat function.

Kamin never really came clean about it or offered a substantive explanation as to why she's in Confederate garb, but she's going to have to do it sooner or later.   Progressive sisters have long memories, and until she clears this up with them, if Kamin  has aspirations for higher office, she may have problems getting support from the Harris County Democratic Party base (Black women) if she doesn't deal with it ASAP.

And in this election cycle's concrete example of why every vote matters, in District H challenger Isabel Longoria is trailing incumbent CM Karla Cisneros by a razor thin 12 votes.

Looks like this District H race will be going to a recount, and they will be counting every ballot cast in this one, including provisional and overseas mail in ballots before we have a declared winner in this race. 

Then there's the mess in District B, which has gone to court.

There were 13 candidates running in the race to replace term limited CM Jerry Davis, and the top two vote getters were Tarsha Jackson (right) and former North Forest ISD board member Cynthia Bailey,

Renee Jefferson Smith, the candidate who finished third in the District B race, filed suit, alleging that since Bailey was an ex-offender, she wasn't eligible to run for city council.   Jackson, the frontrunner on November 5 and who is favored to win the seat, believes Bailey is eligible to run.

It didn't help that when Bailey filed, on the affidavit you must sign in order to run to declare whether or not you have a felony conviction, she said no. 

A judge will need to sort the murky legal question out before they can hold a special election for the seat, which was tentatively scheduled for January 28. 

I also lost a lot of respect for the firefighters in this election cycle.   Their union leadership backed Dolcefino, Dick and Pollard and two failed candidates for mayor in Sue Lovell and Dwight Boykins.  May be time for y'all to stop rejecting the 7% raise Mayor Turner offered y'all and take it. 

I also see the possibility of a garbage fee being passed to fund the Solid Waste Department for much needed new garbage trucks and salary bumps.

So to wrap this up, while there are some developments I'm happy about in terms of the new council will be a female majority body with five Black women sitting on it, there are others that I'm not thrilled about.

Just means that I'll be making a lot of trips to Houston City Hall to ensure I'm doing my part to hold our local elected officials accountable.