July 9, 2025 • 32 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Through the first phase of this election. We're in the
dog days of summer early to mid July before a
March primary. The way this works for the Democrats is
candidates are making the rounds right now and they're tying
(00:24):
up the big money guys. And in Democrat circles in
Harris County is very different than Republicans. The big money
guys don't pick the candidates, fund the candidate, and choose
who will be in office. On the Republican side, the
(00:48):
most influential is Texans for lawsuit Reform. They will identify
their candidate, often grooming them along the way. They will
bring them up through the ranks through a state rep seed,
a state Senate seed. They will raise the money and
and they've they've got a lot of it, and they
(01:11):
will put the consultants on it. They've got very smart people.
Dennis Calabres is very bright. They've got Carl Rove type people,
and perhaps Carl Rove. They've got a network of people
who've been giving. Now, these guys are getting a lot older,
(01:32):
but in in in many of their family offices, the
Sun now runs the family office. The Sun is the
scion of the family and and he's got and those
folks trust Dick Week, Dick Weekly, and and Dick Trabulsi's
kind of more behind the scenes. Dick Trabulsi is the
uh Richard of Richards Liquor. If you remember the Richards
(01:54):
that have a black logo with the white cursive writing
of Richard's real he high end liquor store, befitting a Randalls. Well,
the Onsted family didn't want to have liquor stores. They
don't have liquor in their store. So there was kind
of a wink nod nod because when you were picking
(02:17):
up your groceries, you also wanted to pick up your booze,
so you would go to Randalls and then you'd have
to come out of the Randall's door and walk next
door to Richard's, a separate shop if you will. To
buy your booze in a liquor store that didn't feel
like you were going to get robbed. There wasn't a
homeless guy sitting on a box in the corner, you know,
(02:41):
there wasn't foreign language music playing. It didn't stink you
could use the bathroom it was. It was a very boutique,
nice liquor store. And Dick Trebulsey had, I don't know
how many, he must have had twenty of those. And
for those of you who were around when Randall's was
the dominant chain before you had Whole Foods and h
(03:04):
GB really stepped up their game to the higher quality
and the fancier stores, Randall's was the store on stats
were very, very influential people in this community and they
were everywhere, and their stores had a different feel to them.
They would put the brown flooring more intimate, more cozy,
(03:26):
more welcoming and warm inside. If you remember those stores,
if you want to get a feel for what that
store looked like, the last one I know of that's
like that is on West Timer at about Guestner, and
it's tucked in there. There's a l Tempo on Guestner
(03:46):
about a block north of West Teimer. On the southeast
corner of the Guestner West Teimer intersection there's a big
Tesla store. Then on the northeast corner there is a
I think it's an excellent station, and then set back
in that strip center is a Randalls. If you want
(04:08):
to get a feel for what Randalls used to be like,
that was it. It feels a little bit dated and
a little quaint now, like going to your grandmother's house
in Tanglewood. My grandmother didn't live in Tanglewood, but we
all know these type of people. If you grew up
in Houston and you went to Saint John's or Kincaid
or Saint Francis or Memorial or Saint Thomas, and your
(04:34):
grandmother had that kind of nice home in Tanglewood, but
it was getting a little bit dated. That's what Randalls became. Anyway,
I got a little distracted. Dick Treboulsi is a major force.
I don't know the extent to which he's still involved
with Texas for lawsuit reform. It's still really primarily Dick Weekly.
And Dick gives a lot of money, and he's very smart,
(04:56):
and he likes to win well. On the Republicans side,
you've got the money guys very influential in who the
canidate will be. On the Democrat side, it's not like that.
On the Democrat side, it is operatives. It will today
it's Rodney Ellis. I've been involved in Houston area politics
(05:17):
as a student and a participant to varying degrees since
nineteen eighty nine. I know the players. I know how
the game is played. I know who the influential players
are and who their friendships and alliances are, and which
union is going to support which way. And there has
been nothing like Rodney's hegemony over this area, his absolute dominance.
(05:41):
He is the boss, he is the godfather. And it's
not just that he's respected and people go to it.
It is that he is feared. It is that he
is unquestioned. I've never seen anything like this, not in
the modern era. In a large city, is there one
guy who has this kind of power. He picked some white, male,
(06:10):
white liberal Democrat male judges on the Harris County Judiciary
and decided that he was going to knock them off.
So he went and got black women, some of whom
had really not practiced law, just happened to have a
law degree, which is requisite to being a judge, and
(06:30):
he took He funnels the sorows money and he through
his Justice League or Progressive He's got a couple different organizations.
He starts running these ads in black newspapers, and yes
there are still black newspapers. You'll never see them, but
they're sent out in the mail like an old pony
sheet that it would tell you who to vote for,
(06:52):
and those advertisements still matter. He still has the pastors,
and the pastors, the black pastors, the black churches on
the East side of the Maine have a great deal
of influence even still to this day. And Rodney has
all the power sources, and he's got the rich downtown money.
He's got the John Arnold, who's one of the richest
(07:16):
men in the country and one of the five biggest
donors to politics in the country. And Rodney's got the checkbook.
He writes checks for whatever he wants.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Experience the excitement of Oshan the Michael Berry show, everything.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You need and most everything you want. So the Harris
County Judge Democrat primary, I don't know that all these
candidates that are currently in will be in as of
as of the primary. I don't know that they'll all
make it to election day. I don't think Lenahdalgo runs.
(07:54):
We'll start there. Lena serves at Rodney's pleasure, And Rodney
could have kept everybody out of this race except for
a nice porker. She was going to run and she
doesn't need Rodney's blessing. And when she wins, she will
(08:17):
have an uneasy piece with Rodney Ellis because it's a
four year term and I've seen how she can operate
with someone like him. She can be icy cold, but
get along. But she's not going to do his bidding
(08:40):
the way Lena Hudalgo is. She's not going to let
him talk her into committing crimes. She's not going to
do the corruption in graft. She is a reformer at heart.
I know this to be true, and she's going to
(09:01):
battle Rodney. If Anice Porker wins the primary, an wins
the general election, which is not a foregone conclusion, but
if that were to happen, she and Rodney would have
some difficulties. It wouldn't be an open spat on a
daily basis, but there would be some difficulties. She would
(09:22):
get along much better with John Whitmyer, who does not
get along with Lena Hidalgo, does not like Lena Hidalgo.
And by the way, the greatest secret in Harris County
politics that never gets talked about, John Whitmyer and Rodney
Ellis hate each other. You don't hate a Democrat as
(09:43):
much as these two men hate each other. I'll give
you a little bit of the history in the maybe
late eighties, early nineties. It's also long ago that I forget.
PBS was doing a series that no one knew about yet,
and it was about corruption in politics. And Rodney has
(10:08):
this sort of weird need to cut deals behind the scenes,
very clandestine. He likes to lower his voice. He likes this.
He's very smart, but he also has a tragic flaw
that Rodney is too cute by half. And so Rodney
agrees to do this thing, or probably ask them to
(10:32):
do it with PBS where he wears a wire on
the floor of the State Senate. So the Senate is
in session and the guys are all you know, it
maybe one of the early days, and they're all talking.
And I don't know if you've ever been in the
locker room of a sports team, but when Trump was
(10:55):
called on the carpet for the grab them by the
Whoho coming, he says has locker room talk every at
least every guy, and some women understand what that means.
And truthfully, for all the pearl clutching, you get a
group of women together talking about their husbands, talking about
(11:16):
one of their members that they don't like because she
thinks she's too good for them, or because she's always
asking for this, and because she shows up and then
they wish she would. You get them talk. You will
hear some of the nastiest, most crass language, vile talk.
None of it means anything, just the way people talk. Well,
(11:37):
Rodney wears a wire for PBS and he goes up
to people and he kind of induces them to say
things that appear to be very corrupt. And some of
them were some of us just locker room talk. Hey,
screwl Molly last night. Oh no, And so there was
(11:58):
a lot of that. PBS does this expose, and the
expose is these senators, Republicans and Democrats talking in this
manner in the clubby atmosphere of the Senate, and it
(12:22):
absolutely inflamed a hatred for Rodney that persists to this day.
And Whitmyer will never trust him, never forgive him, doesn't
like him, hates him. But I assure you the feeling
is mutual. Rodney has worked behind the scenes very hard
(12:42):
to undercut Whitmyer at every turn, so the Democrat primary,
so that the mayoral race between Sheila and Whitmyer was
effectively a Democrat primary. And part of the reason we
got involved was to keep Sheila from winning, because Whitmyer
was the only guy who had a chance to win,
(13:04):
and absent a Republican candidate, you got two folks on
the spectrum. All Whitmyer had to be was one inch
to the right of Sheila, and he would pick up
every Republican vote, every moderate and Republican vote, which is
there's not a lot of in the city, but there's
enough to win a race. He would pick up all
(13:24):
of those if he could get them to vote. It
wasn't surprising that Republicans voted for John Whitmyer over Sheila
Jackson Lee. Not a high bar there. What was surprising,
and he knows this, is that Republicans actually showed up
to vote. Because if Republicans stayed home, as they normally do,
(13:46):
and all you had was thirty five to forty percent
black vote, and the Jewish vote, and the gay vote,
and the young white liberal, the DINX and the that's
double income no kid Jim and you know, post college,
early job and then some old folks and then the
(14:08):
Hispanic vote on the East Side. If that was all
that showed up to vote, Whitmark gets wiped out. She
wins We remember that race as being a runaway and
Sheila had no chance. That's not true when you look
at the numbers. Sheila, remember there was a runoff, and
(14:28):
the runoff was on a Saturday, and she had to
announce by Monday at five whether she was going to
run for her congressional seat again. She knew she was
terminal at this point, She's continuing to run knowing she
has terminal cancer. They deny it, but it's true. I
know it's true. I can't tell you how I know
it's true, but I know it's true. And all she
(14:49):
wanted was to be mayor. She had wanted to be
mayor for all those years, which she'd love to be president.
But at this point she was this close to holding
the scepter, and she wasn't going to pull out of
the race and do the right thing. She didn't care
if she died in office with cancer. She didn't care
if she couldn't do the job because she was suffering
from cancer. And the same was also true Sevester Turner.
(15:10):
I'm sorry to speak ill of the dead, but that's
a fact. When you are a steward of the public power,
this public responsibility and the public Treasury. You don't get
to have this veil of protection around you because now
you're dead. No, that's that doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
We don't do that with Nixon, Michael Berry.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So here's how this race is going to play out.
For the Democrat primary. I told you about the mayoral election.
City versus county. City elections are in off years. County
elections are in even years. City elections for the City
(16:05):
of Houston sort of interesting. And you see this with
other small cities around the area. Nobody votes. Only a
tiny percentage of people actually vote, and so that makes
blocks of votes that do show up and vote very powerful.
(16:27):
So you could have a community that's ten percent of
the community that ninety percent of their people show up
and vote. Now they're nine percent of the overall community,
not that big, but when only twenty percent of the
people vote, you've got half the voters right there. That
gives somebody a huge, huge head start. Well, when you
(16:53):
look at the mayoral race, which was basically a Democrat primary,
it wasn't just a Democrat primary, and that was my point.
It was a Democrat primary plus all the Republicans over
here that don't normally vote and Republicans went for Whitmyer
because we and everybody else said, vote for Whitmyer so
(17:16):
we don't have Sheila Jackson Lee. And there was a
concerted effort behind the scenes by Republican organizations to help
Whipmyer win. Not because Whitmyer's our guy. He ended up
endorsing Kamala Harris half heartedly. We did not because Whitmyer's
our guy, but because we knew that Sheila Jackson Lee
(17:37):
would be the end of Houston. So he had the
great good fortune of running against someone who was so
hated that people would show up just to keep her
from winning. You've got to really be hated to be
at that level. Now, the Democrat primary that will be
the county Judge will not have that benefit. Republicans are
(17:59):
not going over there to vote in that race, especially
if Lena stays out of it. Republicans are going to
be more worried and and and energized over voting uh
Dan Crenshaw out in his congressional race, voting for the
attorney general, voting in the US Senate race for Paxton
(18:20):
against Corning or if they replace Cornyn, which looks more
and more likely, and the more he says they're not,
the more he is having to deal with. This is
the same thing's going on with Lena Hudalgo. Methinks the
girl does protest too much. She keeps saying I didn't
say i'm I didn't say I'm not running. Quick quit
(18:40):
saying I'm not I said I wasn't running. I never
said that. And now she's gone. You know, she's unstable.
And she gets caddy, and when she gets caddy, she
gets middle school caddy. The level of her caddy is
not very sophisticated. So Letitia Plumber Kamala Harris of Houston
City Council. She's a half Yamani Indians, so Indian live
(19:05):
in Africa and half black. She appears to be pretty smart,
she's attractive. She's on city council. Now, what she wasn't
supposed to do was announce that she was running. Because
the minute she announces she's running, that triggers that she
has to step down from city council. When she's no
longer on city council, then the people doing business with
(19:27):
City council have no reason to give her money in
a county seat. So she's not going to be able
to raise money, and they don't want to give her
money in a county seat because Rodney controls the contracts,
and if they piss Rodney off, they'll lose their county,
(19:48):
their county jobs. So Rodney's got this pot of money,
which is the county jobs. That's why you know Lena's
not running because all of the engineers, which is who
funds these elections, theeers, surveyors to a less extent because
it's low bid street pavers and all that sort of stuff.
But all the engineers and architects who and vendors who
(20:11):
sell things to Harris County government, they're not about to
touch anybody other than who Rodney tells them because he
controls the contracts. However, the fact that Lena is not
raising any money right now, when Rodney can snap his
finger and give her a bunch of money, he's bleeding
her out. So's he's easing her out, but emotionally she's
(20:35):
not ready to be out yet, so she is tearfully
on his shoulder, begging to be back in office, and
resentful that he's working behind the scenes to help Erica
Lee Carter run her campaign and replace her. Well, we
were all pretending that well, Lena's going to step down,
(20:55):
and that you know, the day she steps down, we're
going to have the bunting all ready and we'll have
you know, our various freak show groups that will all
show up to show we have a coalition. We'll have
all that ready. Well, that takes time, because the day
Lena stepped out, let's say that's a Tuesday, that afternoon
you want to say. We want to say that Lena
(21:17):
Hidalgo was a great county judge and she led us
through tough times and she's the captain of the ship,
and oh this is great and she was a wonderful
and pay tribute to her. And I want to continue
her long line of great leadership and I want to
be the next county judge. So all that has to
be set in motion. Well as that's being put together,
(21:40):
the players that put put that together were with Lena
before and now they're not so Lena. It's Lina sees
the writing on the wall. They're interviewing her replacement. So
Erica Lee Carter, Sheila Jackson, Lee's daughter, being Rodney's choice
(22:00):
is going to get There is a certain group of
people and I know this is going to shock you. Really,
it's going to befuddle you. There's a certain group of
people that actually think that Sheila Jackson Lee was some
sort of legendary civil rights icon. Yeah, they've been told
(22:20):
it and they believe it. They're not very smart, they're
really fat and really stupid, and they just keep repeating this.
They like to think that they were in the presence
of greatness. You know, like Barbara Jordan. Sheila Jackson Lee
was no Barbara Jordan, not even close. In fact, worlds apart,
(22:42):
Barbara Jordan would have despised what Sheila Jackson Lee was.
She was evil, she was mean spirited, she was petty,
she was corrupt, and she did a lot of damage.
I don't want to minimize that. She did a lot
of damage. And she wanted her daughter to come up
through the process. So they put her on the little
(23:04):
county Education board and they had some little ticky tag
stupid stuff so it would make it look like she
had a career of public service. He doesn't. And then
for Sheila's seat, they put Erica Lee Carter in there
to serve out the term so that she could call
herself congressman. So now in all of her political materials.
(23:27):
They're referring to her as congressman, a congresswoman, Erica Lee Carter.
You got to keep the Lee in there, because that's
Sheila Jackson Lee, and that's important. I'm surprised they don't
call her Erica Jackson Lee Carter, which is really too
bad because Elwin Lee, which is where she gets her
(23:48):
last name, is a great guy and I actually like him.
Sheila's husband, wonderful human being. But I leave that's at
So now you got Rodney very quietly plotting with Erica
Lee Carter's campaign. You've got a niece over here, and
she's got her long term friendships and some of them
will go with her instead of Rodney's choice. And then
(24:09):
you got Letitia Plumbers out there. I don't think she's
a big one. And then you still got Lena over
there going here everybody, just because I'm at counseling doesn't
mean I can't make it to the meeting. In a
period of less than ten years, it's easy to forget this.
Harris County went from a beacon of good government, relatively
(24:33):
well run, to be in an absolute in terms of
government craphole. This is what happens in Detroit wants great city,
Baltimore wants great city, Atlanta wants great city. This is
what happens. Ten years ago you had ed emm And
(24:59):
as county judge, not particularly partisan. Just the fact is,
if somebody is running as a as an it's an
administrative type position, if it's done right, which is how
Adam It did it, and to a large extent, how
how Robert Echles did it as well. But if the
(25:20):
county is being run properly by the county judge, then
that person is not known as a party leader. They're
an executor. It's a ministerial position. Keep keep the trucks
running on time, keep the grass mode, keep the trash
picked up. And that's how it was. You had. You
(25:44):
have four precincts in Harris County. So think of Harris
County as a tick, as a as a a box
top left top right, bottom left, bottom right, for ease
of purpose, and that that was kind of how the
precincts looked before precincts. So you have a four precinct,
you have four precinct commissioners. They are the they are
the lord of the manor of their precinct. Unlike a
(26:08):
city councilman who has individually no real power, or a
member of Congress who has individually no real power. A
commissioner has complete authority over his commission. If he wants
to build a park right there and name it Jim
Mudd Park or a monroeless park, he can do it.
If he wants to convert a property to a gun
(26:30):
range or a soccer field or anything else, he can
do it. And he's got a budget for it. He
has a crew. They have crews and trucks and all
that you've probably seen maybe in Galveston or at at
maybe in Round Top. You'll see these buses that are
painted red, white and blue, and it'll say you'll see
a bunch of old people getting off pensioners as an
(26:52):
English call him, and it looks like a Bengal hall
load up and and the old people will get off
and they're going to you know, they're down in Galas
and they're going to this or that restaurant. That is
a little scheme that the county commissioners run where they
have a bus that they take old people and they
take them places, they take them for events, and they
(27:14):
use the county funds and it's coordinated by somebody that
is kind of their old people voter coordinator, and these
old people get to have a day out, and the
county commissioner presumably has loyalty from these voters, and that's
kind of how little process works. So anyway, you had
four county commissioners and then the county judge, who's sort
(27:36):
of like the mayor of the county. This is the
person who is the face of the county in regional stuff,
the person who is the county wide director. Well, ten
years ago you had Cactus, Jack Cagle and Tom Ramsey,
(27:56):
both Republicans, and ed Emmett as a county judge. So
you had three of the five. In fact, there have
been four of the five, and most of the time,
going back thirty years, four of the five commissioners were Republicans.
The only Democrat was l Franco Lee, So Elfranco was
(28:18):
running his own little scheme out of Precinct three, I
think he was, but he wasn't able to corrupt the
entire county. You had longtime county commissioners Jerry Eversold, Steve Raddock,
and Robert Eckles who been there for a long time.
And then you had I think it's Precinct two, which
is the Southeast precinct, which is kind of east Side
(28:41):
politics and Pasadena. Now there was a little bit of
give and take there because you had some competing power
bases and you would have a Republican and Democrat going
back and forth. And in fact, Sylvia Garcia, really really
ugly congressman that serves from that area, was a county
commissioner from that precinct. So a Democrat could win that
(29:07):
precinct if they mobilized the Hispanic vote and they were
able to get labor, which is very influential in that precinct.
But now that's Adrian Garcia. Well, that precinct went solidly Democrat,
and Rodney, who had the one precinct, he took over
for l Franco Lee. He then started plotting to get
(29:29):
three out of the five and the county judge, the
county mayor, and lo and behold ten years later, four
out of the five the county judges a Democrat, Lena,
Then there's Rodney, then there's Leslie Brioni's who he just
placed there, Adrian Garcia, and there's those four and then
(29:52):
the lone Republican left is Tom Ramsey, how they drove
Cactus Jack Cagle out of office, and almost nobody talks
about it. I'm not sure how many people know it.
Jack Kegel was a very popular county commissioner. Rodney just
went in because he questioned everything Rodney did. He's the
(30:13):
one who brought up the Elevate Strategies contract, the allegedly
illegal contract that got Lina's top three people indicted. And
by the way, to be clear, Lena didn't cook that
scheme up. Lena's not smart at all. When I'm not
(30:34):
saying this to insult her, Lena is dumb, as in
really dumb. She's the kind of dumb that if she
worked for you and you gave her a project. I'm
not saying she's slow. I'm saying she's not in any
(30:58):
way a person that you trust to make good decisions
on much of anything. And yeah, well I'll leave that
there for now. Yeah, it's going to be a very
interesting It's going to be a very interesting Democrat primary.
(31:20):
On the Republican side, I will only say that I
don't think there is a strong candidate that has emerged.
I do realize that people are desperate to find a
non white woman to run as the front runner because
a lot of Republican power brokers think that's the only
(31:41):
way a Republican can win countywide in Harris County, which
they say, which is really sad, And I think that's
going to have a big effect on who the candidate
is that is chosen, and I'll leave that there for now.
Through the first phase of this election. We're in the
dog days of summer early to mid July before a
March primary. The way this works for the Democrats is
candidates are making the rounds right now and they're tying
(00:24):
up the big money guys. And in Democrat circles in
Harris County is very different than Republicans. The big money
guys don't pick the candidates, fund the candidate, and choose
who will be in office. On the Republican side, the
(00:48):
most influential is Texans for lawsuit Reform. They will identify
their candidate, often grooming them along the way. They will
bring them up through the ranks through a state rep seed,
a state Senate seed. They will raise the money and
and they've they've got a lot of it, and they
(01:11):
will put the consultants on it. They've got very smart people.
Dennis Calabres is very bright. They've got Carl Rove type people,
and perhaps Carl Rove. They've got a network of people
who've been giving. Now, these guys are getting a lot older,
(01:32):
but in in in many of their family offices, the
Sun now runs the family office. The Sun is the
scion of the family and and he's got and those
folks trust Dick Week, Dick Weekly, and and Dick Trabulsi's
kind of more behind the scenes. Dick Trabulsi is the
uh Richard of Richards Liquor. If you remember the Richards
(01:54):
that have a black logo with the white cursive writing
of Richard's real he high end liquor store, befitting a Randalls. Well,
the Onsted family didn't want to have liquor stores. They
don't have liquor in their store. So there was kind
of a wink nod nod because when you were picking
(02:17):
up your groceries, you also wanted to pick up your booze,
so you would go to Randalls and then you'd have
to come out of the Randall's door and walk next
door to Richard's, a separate shop if you will. To
buy your booze in a liquor store that didn't feel
like you were going to get robbed. There wasn't a
homeless guy sitting on a box in the corner, you know,
(02:41):
there wasn't foreign language music playing. It didn't stink you
could use the bathroom it was. It was a very boutique,
nice liquor store. And Dick Trebulsey had, I don't know
how many, he must have had twenty of those. And
for those of you who were around when Randall's was
the dominant chain before you had Whole Foods and h
(03:04):
GB really stepped up their game to the higher quality
and the fancier stores, Randall's was the store on stats
were very, very influential people in this community and they
were everywhere, and their stores had a different feel to them.
They would put the brown flooring more intimate, more cozy,
(03:26):
more welcoming and warm inside. If you remember those stores,
if you want to get a feel for what that
store looked like, the last one I know of that's
like that is on West Timer at about Guestner, and
it's tucked in there. There's a l Tempo on Guestner
(03:46):
about a block north of West Teimer. On the southeast
corner of the Guestner West Teimer intersection there's a big
Tesla store. Then on the northeast corner there is a
I think it's an excellent station, and then set back
in that strip center is a Randalls. If you want
(04:08):
to get a feel for what Randalls used to be like,
that was it. It feels a little bit dated and
a little quaint now, like going to your grandmother's house
in Tanglewood. My grandmother didn't live in Tanglewood, but we
all know these type of people. If you grew up
in Houston and you went to Saint John's or Kincaid
or Saint Francis or Memorial or Saint Thomas, and your
(04:34):
grandmother had that kind of nice home in Tanglewood, but
it was getting a little bit dated. That's what Randalls became. Anyway,
I got a little distracted. Dick Treboulsi is a major force.
I don't know the extent to which he's still involved
with Texas for lawsuit reform. It's still really primarily Dick Weekly.
And Dick gives a lot of money, and he's very smart,
(04:56):
and he likes to win well. On the Republicans side,
you've got the money guys very influential in who the
canidate will be. On the Democrat side, it's not like that.
On the Democrat side, it is operatives. It will today
it's Rodney Ellis. I've been involved in Houston area politics
(05:17):
as a student and a participant to varying degrees since
nineteen eighty nine. I know the players. I know how
the game is played. I know who the influential players
are and who their friendships and alliances are, and which
union is going to support which way. And there has
been nothing like Rodney's hegemony over this area, his absolute dominance.
(05:41):
He is the boss, he is the godfather. And it's
not just that he's respected and people go to it.
It is that he is feared. It is that he
is unquestioned. I've never seen anything like this, not in
the modern era. In a large city, is there one
guy who has this kind of power. He picked some white, male,
(06:10):
white liberal Democrat male judges on the Harris County Judiciary
and decided that he was going to knock them off.
So he went and got black women, some of whom
had really not practiced law, just happened to have a
law degree, which is requisite to being a judge, and
(06:30):
he took He funnels the sorows money and he through
his Justice League or Progressive He's got a couple different organizations.
He starts running these ads in black newspapers, and yes
there are still black newspapers. You'll never see them, but
they're sent out in the mail like an old pony
sheet that it would tell you who to vote for,
(06:52):
and those advertisements still matter. He still has the pastors,
and the pastors, the black pastors, the black churches on
the East side of the Maine have a great deal
of influence even still to this day. And Rodney has
all the power sources, and he's got the rich downtown money.
He's got the John Arnold, who's one of the richest
(07:16):
men in the country and one of the five biggest
donors to politics in the country. And Rodney's got the checkbook.
He writes checks for whatever he wants.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Experience the excitement of Oshan the Michael Berry show, everything.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You need and most everything you want. So the Harris
County Judge Democrat primary, I don't know that all these
candidates that are currently in will be in as of
as of the primary. I don't know that they'll all
make it to election day. I don't think Lenahdalgo runs.
(07:54):
We'll start there. Lena serves at Rodney's pleasure, And Rodney
could have kept everybody out of this race except for
a nice porker. She was going to run and she
doesn't need Rodney's blessing. And when she wins, she will
(08:17):
have an uneasy piece with Rodney Ellis because it's a
four year term and I've seen how she can operate
with someone like him. She can be icy cold, but
get along. But she's not going to do his bidding
(08:40):
the way Lena Hudalgo is. She's not going to let
him talk her into committing crimes. She's not going to
do the corruption in graft. She is a reformer at heart.
I know this to be true, and she's going to
(09:01):
battle Rodney. If Anice Porker wins the primary, an wins
the general election, which is not a foregone conclusion, but
if that were to happen, she and Rodney would have
some difficulties. It wouldn't be an open spat on a
daily basis, but there would be some difficulties. She would
(09:22):
get along much better with John Whitmyer, who does not
get along with Lena Hidalgo, does not like Lena Hidalgo.
And by the way, the greatest secret in Harris County
politics that never gets talked about, John Whitmyer and Rodney
Ellis hate each other. You don't hate a Democrat as
(09:43):
much as these two men hate each other. I'll give
you a little bit of the history in the maybe
late eighties, early nineties. It's also long ago that I forget.
PBS was doing a series that no one knew about yet,
and it was about corruption in politics. And Rodney has
(10:08):
this sort of weird need to cut deals behind the scenes,
very clandestine. He likes to lower his voice. He likes this.
He's very smart, but he also has a tragic flaw
that Rodney is too cute by half. And so Rodney
agrees to do this thing, or probably ask them to
(10:32):
do it with PBS where he wears a wire on
the floor of the State Senate. So the Senate is
in session and the guys are all you know, it
maybe one of the early days, and they're all talking.
And I don't know if you've ever been in the
locker room of a sports team, but when Trump was
(10:55):
called on the carpet for the grab them by the
Whoho coming, he says has locker room talk every at
least every guy, and some women understand what that means.
And truthfully, for all the pearl clutching, you get a
group of women together talking about their husbands, talking about
(11:16):
one of their members that they don't like because she
thinks she's too good for them, or because she's always
asking for this, and because she shows up and then
they wish she would. You get them talk. You will
hear some of the nastiest, most crass language, vile talk.
None of it means anything, just the way people talk. Well,
(11:37):
Rodney wears a wire for PBS and he goes up
to people and he kind of induces them to say
things that appear to be very corrupt. And some of
them were some of us just locker room talk. Hey,
screwl Molly last night. Oh no, And so there was
(11:58):
a lot of that. PBS does this expose, and the
expose is these senators, Republicans and Democrats talking in this
manner in the clubby atmosphere of the Senate, and it
(12:22):
absolutely inflamed a hatred for Rodney that persists to this day.
And Whitmyer will never trust him, never forgive him, doesn't
like him, hates him. But I assure you the feeling
is mutual. Rodney has worked behind the scenes very hard
(12:42):
to undercut Whitmyer at every turn, so the Democrat primary,
so that the mayoral race between Sheila and Whitmyer was
effectively a Democrat primary. And part of the reason we
got involved was to keep Sheila from winning, because Whitmyer
was the only guy who had a chance to win,
(13:04):
and absent a Republican candidate, you got two folks on
the spectrum. All Whitmyer had to be was one inch
to the right of Sheila, and he would pick up
every Republican vote, every moderate and Republican vote, which is
there's not a lot of in the city, but there's
enough to win a race. He would pick up all
(13:24):
of those if he could get them to vote. It
wasn't surprising that Republicans voted for John Whitmyer over Sheila
Jackson Lee. Not a high bar there. What was surprising,
and he knows this, is that Republicans actually showed up
to vote. Because if Republicans stayed home, as they normally do,
(13:46):
and all you had was thirty five to forty percent
black vote, and the Jewish vote, and the gay vote,
and the young white liberal, the DINX and the that's
double income no kid Jim and you know, post college,
early job and then some old folks and then the
(14:08):
Hispanic vote on the East Side. If that was all
that showed up to vote, Whitmark gets wiped out. She
wins We remember that race as being a runaway and
Sheila had no chance. That's not true when you look
at the numbers. Sheila, remember there was a runoff, and
(14:28):
the runoff was on a Saturday, and she had to
announce by Monday at five whether she was going to
run for her congressional seat again. She knew she was
terminal at this point, She's continuing to run knowing she
has terminal cancer. They deny it, but it's true. I
know it's true. I can't tell you how I know
it's true, but I know it's true. And all she
(14:49):
wanted was to be mayor. She had wanted to be
mayor for all those years, which she'd love to be president.
But at this point she was this close to holding
the scepter, and she wasn't going to pull out of
the race and do the right thing. She didn't care
if she died in office with cancer. She didn't care
if she couldn't do the job because she was suffering
from cancer. And the same was also true Sevester Turner.
(15:10):
I'm sorry to speak ill of the dead, but that's
a fact. When you are a steward of the public power,
this public responsibility and the public Treasury. You don't get
to have this veil of protection around you because now
you're dead. No, that's that doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
We don't do that with Nixon, Michael Berry.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So here's how this race is going to play out.
For the Democrat primary. I told you about the mayoral election.
City versus county. City elections are in off years. County
elections are in even years. City elections for the City
(16:05):
of Houston sort of interesting. And you see this with
other small cities around the area. Nobody votes. Only a
tiny percentage of people actually vote, and so that makes
blocks of votes that do show up and vote very powerful.
(16:27):
So you could have a community that's ten percent of
the community that ninety percent of their people show up
and vote. Now they're nine percent of the overall community,
not that big, but when only twenty percent of the
people vote, you've got half the voters right there. That
gives somebody a huge, huge head start. Well, when you
(16:53):
look at the mayoral race, which was basically a Democrat primary,
it wasn't just a Democrat primary, and that was my point.
It was a Democrat primary plus all the Republicans over
here that don't normally vote and Republicans went for Whitmyer
because we and everybody else said, vote for Whitmyer so
(17:16):
we don't have Sheila Jackson Lee. And there was a
concerted effort behind the scenes by Republican organizations to help
Whipmyer win. Not because Whitmyer's our guy. He ended up
endorsing Kamala Harris half heartedly. We did not because Whitmyer's
our guy, but because we knew that Sheila Jackson Lee
(17:37):
would be the end of Houston. So he had the
great good fortune of running against someone who was so
hated that people would show up just to keep her
from winning. You've got to really be hated to be
at that level. Now, the Democrat primary that will be
the county Judge will not have that benefit. Republicans are
(17:59):
not going over there to vote in that race, especially
if Lena stays out of it. Republicans are going to
be more worried and and and energized over voting uh
Dan Crenshaw out in his congressional race, voting for the
attorney general, voting in the US Senate race for Paxton
(18:20):
against Corning or if they replace Cornyn, which looks more
and more likely, and the more he says they're not,
the more he is having to deal with. This is
the same thing's going on with Lena Hudalgo. Methinks the
girl does protest too much. She keeps saying I didn't
say i'm I didn't say I'm not running. Quick quit
(18:40):
saying I'm not I said I wasn't running. I never
said that. And now she's gone. You know, she's unstable.
And she gets caddy, and when she gets caddy, she
gets middle school caddy. The level of her caddy is
not very sophisticated. So Letitia Plumber Kamala Harris of Houston
City Council. She's a half Yamani Indians, so Indian live
(19:05):
in Africa and half black. She appears to be pretty smart,
she's attractive. She's on city council. Now, what she wasn't
supposed to do was announce that she was running. Because
the minute she announces she's running, that triggers that she
has to step down from city council. When she's no
longer on city council, then the people doing business with
(19:27):
City council have no reason to give her money in
a county seat. So she's not going to be able
to raise money, and they don't want to give her
money in a county seat because Rodney controls the contracts,
and if they piss Rodney off, they'll lose their county,
(19:48):
their county jobs. So Rodney's got this pot of money,
which is the county jobs. That's why you know Lena's
not running because all of the engineers, which is who
funds these elections, theeers, surveyors to a less extent because
it's low bid street pavers and all that sort of stuff.
But all the engineers and architects who and vendors who
(20:11):
sell things to Harris County government, they're not about to
touch anybody other than who Rodney tells them because he
controls the contracts. However, the fact that Lena is not
raising any money right now, when Rodney can snap his
finger and give her a bunch of money, he's bleeding
her out. So's he's easing her out, but emotionally she's
(20:35):
not ready to be out yet, so she is tearfully
on his shoulder, begging to be back in office, and
resentful that he's working behind the scenes to help Erica
Lee Carter run her campaign and replace her. Well, we
were all pretending that well, Lena's going to step down,
(20:55):
and that you know, the day she steps down, we're
going to have the bunting all ready and we'll have
you know, our various freak show groups that will all
show up to show we have a coalition. We'll have
all that ready. Well, that takes time, because the day
Lena stepped out, let's say that's a Tuesday, that afternoon
you want to say. We want to say that Lena
(21:17):
Hidalgo was a great county judge and she led us
through tough times and she's the captain of the ship,
and oh this is great and she was a wonderful
and pay tribute to her. And I want to continue
her long line of great leadership and I want to
be the next county judge. So all that has to
be set in motion. Well as that's being put together,
(21:40):
the players that put put that together were with Lena
before and now they're not so Lena. It's Lina sees
the writing on the wall. They're interviewing her replacement. So
Erica Lee Carter, Sheila Jackson, Lee's daughter, being Rodney's choice
(22:00):
is going to get There is a certain group of
people and I know this is going to shock you. Really,
it's going to befuddle you. There's a certain group of
people that actually think that Sheila Jackson Lee was some
sort of legendary civil rights icon. Yeah, they've been told
(22:20):
it and they believe it. They're not very smart, they're
really fat and really stupid, and they just keep repeating this.
They like to think that they were in the presence
of greatness. You know, like Barbara Jordan. Sheila Jackson Lee
was no Barbara Jordan, not even close. In fact, worlds apart,
(22:42):
Barbara Jordan would have despised what Sheila Jackson Lee was.
She was evil, she was mean spirited, she was petty,
she was corrupt, and she did a lot of damage.
I don't want to minimize that. She did a lot
of damage. And she wanted her daughter to come up
through the process. So they put her on the little
(23:04):
county Education board and they had some little ticky tag
stupid stuff so it would make it look like she
had a career of public service. He doesn't. And then
for Sheila's seat, they put Erica Lee Carter in there
to serve out the term so that she could call
herself congressman. So now in all of her political materials.
(23:27):
They're referring to her as congressman, a congresswoman, Erica Lee Carter.
You got to keep the Lee in there, because that's
Sheila Jackson Lee, and that's important. I'm surprised they don't
call her Erica Jackson Lee Carter, which is really too
bad because Elwin Lee, which is where she gets her
(23:48):
last name, is a great guy and I actually like him.
Sheila's husband, wonderful human being. But I leave that's at
So now you got Rodney very quietly plotting with Erica
Lee Carter's campaign. You've got a niece over here, and
she's got her long term friendships and some of them
will go with her instead of Rodney's choice. And then
(24:09):
you got Letitia Plumbers out there. I don't think she's
a big one. And then you still got Lena over
there going here everybody, just because I'm at counseling doesn't
mean I can't make it to the meeting. In a
period of less than ten years, it's easy to forget this.
Harris County went from a beacon of good government, relatively
(24:33):
well run, to be in an absolute in terms of
government craphole. This is what happens in Detroit wants great city,
Baltimore wants great city, Atlanta wants great city. This is
what happens. Ten years ago you had ed emm And
(24:59):
as county judge, not particularly partisan. Just the fact is,
if somebody is running as a as an it's an
administrative type position, if it's done right, which is how
Adam It did it, and to a large extent, how
how Robert Echles did it as well. But if the
(25:20):
county is being run properly by the county judge, then
that person is not known as a party leader. They're
an executor. It's a ministerial position. Keep keep the trucks
running on time, keep the grass mode, keep the trash
picked up. And that's how it was. You had. You
(25:44):
have four precincts in Harris County. So think of Harris
County as a tick, as a as a a box
top left top right, bottom left, bottom right, for ease
of purpose, and that that was kind of how the
precincts looked before precincts. So you have a four precinct,
you have four precinct commissioners. They are the they are
the lord of the manor of their precinct. Unlike a
(26:08):
city councilman who has individually no real power, or a
member of Congress who has individually no real power. A
commissioner has complete authority over his commission. If he wants
to build a park right there and name it Jim
Mudd Park or a monroeless park, he can do it.
If he wants to convert a property to a gun
(26:30):
range or a soccer field or anything else, he can
do it. And he's got a budget for it. He
has a crew. They have crews and trucks and all
that you've probably seen maybe in Galveston or at at
maybe in Round Top. You'll see these buses that are
painted red, white and blue, and it'll say you'll see
a bunch of old people getting off pensioners as an
(26:52):
English call him, and it looks like a Bengal hall
load up and and the old people will get off
and they're going to you know, they're down in Galas
and they're going to this or that restaurant. That is
a little scheme that the county commissioners run where they
have a bus that they take old people and they
take them places, they take them for events, and they
(27:14):
use the county funds and it's coordinated by somebody that
is kind of their old people voter coordinator, and these
old people get to have a day out, and the
county commissioner presumably has loyalty from these voters, and that's
kind of how little process works. So anyway, you had
four county commissioners and then the county judge, who's sort
(27:36):
of like the mayor of the county. This is the
person who is the face of the county in regional stuff,
the person who is the county wide director. Well, ten
years ago you had Cactus, Jack Cagle and Tom Ramsey,
(27:56):
both Republicans, and ed Emmett as a county judge. So
you had three of the five. In fact, there have
been four of the five, and most of the time,
going back thirty years, four of the five commissioners were Republicans.
The only Democrat was l Franco Lee, So Elfranco was
(28:18):
running his own little scheme out of Precinct three, I
think he was, but he wasn't able to corrupt the
entire county. You had longtime county commissioners Jerry Eversold, Steve Raddock,
and Robert Eckles who been there for a long time.
And then you had I think it's Precinct two, which
is the Southeast precinct, which is kind of east Side
(28:41):
politics and Pasadena. Now there was a little bit of
give and take there because you had some competing power
bases and you would have a Republican and Democrat going
back and forth. And in fact, Sylvia Garcia, really really
ugly congressman that serves from that area, was a county
commissioner from that precinct. So a Democrat could win that
(29:07):
precinct if they mobilized the Hispanic vote and they were
able to get labor, which is very influential in that precinct.
But now that's Adrian Garcia. Well, that precinct went solidly Democrat,
and Rodney, who had the one precinct, he took over
for l Franco Lee. He then started plotting to get
(29:29):
three out of the five and the county judge, the
county mayor, and lo and behold ten years later, four
out of the five the county judges a Democrat, Lena,
Then there's Rodney, then there's Leslie Brioni's who he just
placed there, Adrian Garcia, and there's those four and then
(29:52):
the lone Republican left is Tom Ramsey, how they drove
Cactus Jack Cagle out of office, and almost nobody talks
about it. I'm not sure how many people know it.
Jack Kegel was a very popular county commissioner. Rodney just
went in because he questioned everything Rodney did. He's the
(30:13):
one who brought up the Elevate Strategies contract, the allegedly
illegal contract that got Lina's top three people indicted. And
by the way, to be clear, Lena didn't cook that
scheme up. Lena's not smart at all. When I'm not
(30:34):
saying this to insult her, Lena is dumb, as in
really dumb. She's the kind of dumb that if she
worked for you and you gave her a project. I'm
not saying she's slow. I'm saying she's not in any
(30:58):
way a person that you trust to make good decisions
on much of anything. And yeah, well I'll leave that
there for now. Yeah, it's going to be a very
interesting It's going to be a very interesting Democrat primary.
(31:20):
On the Republican side, I will only say that I
don't think there is a strong candidate that has emerged.
I do realize that people are desperate to find a
non white woman to run as the front runner because
a lot of Republican power brokers think that's the only
(31:41):
way a Republican can win countywide in Harris County, which
they say, which is really sad, And I think that's
going to have a big effect on who the candidate
is that is chosen, and I'll leave that there for now.
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