Outgoing City Attorney David Feldman shares his thoughts on the state of the city’s campaign finance rules as he makes his exit.
Chris Bell
City Hall began its attempt to use a federal court ruling declaring its own election rule unconstitutional to its advantage it in a second, unrelated suit in a letter this week.
In the below memo to City Council on Thursday, City Attorney David Feldman argues that the U.S. District Judge’s ruling last week that tossed the city’s blackout period had a broad impact: It invalidated the concerns of Chris Bell, a mayoral candidate suing the city for not strictly enough enforcing campaign finance rules.
In the four-paragraph letter, Feldman writes that case law is building that governments cannot outlaw campaign spending merely for its own sake. And Feldman says that without the previous restriction on when candidates can raise money, there is no reasonable challenge to be made by Bell as to why Rep. Sylvester Turner, Bell’s opponent, can’t spend it.
Turner is not merely attempting to spend money, however, but transfer it. He eventually hopes to transfer almost all of the $1 million in his legislative account to a to-be-created mayoral account. Bell believes that Turner’s legislative account should be able to only donate $10,000, the maximum that any political action committee can contribute in a city election.
See here and here for the background, and click that Houston Politics link to see the memo. Not a whole lot to add here, though I should mention that while I believe Turner should be able to transfer his funds as he sees fit (Bell will likely file suit over that), that outcome would be a raw deal for Chris Bell. I’m sure he would have been raising money last year if he could have, and the late-breaking injunction against the blackout rule not only doesn’t give him much time back to catch up, there are now more candidates out there that may be competing with him for the money. But that’s the way it goes, and if Bell manages to get a favorable ruling in his lawsuit, it’s Turner that will be in a world of hurt. You know what they say about the fairness of life.
I can’t wait to watch this race.