PREVIOUSLY:
Harris County offices
City of Houston
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Right now, as we await the DaSean Jones election do-over appeal and ponder the likelihood of not having another HISD bond referendum anytime soon, the only elections for most of Harris County in 2025 are the HISD and HCC trustee elections. There are other school board races of interest, in Spring Branch, Katy, Pasadena, and Cy-Fair at least, but the ones I’m watching now from a campaign finance perspective are the two that have Houston in their names. We’ll start with HISD, which will feature five seats up for election. Not everyone on the elected Board had an up to date finance report – for the ones who didn’t show a January report I’ve got the most recent one I could find.
Elizabeth Santos – Last report was a blank filed in July 2023. The January 2023 report shows $2,174 on hand.
Dani Hernandez – Last report filed July 2024, no money raised or spent, $7,872 on hand.
Kendall Baker – Last report filed July 2024, no money raised or spent, no cash on hand.
Myrna Guidry – Last report filed July 2024, no money raised or spent, no cash on hand.
These five had up to date finance reports:
Candidate Raised Spent Loan On Hand
=======================================================
Moore 0 0 0 0
Allen 0 0 0 0
Deigaard 0 1,778 0 4,644
Wade 0 70 4,000 100
Gomez 0 351 0 15,497
The candidates who are up for election this cycle are Santos, Deigaard, Baker, Wade, and Guidry. I only listed the candidates in the table who had a current report in the system. Not that anyone has been busy raising funds, since who even knows what the pitch would be. If we are going to get some form of power restored to the elected Board in the next year or so, I suppose it makes sense to start with the most recently elected members. I have no idea if that’s the actual plan or if there is a plan and not just something Mike Miles and/or Mike Morath pull from their nether regions the next time someone asks them about it.
I do know that I would like for someone other than Kendall Baker to be on the short list for “elected Board members who can actually vote on Board stuff”, so I hope someone good is planning to run against him. I don’t know but strongly suspect that Sue Deigaard will not run for another term. (I haven’t asked her about this, but I will at some point.) I can’t say I’m a big Bridget Wade fan, but I also can’t say that I’m aware of anything she’s said or done since getting elected that I find objectionable. It’s likely that I will first become aware of some potential candidates when the July finance reports are published.
Now for HCC, whose finance reports can be found here:
Monica Flores Richart – July 2024 – $2,608 on hand
Cynthis Lenton-Gary
Adriana Tamez – January 2023 – $10,980 on hand
Lalou Davies-Yemitan
Sean Cheben
Dave Wilson
Eva Loredo
Pretta VanDible Stallworth
Same deal as above, here are the candidates that had up to date reports in the system:
Candidate Raised Spent Loan On Hand
=======================================================
D-Yemitan 250 603 1,000 4,733
Cheben 0 0 1,849 2,142
Wilson 0 0 0 0
Lenton-Gary 0 0 0 0
Loredo 0 500 4,500 1,199
Stallworth 1,000 0 0
Flores Richart and Lenton-Gary are up for election this cycle. So is the District 2 trustee, which was vacant as of January as the previous officeholder was Charlene Ward Johnson, who is now the State Rep in HD139. As of January 31, the Board of Trustees page still had no one listed for that seat. They apparently filled it on January 29, and the new Board member is Renee Jefferson Patterson, whose bio says she is a “former candidate for Houston City Council”. I’m glad that was included, because until I read that it hadn’t clicked that she was the third place candidate in the highly contentious District B race from 2019, when she was known as Renee Jefferson Smith. You can follow that saga here if you’d like. I need to sit down for a minute, my head is still spinning.
Anyway. I learned of Jefferson Patterson’s appointment when I read this story about HCC settling a racial discrimination lawsuit from 2020. I don’t remember that suit at the time – to be fair, there was a lot going on then – but I’ll make it a topic for candidate interviews this fall.
As noted, I only listed the totals in the table for people who had current reports in the system. It’s hard to know if the missing reports are due to them not being filed or the system being buggy. I’m glad that HCC finally got around to putting their finance reports online, but their system for doing so could be a lot better. Nobody ever has much money for these races, but it’s still good to know who has what.
That’s it for the finance report rundown. I’ll skip the April Congressional reports but will be back in July with another look around. Let me know what you think.
So, what is the definition of “good” for Kuffner?