The West U Examiner has a short profile of some of the candidates for the City Council special election; as it happens, these are the five candidates whom I’ve interviewed so far. (As a reminder, my interview with Melissa Noriega is here and my interview with Andy Neill is here.) The other three will be run on Kuff’s World shortly, starting with Roy Morales on Monday. The one thing that really caught my eye in the story was this, about Noel Freeman:
Freeman said Houston’s leadership needs to take a more proactive approach to planning for growth, although he did not necessarily advocate zoning, which has long been anathema to the city’s pro-growth culture.
I asked him about that yesterday when I did my interview with him. Be sure to listen to it so you’ll know what he said.
Beyond that, I’ve spoken with David Goldberg, I’ve scheduled a talk with Ivan Mayers, and I need to get off my butt and track down Tom Nixon. After that, we’ll see. While every article one reads about the race includes a statement about how unlikely it will be for someone to get a majority of the vote in such a crowded field, it’s also the case that some of these people will be lucky to break one percent – Anthony Dutrow got 0.97% of the vote for Mayor in 2005 (PDF), which was a vast improvement on his showing in 2003 (PDF). My time is more valuable than that. I haven’t made a final decision yet, but let’s just say I’m not terribly motivated to speak to some of these folks. If that makes me a tool of the establishment, then so be it.