The Chron makes its choice in the District K special election.
Martha Castex Tatum
Larry Blackmon, 68, has spent decades serving on various boards and advisory committees under the leadership of three Houston mayors. Martha Castex-Tatum, 48, is the director of constituent services in the late Councilman Green’s office. Carl David Evans, 63, works for an accounting firm and serves as the president of a super neighborhood group. Pat Frazier, 58, is a politically active educator who ran for this office in 2011 and served on Mayor Sylvester Turner’s transition team. Anthony Freddie, 55, spent almost 30 years working in municipal government, including stints as an assistant to Mayor Lee Brown’s chief of staff and chairman of the Super Neighborhood Alliance committee. Elisabeth Johnson, 32, is a Texas Southern University graduate student who’s about to graduate with a master’s degree in public administration. Gerry Vander-Lyn, 68, is an accounting firm records management worker who’s been involved in Republican politics for at least 50 years.
Two candidates didn’t meet with the editorial board. Lawrence McGaffie, 30, is a disabled Army veteran who founded a nonprofit encouraging young people in low-income neighborhoods to become community leaders. Aisha Savoy, 40, works in the city’s floodplain management office.
Castex-Tatum and Frazier are the stand-out candidates. Both of them have deep roots in the area, and they’re passionately familiar with the district. But Castex-Tatum’s breadth of experience makes her the better candidate for City Council.
As a top level aide to Green, Castex-Tatum can hit the ground running. Nobody will need to brief her on any of the arcane issues and myriad capital improvement projects Green worked on until his untimely death. Unlike any of the other candidates in this race, she already commands a detailed knowledge not only of what’s happening in the district but also what city government is doing about it. For example, while other candidates offered our editorial board only vague notions about tackling flooding problems, Castex-Tatum specifically cited how improvements to a parking lot in the district made it more permeable for soaking up floodwaters.
What’s more, Castex-Tatum will bring to the council table a unique credential: She’s already served on a city council. She not only earned a master’s degree in public administration at Texas State University in San Marcos, she also unseated a 12-year incumbent to become the first African-American woman elected to the San Marcos City Council.
As a reminder, here are all the interviews I did for this race:
Anthony Freddie
Lawrence McGaffie
Martha Castex-Tatum
Larry Blackmon
Elisabeth Johnson
Pat Frazier
Aisha Savoy
Early voting begins today. This feels like a single-digit-turnout kind of race, which means that if you live in the district your vote really counts. Don’t miss your chance to make it.
She has an MPA and served on the san marcos city council.
But she has no ideas for the 4th largest city, or at least she was too lazy to say them in the interview or put any on a website lol.
frazier and Martha will split a portion of the voting populous but carl evans will be the front runner ,ive watched this guy for years ,he’s deep deep in political circles in district k , hes been plotting a heavy charge of the mound for years ,easy call here with evans finishing ahead of the rest ,look for Martha and frazier to photo finish in 2nd and 3rd place for a run off spot=larry Blackmon comes in 4th place on this one =no doubt in it.the rest of the candidates just wanted to see their names on the ballot,i maybe wrong but I never am,carl evans out front on election night. PS ALert frazier is actualy marthas spoiler candidate in this race ,the irony is , if frazier would have fell back , Martha would have leveraged over carl evans and vice versa if Martha would have fell back.dont listen to the chronicle editors on this one , I think their high.