October 17, 2006

Vo's Campaign Wants Probe into Calls
Promoting Block-Walking for Democrat

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

Two years after Talmadge Heflin accused Democrats of electoral malfeasance in the wake of a stunning re-election defeat, the freshman lawmaker who beat him is raising questions about possible legal infractions by the Republican's campaign as they battle in round two for a west Houston state House seat.

The attorney who defended State Rep. Hubert Vo in an election contest that Heflin filed after a close loss the last time they met has asked the Harris County District Attorney's office to investigate automated phone calls that invited some House District 149 voters to block-walk for the Democrat.

The caller or callers claimed to be representing the local gay caucus. But caucus officials say they never authorized the robo-calls or had anything to do with them. While Vo's campaign had planned to have volunteers going door-to-door through neighborhoods in the district to promote his re-election bid on the same day and time that the recorded message mentioned, the legislator and his team say they did not place the calls, authorize them or know about them until contacted by supporters who'd been on the receiving end.

In a terse letter to Donna Cameron Goode, the public integrity division chief in Harris District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal's office, Houston lawyer Larry Veselka requested an investigation into possible violations of Texas Election Code provisions pertaining to political advertising . Veselka specifically pointed to sections in the law that prohibit campaign-related communications that disguise or misrepresent their true source.

"Since these are ongoing violations of the law, I ask that your office investigate and take all necessary action to prevent any further political dirty tricks violating Texas law attempting to interfere with the re-election of Rep. Vo," the lawyer wrote.

Vo's allies suspect the Heflin campaign of being behind the auto-calls as part of a push to make the incumbent look out of step with district residents who voted by a substantial margin for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages in Texas last year. Vo voted against the measure that authorized the statewide vote on the constitutional revision - and his opposition to the gay marriage ban has been an issue in the rematch with Heflin.

But Heflin's campaign denied having any advance knowledge of the calls in question and suggested that the incident was the result of a miscommunication between Vo's campaign and some of its supporters. Heflin Campaign Director Court Koenning suggested that the GOP nominee is too busy noting Vo's votes on issues such as education, immigration and crime to spend time cooking up schemes like Democrats envision.

"It is high time Mr. Vo owns up to his bad votes and now his mistakes on the campaign trail,” Koenning said. According to Koenning - a Republican consultant who used to be executive director for the Harris County GOP - the Houston Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus had been advertising its plans to do block-walking for Vo on its web site the day that the calls went out. Koenning said the message about the volunteer effort for Vo was taken down from the GLBT site by the following day.

Vo was one of only 29 no votes on the emotion-charged proposal, which seven other Democrats and one Republican refused to touch while registering as present but not voting when it came up. The constitutional amendment was approved by 76 percent of Texas voters statewide including 72 percent of those who cast ballots in Harris County. The ban passed in every county of the state with the exception of Travis County where state government is based. Voters in only one state House district in Houston and one in Dallas turned thumbs down on the measure. Those districts are represented by Republican State Reps. Martha Wong of Houston and Dan Branch of Dallas. Wong punched a white light to signify that she was present but not voting while Branch was in the majority that voted to send the question to voters. While Vo opposed the gay marriage prohibition as a representative from a district that favored it, Wong's decision to not vote against it has come back to haunt her in a part of Houston where the gay population is concentrated.

While Vo doesn't go out of his way to trumpet his support from gay groups, he doesn't try to hide it either. The first-term lawmaker lists the Houston GLBT Political Caucus as one of about two dozen organizations that have endorsed his re-election campaign. The list includes representatives for teachers, doctors, police officers, realtors, labor, Latinos, the Farm Bureau and other Democrats.

Veselka - a former Harris County Democratic chairman - has been to battle for Vo before and won. The Houston attorney led the legal team that represented Vo when Heflin was trying to convince his former House colleagues to overturn the 2004 election that he'd lost by a mere 33 votes. Vo had been a political unknown when he filed to run against Heflin, who was one of the House's longest-serving and most powerful members as the Appropriations Committee chairman. The Democrat, however, gained national attention after the election as Heflin spent three months fighting to have the outcome reversed. Heflin dropped the election contest after the 2005 regular session was under way when it became apparent that he was not going to prevail.