August 8, 2006

Heflin Jump-Starts Rematch Campaign
with New Team Led by Patrick Advisor

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

Former Texas House member Talmadge Heflin of Houston left many old supporters and political enemies wondering how serious he was about the campaign to reclaim the seat he lost two years ago when he raised less than $10,000 during the first six months of the year and headed toward the fall with only $6,000 in the bank.

But Heflin appeared to be more revved up for his rematch with Democratic State Rep. Hubert Vo than some skeptics had been thinking when he announced Tuesday that he'd assembled a campaign team led by the same consultant that radio personality Dan Patrick had on board when he demolished a star-studded field of primary opponents in a state Senate race earlier this year.

Heflin has enlisted Court Koenning to be his campaign's general consultant while signing up Houston attorney Mike Schofield and real estate broker George Huntoon to engineer a grassroots effort in the Republican's bid for the seat that Vo won by a 33-vote margin in 2004.

Koenning - the assistant executive director at the Harris County Republican Party until starting his own company last year - helped guide Patrick to a March primary victory with 69 percent of the vote in his campaign for an open state Senate seat in northwest Harris County. Koenning, who'd concentrated on the Patrick campaign until that point, worked as a consultant to Schofield during a spring primary runoff battle against Jim Murphy for the Republican nomination for the seat that State Rep. Joe Nixon decided to give up in order to compete for the state Senate opening. Schofield fell short in the runoff, however, when Murphy captured almost 53 percent of the vote.

While Schofield lost the primary race, he made it close by taking the campaign directly to voters while crossing the district three times on foot. Huntoon was the grassroots director for Schofield's House campaign. Heflin apparently was impressed - and he's tapped that duo to head up a block walking program as part of an overall grassroots operation in the bid to take back the House District 149 seat from the Democrat who wrestled it away from him during a debut political foray.

Arlington consultant Craig Murphy advised Heflin during the previous race against Vo, whose victory wasn't sealed until after a recount and an election contest that the powerhouse Republican filed in the state House and then dropped after an initial inquiry made it appear that he had little chance of succeeding.

Heflin has summoned two members of his 2004 campaign team back for the rematch. Sherlyn Hulsey is returning to coordinate volunteer efforts, event planning, endorsements and other needs as operations director - and the candidate's daughter-in-law, Becky Heflin, will be the campaign manager after serving as deputy campaign manager two years ago.

Dawn Koenning, who's raised money in the past for MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine, will handle fundraising duties for the Heflin campaign this fall. Like the new general consultant, Heflin's chief fundraiser is a member of the firm Koenning Consulting.

Vo, a Houston businessman whose family came to the United States after feeling war-torn Saigon 30 years ago, has some of the same advisors who pointed the way to a historic victory two years ago as one of the first two Vietnamese-Americans to win seats in state legislatures. Karen Loper is back as Vo's campaign manager - and the Democrat also has help from Austin with the consulting firm run by Kelly Fero and Jeff Hewitt.

Heflin had been the House Appropriations Committee chairman for almost two years when Vo caught him by surprise in a district whose demographics had changed substantially since years before when the incumbent had his last competitive race. While Heflin was distracted by a custody fight involving the child of a former maid's infant son, Vo cultivated support within a growing Asian-American community and rallied others behind his state House campaign against one of the Legislature's most powerful and longest-serving members. Vo scored the upset of the year at the same time President George W. Bush and other Republican statewide candidates polled about 53 percent in HD 149 in 2004.