September 6, 2007

School Trustee Takes Aim at House Seat
that Asian-American Dem Won in Shocker

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

State Rep. Hubert Vo shocked the Texas political world in 2004 with a history-making victory over Republican icon Talmadge Heflin - the second most powerful member in a state House that the GOP had controlled for almost two years. Vo's monumental win against the House Appropriations Committee chairman gave Democrats a net gain of one seat in a lower chamber where they'd been losing ground for more than 25 years.

But Republicans think the Houston Democrat has failed to capitalize on the rock star status he gained after a controversial election contest in the wake of the first bout with Heflin - and they're launching a full-scale effort in an attempt to unseat him in 2008 with Greg Meyers as the first GOP contender to break from the starting gate.

Meyers ended months of speculation Thursday when he announced as a candidate for House District 149 on the western edge of Harris County. Meyers, who owns a dental supply company, has experience in politics and government as a Houston School Board member who won the seat he holds the same year that Vo ousted Heflin from the state House.

Meyers has enlisted Houston businessman Dionel Aviles to be his campaign chairman while GOP activist Mary Ann Wall assumes the role of campaign treasurer. Aviles, who runs an engineering firm, is a former Texas A&M University regent who also served on the Greater Houston Partnership board. Wall is a former precinct chair in Harris County.

On paper, Meyers appears to be similar as a candidate to Republican State Rep. Jim Murphy, a Houston business leader who'd been a member of the Houston Community College board before winning a House seat that was open in a neighboring district last year. But Unlike Murphy's Democratic foe in 2006, Vo is a two-time winner in state House elections and has a considerable amount of personal wealth to tap for a race if needed. After becoming one of the first two Vietnamese-Americans in the nation to win a state legislative race, Vo claimed a relatively easy victory over Heflin in a rematch last year with more than 54 percent of the vote. While Heflin won't be on the ballot next year, he could still have a hand in the race against Vo as the new executive director for the Texas Republican Party.

Republicans, nonetheless, see Vo as one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents on the House battleground in 2008. Some of the optimism that Meyers' supporters say they have going into the race is based on the fact that every Republican on the ballot both times Vo won carried HD 149 except Heflin. After winning 53 percent of the statewide vote in 2004, the GOP's statewide slate claimed 55 percent in last year's voting. U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison fared best in HD 149 with support from 58 percent of the voters last year while Governor Rick Perry beat Chris Bell there with 40 percent compared to 35 percent for the Democrat in a four-way general election battle.

But Vo, as a former refugee who came to the United States with his family after fleeing a war-torn homeland in the mid-1970s, has been able to win in HD 149 partly as a result of the district's large Asian population. Twenty-percent of the district's residents are not African-American, Hispanic or white - and most of those are of Asian descent. No other House district in Texas has that many Asian-Americans living in it. Republicans will argue that Vo hasn't done much as a legislator to make a significant change in the lives of the Asian voters who helped elect him - a charge that the Democrat's camp will dispute.

Meyers, meanwhile, will note during the campaign that he's been the Houston school board's legislative liaison. About one-fourth of the Houston ISD district that Meyers represents is in HD 149.

Meyers is a former president of the Houston West Chamber of Commerce - and he's lived and worked in the House district that he wants to represent since graduating from high school. Vo moved to HD 149 after working his way through college - and he has built his own successful real estate development business while living there.