It’s about to hit the fan in the Houston Mayoral race. Challenger Tony Buzbee stood in front of a wheelbarrow full of manure during a Friday press conference, where he criticized the Sylvester Turner administration and alleged the mayor is trading city contracts for campaign contributions.
Buzbee said, “Something stinks at City Hall, and it's not this horse manure… There are several different companies that have been feeding at the trough. I used to raise hogs. And when you bring the slop, the hogs come running. And that’s what’s going on at the city of Houston. There’s a feeding frenzy.”
Buzbee also took the media to task for failing to ask harder questions of the current administration, especially on the drainage issue; “Somebody needs to ask more questions about the 38-million dollar contract where the mayor’s former law partner got 6.7-million.”
The Houston attorney is self-funding his campaign. According to campaign finance reports, Buzbee has put about two-million dollars into his campaign and has spent about 500-thousand dollars of it – mostly on radio and television ads. Mayor Turner raised about 1.2-million in the second half of 2018, and has about 2.8-million in his war chest.
Buzbee took aim at that as well: “More than 70-percent of the money that has been donated to this mayor comes from people doing business with the city. It spiked in the last six months. Do you know why it spiked? Because they finally figured out how they’re going to distribute the 1.18-billion dollars that’s coming from Washington and so now people are in.”
Both Buzbee and fellow challenger Bill King are leading petition drives to amend the city charter to block political donors from doing business with the city.
Turner has not responded to the allegations. Houston’s municipal election is on November 5th.