Houston mayoral candidate Tony Buzbee on Wednesday will announce he's filing a lawsuit against Mayor Sylvester Turner for violating campaign finance laws.
The move comes one day after fellow challenger Bill King accused Mayor Turner of ethics violations.
Dr. Robert Stein, fellow in urban politics at Rice University's Baker Institute of Public Policy, says it appears both challengers are working to tag team against the mayor.
"They're not going after the mayor on issues dealing with Prop B, firefighters' pay.They're not going after the mayor on preparation for or preventing future flooding.They're not going after the mayor about picking up garbage.We may hear that later on, but what they're going after is something a little bit more obscure and hard to measure," he says.
Stein says this year's mayoral race so far reminds him of 1991, when challengers Bob Lanier and Sylvester Turner successfully squeezed out incumbent mayor Kathy Whitmire.
"Usually we don't see this type of campaigning ramping up until maybe late summer," he says."I think what you're seeing now is an effort to catch the voters' attention and interest before everybody spreads away, 20 percent of our population, after the Memorial Day weekend and leaves for the summer holiday."