Freeman Mail Piece Hits Bradford Hard

We have a hot race in At-Large 4, the Houston City Council seat Ron Green currently holds. Green is term limited and is running for Controller. Noel Freeman works in the office of the City Engineer and has an extensive knowledge of infrastructure issues. C.O. Bradford is the former Chief of Police, who lost a close race for Harris County D.A in 2008. I was supportive of Bradford in his D.A. race, but was a little surprised to see him running for City Council. Freeman was one of the eleven candidates who ran in the special election for At-Large 3 in 2007, ultimately won by Melissa Noriega in a run off with Roy Morales.

I was the campaign manager for Noriega in 2007, and Freeman was one of a number of her opponents who I quickly came to respect on the campaign trail and became friends with after the race was over. Freeman jumped right in after his May loss to Noriega and put his full support and effort behind her winning effort in June. I was thrilled to see him run again, as I knew from 2007 that he would make a terrific city council member.

This mailer (click on it to make it nice and large so you can read it) hits Bradford hard on his crime lab problems, with quotes from the Houston Chronicle, Josiah Sutton (wrongly imprisoned for four years), former Houston Police Officers Union President Hans Marticiuc and former City Council Member Gabriel Vasquez (who was one of the council members who called for Bradford's resignation). All you have to do to find out more is google "Bradford crime lab" and you'll get stories like this one about the crime lab debacle and Bradford's early resignation as chief of police.

These are not the only candidates in the At-Large 4 race - Deborah Shafto and Curtis Garmon are also running - but, Freeman and Bradford are the two serious candidates. It will be interesting to see if Bradford's name recognition and experience help him or hurt him.

The Chronicle reports that Bradford is correcting his campaign finance reports because of the problem I reported here first - four in-kind donors who gave more than the legal limit of $5000:

Bradford said his campaign's initial estimates of the value of these donors' contributions were incorrect, and he filed an amended report with reduced amounts below the legal limit.

As to Bradford padding his report with in-kind contributions (2/3 of the donations were in-kind, and some for very unusual things), Bradford denies it:

Others have raised questions about Bradford's report because more than 60 percent of his total of $112,945 was in-kind rather than monetary donations. These included $7,200 in donations for the value of the use of donors' property for placement of large political signs.

Several political professionals unaffiliated with Bradford's or his opponents' campaigns said they had never heard of this being reported as an in-kind contribution. They suggested it was an effort to create the appearance of greater support.

“He wanted to show the bottom-line funds on his report as higher than he had received in cash donations or checks,” said Nancy Sims, a longtime Houston political consultant who now works in public relations and is blogging about the mayor's race. “He's stretched a bit to beef those numbers up and make the race look competitive.”

Bradford denied that, saying he made an effort to report everything to be as transparent as possible.

Anyone who has looked a a number of reports - and I've reviewed probably at least 300 in the past several years - would agree with Nancy Sims, and I'd take that into account as an indicator of Bradford's governing style.