Monday, November 02, 2009

Late-Breaking Election News: Scooter Khan Nabs Key Endorsement, Is No Longer a Campaign Finance Scofflaw (Or at Least Not as Much of One)

It had gotten so that every day for the past couple of months, after dragging our weary carcass back to the domicile we claim as a homestead for tax purposes, we'd pause at the mailbox and wonder, with a rise of no small expectation we found difficult to suppress, "Did Khalid Khan send us any mail today?" This semi-regular haunting of our mail receptacle by the District F council candidate was, for us, the high point of the current, rather drab municipal election season.

We were sad to realize that the mail loped to a stop last week after we were the recipient of a personal "Dear friend" missive from Mehreen Khan, who apparently is conjoined in holy matrimony to Khalid and who, if she's the same woman pictured on several of the many previous mailings we'd received from KK, is a looker, as we aging metrosexuals say (yes, we are the sort of superficial fellow who tends to think better of a guy if he's got a good-looking wife or girlfriend––shows initiative, among other things). Anyway, Ms. Khan wrote to inform us that her husband is not only a successful businessman but a great humanitarian, doting dad and all-around excellent role model. "I guarantee you will be pleased with his work performance," enthused Mrs. Khan, who appears to have affixed her personal signature to the letter.

You may snicker, but as far as we know we've gotten no similar endorsements from the spouses and/or significant others of any of the other six candidates vying in District F, a political jurisdiction that offers an almost too-perfect confirmation of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam's theory regrading the deleterious effects of "diversity" on community. (Watch how low the turnout is in this one.) And we have received no similar letter, nary a one, from the wife of Peter Brown (whose full name, we believe, is Schlumberger heiress Anne Brown), or the wife of Gene Locke, or the partner of Annise Parker. Or even Roy Morales' significant other.

Certainly a letter from a candidate's wife urging a vote on his behalf is much preferred to a letter from a candidate's wife urging a vote against her husband, or a vote for another candidate (now that would get our attention).

In addition to the public support of his wife, last week brought more salutary tidings from Khalid Khan: He's finally gotten his campaign finance reports to comport with reality (or close enough), with his latest and yet another amended version of his earlier one now showing he had spent about $92,000 on direct mail through Oct. 24. (Khan, however, still hasn't listed the occupation of even one of his contributors, including one-named $1,000 donor "Nash" of LaPorte, who must be the guy who doles out political money from the convenience store parking lot.)

That strikes us as an absurdly high figure for a very low-interest election in a demographically inchoate city council district. We now belatedly realize that we had grievously underestimated Khalid Khan, who may in fact be the Peter "Farmer" Brown of our humble District F, layin' down the Astroturf and harvestin' the vote.

Enough of this micro-hyper-local palaver. Do we have a prediction on the mayoral race? Yes, we do. It's gonna be Parker and Locke, unless it's Brown and Locke or Parker and Brown. Personally, we're voting for Parker. You go with who you like, and let a hundred flowers bloom o'er this grand metropolis of ours, from the Ship Channel to Highway 6 and beyond, if the city limits stretch that far.

We forgot to vote early, so we may see you at the polls, unless we forget again (if we don't, please refrain from handing us any push cards, especially if they're for Khalid Khan).

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