Career Politician Sylvester Turner Basing Mayoral Campaign on Staff Tweets and Boats … Really

Vote for Bill King for Houston Mayor, a businessman who will return Houston to being a refuge for families and businesses!

Failure to Deliver Pension Reform, Promises to Raise Taxes Not Featured in Turner Ads

Last Friday, a mid-day TV news report said that Sylvester Turner was promising “to run a clean campaign.” In reality, the career politician running for Houston Mayor had already spent tens of thousands of dollars to attack businessman Bill King personally with a bought media campaign littered with juvenile smears and outright falsehoods.

If Sylvester’s promises to the media are no good, what about his promises to city voters?

More importantly, if you’ve spent 26 years in Austin, and your campaign is based on attacking your opponent for the high crime of owning a boat, you’re out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time.

Since Mr Turner is interested, here is a quick fact-check on Bill King and boating: 

* Growing up the son of a union pipe fitter two blocks from Galveston Bay, Bill developed a lifelong love affair with the water. As a young boy, Bill worked the shrimp and fishing boats and cleaned so many sea trout and red-fish that, to this day, he rarely eats fish.

* After becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college — from the University Houston — Bill enjoyed great financial success before losing everything during Houston’s severe downturn of the 1980’s. Rebuilding his life and business career, Bill earned enough success to buy a boat which he dubbed “Hard Times” in reference to his own life challenges.

* Bill sold that boat in 2012, but not before he lent it to dozens of charitable organizations — who, in turn, auctioned off rides and use of the boat to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for worthy causes. At least 200 groups and over 5,000 people benefited from Bill King’s generosity with his boat.

* Between 2009 and 2012, in fact, Bill coordinated with Rev. Leslie Smith of Change Happens! in Houston to organize eight to 10 cruises with at-risk children. Several of these Change Happens! cruises are still featured on the organization’s website:

http://www.changehappenstx.org/?p=1412

http://www.changehappenstx.org/?p=1298

Sylvester Turner says “We’re all in this together” on his website, but the fact is: his only interest is in dividing Houstonians by class and distracting from his failure to address the fundamental challenges facing the City of Houston. After 26 years in Austin and after more than 60 debates and forums during the course of this campaign for Houston Mayor,  Mr. Turner still has offered no plan to address the pension crisis that threatens the city’s future.

To be fair, the career politician has proposed busting the property tax cap — known as the Rev Cap — so he can raise our taxes as much as he wants and anytime he wants. Curiously, this policy position is not featured in Mr Turner’s paid ads.