Whipped Cream Difficulties

Long day, but I did want to bring you the latest development in the Shade-Tovo race.

The story is kind of confusing, perhaps because some people are obfuscating what’s going on. But the brief version is that a dozen bars on West 6th Street have put up signs offering drink specials during the early voting period (which starts next week.) The signs are also offering unspecified prizes and transportation to the polls. The signs also endorse Ms. Shade.

There are some interesting questions. For example:

• Is this an organized political action committee? Michael Klein, “president of the Texas Bar and Nightclub Alliance, which represents several downtown bars” says that the bar owners are acting independently, are setting up their own specials and prizes, and that the whole thing started with one bar owner who made his own sign, which was then copied by the others. This doesn’t quite pass the smell test for me…
  

  Tovo’s campaign said the signs might violate campaign finance rules because they don’t have a disclaimer saying who’s paying for them or the promotion, the bars aren’t registered as a political action committee and bars offering prizes and drink specials to promote a candidate might be a corporate contribution, which in some cases are illegal.

• Do you have to vote for Ms. Shade to get the prizes and specials? Klein says no, but I’m not sure how he can speak for all 12 of the bars if they’re all acting independently. On the other hand, how would they make you prove you voted for Ms. Shade? Or even voted at all? Would you need to get one of those “I Voted” stickers to get a buck off draft beer?
• Is all this being done independently of Ms. Shade’s campaign? Reply hazy, ask again later. Seriously, there seems to be no evidence one way or the other; the sign showed up on Ms. Shade’s FaceBook page, but her people say it was posted by someone outside the campaign and they removed it.
• The article is curiously missing any quotes from anyone with TABC.
• Can I hope for an asteroid to come along and wipe out both the Shade and Tovo campaigns?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Clippings, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.