Election year’s ‘campaign shuffle’ begins for state workers

Some employees move to new jobs to help get their bosses re-elected

AUSTIN — A week ago, John Wittman, Gov. Greg Abbott’s press spokesman, packed up the contents of his desk, turned in his state ID card and surrendered his state cellphone.

He was off to a new job starting the following Monday, as Abbott’s press spokesman — at the governor’s campaign office, just three blocks away.

His move is part of a silent trek that happens every fall before an election year in Texas, when state employees take leave from their bosses’ official taxpayer-paid staff to work on their reelection campaigns, a jump that keeps their work from violating state law.

To political insiders, it marks the official start of the election season. “The campaign shuffle,” some call it.

By the end of this year, Texas officials and ethics watchdogs say that perhaps as many as 300 state employees may be doing the shuffle as the campaign season ramps up — some taking time off during their state workday to do campaign business, some leaving their state jobs altogether like Wittman.

He was among four employees in the governor’s office who made the move to Abbott’s campaign on Oct. 1, with others expected to follow in coming months.

“The governor wants to avoid the appearance of any ethics issue,” Wittman said. “It keeps things clean to do it this way, to make sure things do not cross over into an ethical area.”

Under state law, public officials are prohibited from using state employees or resources to run for reelection or to help their campaigns. Violations, though, can be difficult to prove and politically thorny to prosecute.

In other Texas Capitol offices, some staffers have their salaries paid partly

with campaign funds, and they split their time on political business. Or they are required to take leave from their state job to do any campaign work. Some even help on campaigns after hours, on their own time, after state offices close.

Line not always fine

In past years, the conflict between official business and campaign business has repeatedly made headlines and given many incumbents heartburn as their opponents have blistered them with bad publicity during election campaigns.

“The issue is: where is the line between your public office and your campaign?” said longtime ethics watchdog Craig McDonald, director of the Austin-based Texans for Public Justice.

“Can people change their hats from one minute to the next, from public office to campaign and then back, and not have some type of conflict? That’s always the question: Who are they really serving, their boss or the taxpayers?”

The line between campaign and state duties was not always as fine as most officials say it is now, even though critics — and even supporters — say the bar is still high for anyone to actually get into trouble for crossing it.

Before an ethics scandal erupted in 1991 over lobbyists lavishing free getaways and expensive meals on lawmakers, as they pushed bills that benefited those lobbyists, the line between campaign and state duties were often blurry. Some officials ran their campaigns from their Capitol offices, reimbursing the state for expenses if someone made an issue of it.

But after the Texas Ethics Commission was established in 1991, after voters who had tired of cronyism at the Capitol passed a constitutional amendment to enact reforms, most officeholders began drawing much clearer distinctions between their official roles and their campaigns.

Dozens of officeholders during the 1990s installed a separate phone in their office for making campaign calls. After cellphones became popular, many carried two — one for official business, one for the campaign.

Some lawmakers and state officials routinely wrote checks to the state comptroller to cover the costs of any inadvertent personal and campaign phone calls that might have been made during one month or the other.

Ethics laws changed

Questions about the two hats worn by staff surfaced as then-Gov. George W. Bush ran for president in 2000. The same happened when Gov. Rick Perry, who replaced Bush, ran for president in 2011.

Each denied any conflicts, and each took steps to ensure the separation of their staffs was clear.

Most of the issues that have arisen since have been in legislative offices, which have smaller campaign budgets for totally separate political staffs than statewide officeholders, who can raise much more money for larger campaigns.

Three years ago, after Perry was indicted for alleged abuse of power, the Legislature changed ethics laws to allow incumbent Republican officials and lawmakers to be prosecuted in their home counties rather than in Democratic-leaning Austin. Perry’s indictment was ultimately dismissed.

Critics said the change would likely make it nearly impossible for incumbents to get busted, especially for relatively minor infractions such as using state resources for campaign business — even though the target was to protect incumbents from political prosecutions.

Despite that, Attorney General Ken Paxton has since been indicted on felony charges in Collin County, where he is from, for alleged securities infractions before he was elected. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial next year.

Earlier this year, State Rep. Dawnna Dukes, DAustin, was indicted in her home county on 13 counts alleging she misused public funds for her personal gain — the same section of the law that prohibits officials from using taxpayers funds or employees to campaign.

A complicated issue

“This issue gets to be complicated the more you peel back the onion,” said Texas Ethics Commission Chairman Steve Wolens, who served in the Texas House from 1981 until 2005. During his tenure as a lawmaker, he said he kept his state and campaign operations completely separate.

“But campaign activities have to be done outside a state office,” he said.

For his part, Wittman said he views the separation from Abbott’s campaign and his $85,000 year state job as a good thing. He said he was originally scheduled to switch jobs in July, but a special legislative session called by his boss delayed that, and then on Sept. 1, but that was called off by Hurricane Harvey.

Even though Abbott only has token Democratic Party opposition so far — Jeffrey Payne of Dallas and Tom Wakely — the GOP incumbent has had a campaign staff at work since he first launched his run for Texas’ top office in 2013.

The governor’s campaign aides said he already has more than 40 people working on his campaign after announcing his reelection plans July 14 in San Antonio. By the end of the year, that staff will top 100, they said, including several more from Abbott’s Capitol office.