Abbott mulls special election
Governor looks into power to fill Farenthold’s seat
WASHINGTON — Telephone calls to the office of former Texas U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold are answered by a receptionist.
“27th Congressional District.”
His Facebook and Twitter pages have gone dark, his press secretary has left, and media inquiries are referred to the clerk of the House of Representatives, which now supervises his office.
Two weeks after the Corpus Christi Republican abruptly quit rather than face an ethics panel vote on allegations of sexual harassment and misusing staff for campaign work, he has left a political void on the Texas Gulf Coast.
In his wake, the fourterm congressman not only left behind an $84,000 tab for a 2015 sexual harassment settlement, but also what the Victoria Advocate, a leading newspaper in his district, calls “an election nightmare.”
The timing, just seven months before the Nov. 6 midterm election, has left state officials scrambling to fill his vacant seat for a short but critical time when the region is still recovering from Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall last year in Farenthold’s district.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who has the power to call special elections, is now considering using emergency powers normally reserved for disasters to short-circuit a series of federal and state laws that would normally require several months to hold an election and declare a winner.
“I am concerned that the combination of state and federal law makes it practically impossible to hold an emergency special election and to replace Representative Farenthold before the end of September,” Abbott wrote in a letter Thursday seeking guidance from Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Complicating the process are rules for allowing candidates to file, printing ballots, counting absentee ballots and the possibility of a runoff election. Local election officials estimate the costs at more than $200,000 — to be borne by the 13 counties that the 27th District comprises.
Meanwhile, Congress is expected to move forward in the coming months with legislative initiatives on immigration, border security, trade and spending — potentially including any additional appropriations for Texas and other regions struck by natural disaster.
“It is imperative to restore representation for the people of that district as quickly as possible,” Abbott wrote. “I am acutely concerned about this issue because many of the district’s residents are still recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Harvey.”
Paxton has yet to issue an opinion, which would not be binding.
A series of revelations
The dilemma was not totally unforeseen. Farenthold, who rode into Congress on a tea party wave in 2010, had been under an ethics cloud since 2014, when a 27-year-old former press secretary, Lauren Greene, hit him with a lawsuit for sexual harassment.
Though the suit was settled out of court a year later, it led to a House Ethics Committee investigation that lay largely dormant until late last year, when the #MeToo movement gathered steam and several other Farenthold staffers went public with their own accusations.
A series of revelations nationwide about leading men in business, politics and the media led to a push for greater transparency in Congress. That resulted in the public exposure of Farenthold’s $84,000 taxpayer settlement with Greene, which had remained confidential since 2015.
Farenthold publicly agreed to repay the settlement in December, even as he announced that he would not seek re-election in 2018 to a fifth term. But until he suddenly announced his resignation on April 6 — effective the same day — he had been expected to serve out the remainder of his term, which runs until January.
Farenthold, maintaining his innocence, gave little explanation for his decision to resign, other than to say in a video statement that “in my heart it’s time for me to move along and look for new ways to serve.”
Farenthold’s resignation came nine days after he’d been told that an investigative panel of the Ethics Committee had scheduled a vote on his case for April 11 — five days after he resigned.
According to the office of U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who has led efforts to reform sexual harassment policies in Congress, Farenthold also was told the vote would likely be to move forward with the case against him. Farenthold’s departure, however, ended the Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction over the matter, foreclosing any possibility of a vote or any adverse action. But in announcing that it was dropping the matter last week, the full ethics panel — including Texas Republicans John Ratcliffe and Kenny Marchant — urged him “in the strongest possible terms” to uphold his promise to repay the U.S. Treasury the $84,000 paid out in the Greene settlement.
The Ethics Committee statement followed those of House Speaker Paul Ryan and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Stivers, both saying Farenthold should make good on his commitment.
In putting off any repayment over the past three months, Farenthold’s office has said he was waiting on “advice of counsel” to see the fate of Speier’s reform bill, which would overhaul the way staffers pursue harassment complaints against lawmakers.
Speier’s bill was overwhelmingly approved on a voice vote of the House in February, but it has been bottled up in the Senate ever since. Though it would put the financial burden of any payouts on the lawmakers themselves, it would not be retroactive — raising questions of how it would be relevant to Farenthold.
Money in the bank
The congressman, the scion of a wealthy family with deep political roots in Texas, has not pleaded financial hardship in the matter. A recent estimate by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, put his net worth at $2.4 million in 2016, ranking him 120th in overall wealth in the House.
Campaign finance records also show that he has been able to dip into campaign funds to defend himself. He has racked up more than $61,000 in legal bills so far this year, leaving about $55,000 left over in his campaign account.
In the meantime, his offices in Washington, Corpus Christi and Victoria remain open for business, according to Erin McCracken, a spokeswoman for the House Administration Committee. Their services include casework and constituent service, she said, but not “voting representation.”