Will backing from Trump, McCarthy be enough to boost Hunt in GOP primary?
Ten years ago, Bellaire City Council was in a jam. The recession had diminished home values, leaving less property tax revenue to pay for the city’s ballooning debt service — a result of its voter-approved street and drainage bond program.
To avoid dipping into their reserves, city officials, including then-Mayor Cindy Siegel, trimmed spending and raised the property tax rate by about 6 percent. It cost the average Bellaire homeowner some $78 a year.
That decade-old rate increase has become an issue in Siegel’s bid for the Republican nomination in Texas’ 7th Congressional District, one of several matters to generate strife between the former mayor and her main rival, Army veteran Wesley Hunt.
The two candidates are running arguably the most visible campaigns in the six-person GOP primary to decide who will face rookie U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher. Hunt has amassed a major fundraising advantage — thanks in part to a boost from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — while Siegel is touting grassroots support from her years in local Republican groups.
The contest has seen its fair share of negative ads and political attacks, many of which take aim at Hunt, who has outraised and outspent the other five candidates combined and recently received President Donald Trump’s endorsement.
Hunt and Siegel have cast each other’s jabs as duplicitous. In response to a digital ad run by Hunt’s campaign labeling her
“not conservative” due to her “votes for higher property taxes and wasteful spending,” Siegel said the ad is “disingenuous, it’s misleading, it’s everything that people hate about ‘the swamp.’ ”
During Siegel’s 14-year tenure on Bellaire City Council, she noted, the city’s tax rate decreased from 51 cents to 40 cents per $100 in taxable value. The only annual rate hike, in fiscal 2011, was needed to service debt approved overwhelmingly by voters after Tropical Storm Allison, Siegel argued.
Still, it is Siegel who has thrown the vast majority of the punches in this primary, starting late last year when she laid into Hunt for missing a handful of candidate forums. Then, after Hunt revealed at a January forum that he last voted in the 2008 Democratic primary, Siegel began hammering Hunt over his voting history.
Hunt has said he is a lifelong Republican, explaining his vote in the Democratic primary as being part of a strategy devised by conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who told Republican voters to support Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama that year to lengthen the primary season for Democrats. Siegel has questioned why Hunt did not vote in subsequent Republican primaries.
One of Siegel’s latest broadsides on Hunt is over a lawsuit against his employer and campaign donor, homebuilding firm Perry Homes, which is accused of making a Kingwood subdivision more susceptible to flooding through its development of an adjacent property. Siegel panned Hunt over the lawsuit and was joined in her critique by Republican candidate Maria Espinoza, who said Hunt “cares more about campaign funds than he does about doing the right thing and preventing a recurrence of devastating floods.”
Hunt, who works in human resources at Perry Homes, said he is “not at all involved in the issue” at work.
“Yes, Ted Cruz endorsed him, but Ted Cruz lost the district in 2018. … I have to believe if (Trump) knew Mr. Hunt didn’t bother to vote in 2016, I have to believe he wouldn’t have endorsed him.”
Cindy Siegel, Republican candidate in the 7th Congressional District
“Any attention that we are putting on something else is not attention on defeating Lizzie Fletcher,” Hunt said. “That’s the kind of infighting that is kind of absurd. Let’s focus on Lizzie and not our fellow Republicans.”
Siegel said Hunt nonetheless bears some responsibility for the company that “pays his paycheck.”
“I just don’t see how Wes Hunt can say that he doesn’t have a conflict of interest in Perry Homes,” she said.
The other Republican candidates are former Houston Housing Director Jim Noteware, energy consultant Kyle Preston and Laique Rehman, a commodities trader in the oil and gas industry. Preston and Rehman have not filed any campaign finance reports.
Distinct backgrounds
Lacking many discernible policy disputes, Hunt and Siegel also have drawn contrasts over their sharply differing backgrounds. Hunt served as a helicopter pilot and liaison officer in the Army, with deployments to Iraq and Saudi Arabia, while Siegel is emphasizing her experience as an accountant and in local government to underline her desire to reduce federal spending.
Espinoza has focused her campaign on supporting hard-line immigration stances. She often touts Trump’s support for the group she co-founded with her husband, called the Remembrance Project, which amplifies the stories of families with relatives killed by unauthorized immigrants. Espinoza won nearly 18 percent of the vote in her bid for the Republican nomination in 2016.
Siegel, who has filled leadership roles in the county Republican Party and other local groups, is framing the race as a battle between her grassroots support and Hunt’s fundraising might, which has been aided by his connection to McCarthy. The majority leader has connected Hunt to his extensive donor network and contributed $10,000 to Hunt’s campaign through his political action committee.
Hunt has emphasized his own grassroots support, sending out an email to supporters Sunday in which he said his “volunteer army” knocked on more than 5,000 doors Saturday, while about 300 people attended his rally the day after with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Hunt, who is African American, has also received backing from a PAC formed by U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, who is the only black Republican in the House and is not seeking re-election.
According to Federal Election Commission data, Hunt has raised almost $165,000 from donors who list addresses outside Texas, though he has also vastly outraised Siegel from those with in-state addresses, $932,000 to $190,000. Siegel has received just $2,100 from outside the state, while loaning her campaign nearly $359,000.
Though Hunt has drawn the endorsement of popular conservative radio host Michael Berry, he recently lost the support of conservative firebrand Steven Hotze, who also holds sway with a swath of the socially conservative primary electorate.
Jared Woodfill, president of Hotze’s Conservative Republicans of Harris County organization, said Hotze initially supported Hunt but switched his endorsement to Siegel after hearing about Hunt’s primary voting history.
Hotze also was concerned about contributions Hunt received from Republicans who supported Houston’s equal rights ordinance in 2015, Woodfill said, adding that Siegel was “with us” on the ordinance and other social issues. Hotze’s group sent out an initial mailer touting the Hunt endorsement but sent out a revised endorsement over the weekend and plans to back Siegel if there is a runoff.
Hunt, for his part, said he intends to win the election outright on March 3 — an outcome that would give him more time to raise funds against Fletcher without spending against a fellow Republican. (About $152,000 of the funds Hunt has raised may be spent only in the event of a runoff.)
“There may very well be a runoff, and we are going to prepare for that accordingly, but I feel like we are running to win,” Hunt said after a recent candidate forum. “We have made the phone calls, we’ve done the block walking, we’ve put the work in. We are prepared for it, but our goal is to end this.”
Fletcher’s seat a top target
Fletcher, who defeated GOP incumbent John Culberson in 2018, is a top target this November for local and national Republicans. She won the suburban west Houston district — which contains a mix of minority communities and affluent residents who are mostly white — during the same cycle in which Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke carried 53 percent of the vote in her district.
Siegel cited that result in dismissing Cruz’s decision to endorse Hunt — a move that Democrats hope will aid their chances during the general election.
“Yes, Ted Cruz endorsed him, but Ted Cruz lost the district in 2018,” Siegel said. “The president, I have to believe if he knew Mr. Hunt didn’t bother to vote in 2016, I have to believe he wouldn’t have endorsed him.”
Through Feb. 12, Fletcher had $1.9 million cash on hand. Hunt had $821,000, Espinoza $179,000 and Siegel $120,000, though she had outspent Espinoza nearly 9to-1.