Houston City Councilwoman Abbie Kamin (D) echoes any other left-wing scamp in rebuking the Texas GOP, but she showed unusual brass last week prodding her Twitter followers to phone and badger the party’s supporters.
“TX GOP/SREC pulled down the sponsor list for their State Convention that they insist be IN-PERSON in #Houston during a dangerous #COVID surge + increasingly limited ICU capacity,” began Kamin’s tweetstorm last Tuesday. “Here’s the list of elected official & corporate sponsors. Feel free to call them.”
Her flunkies doubtless obliged. A day later, the gentlelady from District C heralded Union Pacific’s withdrawal as a convention sponsor. Mayor Sylvester Turner (D) would soon disallow the in-person convention altogether.
Whatever the merits of the event or Turner’s decision to forbid it, common decency restrains politicians from exhorting their minions to hound their opponents’ backers. But since Kamin endorses this practice, she presumably wouldn’t mind it if her opponents were reminded that they can call and complain to her benefactors.
Would she mind area residents calling the Houston Astros, whose vice president for strategy and analytics, Michael Dillon, contributed $250 to Kamin’s campaign last year?
Is she comfortable with people contacting Allegiance Bank, whose then-CEO and current Vice Chairman George Martinez gave her $8,500 last year?
Does she want to spur her detractors to get in touch with her supportive officeholders? State Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-147) had donated a total of $3,000 to her. Coleman’s Laredo-based colleague Rep. Richard Raymond (D-42) had contributed $10,000. And Kamin’s predecessor Ellen Cohen gave her $500.
Are those officials’ staffers fair game? Coleman’s former Chief of Staff Kyle Mauro contributed $750 to Kamin. And if you think he’s too small-fry to pester, be assured he’s gone onto bigger and better things: This year, Mauro joined the lobbying firm HillCo Partners.
Actually, a number of the lobbyists at HillCo might be worth a phone call, on Kamin’s logic: HillCo’s William Miller gave her $10,000. HillCo consultant Marsha Jones donated $1,000. Another of their partners, Jay Howard, has contributed $300.
It might behoove other politically connected donors to take some grief over their association with Kamin. David Hawes of the economic-development firm Hawes Hill & Associates contributed $750 to the freshman councilwoman last year. Other backers from that firm include partner Alice Lee and executive director Ben Brewer. Their sometime associate William Calderon, who now heads his own economic-development outfit, donated $600.
We probably oughtn’t weep for certain other representatives of corporate interests who support Kamin if anyone bothers them with phone calls. Mark Jensen, for instance, a human resources staffer in the American wing of the Beijing-based oil and gas company PetroChina International Inc., seems a poor candidate for our sympathy.
What about attorney Bobby Lapin, of Lapin & Landa? In addition to serving as Kamin’s campaign treasurer, Lapin has given her $7,500 in cash plus several hundred in in-kind contributions. Is getting pestered by unsupportive Houstonians what he signed up for when he joined her effort?
Some Kamin supporters have surely endured their share of bile from opponents, so let’s not fear offending their sensibilities by phoning them up. They would include attorney Sherry Merfish who worked for the pro-abortion Emily’s List as well as fundraisers Martha “Anne” Murphy and Abby Whitmire, both of Planned Parenthood. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) probably could abide a phone call or three. So could University of California-Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who hopes that a more liberal U.S. Supreme Court will one day “find a constitutional right to education and conclude that disparities in school funding violate the Constitution” and that “the Second Amendment protects only a right to have guns for the purpose of militia service.”
The list of liberal extremists who have backed Kamin goes on. It includes attorneys Peggy Li of the American Constitution Society and Brian Klosterboer of the Texas ACLU as well as political consultant Grant Martin, who has received thousands upon thousands in political advertising work from the councilwoman. Would Kamin agree people should “feel free to call them?”
The political action committee for Comcast Corporation and NBCUniversal, which has funded Kamin to the tune of $3,000, is probably used to hearing from disgruntled Americans about the leftist filth they’ve peddled for years. So let’s not leave them out either. Other media figures who have supported Kamin include David Lee, president of the far-left Texas Signal, and Los Angeles-based author Vince Beiser.
Another is Jennie Kamin, an associate producer at CBS News in New York City.
Which raises an obvious question: When Abbie Kamin’s adversaries complain to her supporters, should they leave members of her family alone? There seems little reason to; after all, each of her supporters is someone’s family. Rumor has it, even the GOP supporters she asked her followers to hassle are humans with families.
So, then, let’s get on with it. Other Kamins and their colleagues who have financially backed Abbie’s campaign include Lynn Kamin, a partner at Jenkins & Kamin LLP; Mark Kamin, founder and CEO at Mark Kamin & Associates; Annette Nathan, a management consultant at that firm; Ya-Chieh Wang, the firm’s chief operating officer; and Juli Hall of Juli Kamin Consulting.
If I were to say, “feel free to call” these people—or anyone listed on the linked spreadsheet of standout contributors—rest assured it’s behavior of which Councilwoman Kamin would approve.