White candidate wins local race after pretending to be black
MSNBC - He got his constituents’ votes, but he may not have their trust for very long.
MSNBC – He got his constituents’ votes, but he may not have their trust for very long.
By a small margin, a white anti-gay activist has ousted a 24-year African American incumbent from his position on the Houston Community College System Board of Trustees – and he did it by pretending to be black. Dave Wilson, who until recently was described in the press as an “unsuccessful candidate in several local political races,” decided to take a shot at the HCCS Trustee job, even though he knew he was running in an overwhelmingly black district. So he tried to see if he could subtly convince voters he was black, too.
In an interview with KHOU reporter Doug Miller, Wilson said he was “shocked” that he won.
“I’d always said it was a long shot,” he said. “No, I didn’t expect to win.”
Wilson sent campaign fliers to community members that used stock photos of African Americans with messages like, “Please vote for our friend and neighbor, Dave Wilson.” He even boasted an endorsement from Ron Wilson. Houston voters probably thought he meant former state Rep. Ron Wilson, who helped create the Texas Human Rights Commission, debated Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and led the fight to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a recognized holiday in the state, according to the Houston Chronicle. But the Ron Wilson in question was actually his family member with the same name, an Iowa-dwelling cousin who Wilson grew up playing baseball with.
In one of those mailers, he made a point to tie his opponent, incumbent Bruce Austin, to Houston’s openly lesbian mayor, Annise Parker, pointing out that they both supported “sodomy,” “marriage between a man and a man,” and “that a man can use a woman’s bathroom.”
Austin told KHOU he was disgusted by the mailers, adding that he may pursue a recount, since he lost by a mere 26-vote margin.
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