The Chronicle‘s Kristen Mack has an interesting quote from Professor Richard Murray in a politics column that discusses the possibility of Councilmember Michael Berry’s wife Nandy running for Shelley Sekula-Gibbs’ seat should it come open:
“It’s easier to run if your husband is leaving council than to serve at the same time,” said University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray. “Generally, voters want council members to be independent. There will be suspicion if you have a husband-and-wife team that they will be voting together.”
Professor Murray is not identified by Mack as a sometime Democratic political advisor and pollster.
Speaking of keeping it in the family, however, Professor Murray’s commentary on the potential Berry/Berry Council tandem sounds a lot like his son Keir Murray’s perspective:
Mrs. Berry may well be a fine person and a potentially great public servant, but if she wants to run for City Council she needs to wait until her husband’s term is up at the end of next year. One person per nuclear family at a time serving on a major elective body is enough, thank you. If she wants to run, she should run in November to replace her husband, not in May, so they can office together through the end of the year.
It is difficult to imagine, that over the course of even an abbreviated campaign season, other candidates to replace Sekula-Gibbs won’t make an issue of this nepotism.
It’s not clear how it would be nepotism if the voters of Houston (not her husband) chose Nandy Berry to serve on Council with her husband (however unlikely that possibility seems), but it is clear that the Murray family doesn’t think much of the idea.
Maybe Bob Stein was off riding his bike and so Mack had to turn to the other go-to Democrat for political commentary in town.
