Yesterday, the Chronicle‘s Matt Stiles posted that Slumlord-Representative Hubert Vo had hired an alleged “political pro” to help him with his problems:
Glenn W. Smith, a former director at Public Strategies who worked for the late Gov. Ann Richards, is in town now to advise Vo on media strategy.
Smith, also a former Austin Bureau chief for the Houston Post, met with some of us today. The message was pretty clear: Vo’s a good person. The apartments aren’t that bad. And employees at the complexes do good things for the residents, including organizing health fairs and security training.
“I’ve met him a few times, and I liked him, so I wanted to help,” he said. “I want him to be able to tell the good part of the story.”
Cory Crow asks the obvious (and not so obvious) questions:
I’m sorry, WHAT good part of the story? The bit where the children are using dead rat carcases as toys? Or where residents of his broken down apartments are using dead rodents as a hedge against high food prices?
And in the Chron blog comments, I wondered if it might not have been a better strategy actually to FIX the slums.
The “political pro” was apparently not happy today, after Empower Texans released the following video:
Here’s what the “political pro” had to say, also courtesy of Stiles:
UPDATE: A response from Glenn Smith, Vo’s new spokesman:
“The Houston Chronicle used a false characterization of Mr. Vo that the paper knew was a false characterization. As expected, partisan hacks are now exploiting the Chronicle error.”
Smith said he was referring to an adjective – the “s”-word – that appeared in an editorial, and not the paper’s coverage overall. He wouldn’t comment about that.
What was the error?
If the guy doesn’t want to be called a slumlord, maybe he should fix up his properties? Crazy suggestion, I know!
PREVIOUSLY: Stiles: Slumlord-Rep. Vo urged HPD to ease up on his slums, The serial slumlord saga continues, State Rep. Vo is a serial slumlord, Hubert Vo’s “next step toward positive change”: ridding himself of slumlord status!.
