The first attack mailing — surgically written with the skill of a con man’s training — in the hotly contested House District 17 race (John Cyrier v. Brent Golemon) hit the very night of the debate last Monday. It came from Goleman and, though clever, it lacked the precision that straight shooters have. Instead, it hit us and threatens to do real harm to our efforts to stop the “water grabs” and therefore, demands this response.
After you take a minute to take all this in, we ask for your help. Word travels fast in rural communities, so what we need most is for you to talk to your neighbors. If you want to donate funds, that information is at the bottom of this page.
Rep. John Cyrier, hydrologist George Rice, landowners over the Simsboro at press conference called by League of Independent Voters, February 1, 2016
A funny thing happened when Golemon’s postcard was going out in the mail. While it proclaimed that he was the real water defender who “won’t sell you down the river” (not Cyrier or apparently us) Cyrier was actually down at the Capitol standing with the League of Independent Voters, Simsboro landowners and San Antonio hydrologist, George Rice covered in this Statesman piece here, sounding the alarm on the dangers of all three mega-permits to our water future. Golemon then took the Statesman piece and cut out our picture (similar to the one here) and sent it out with his quote promoting himself.
For months and behind our backs, Golemon had been dismissing the bill that the League of Independent Voters and my dear friend, Michele Gangnes of Lee County, asked Cyrier to introduce — HB 3163.
Surely Golemon, a lawyer by training, knows what HB 3163 is really about. It put an end to water marketer’s lawsuits against groundwater conservation district board members – as individuals — for simply for performing their duties. Their goal locally was to bully our volunteer public servants into granting huge permits that pose real risks to our aquifer and our property rights. Coercion of public servants should be scorned — if you don’t believe us, ask a sitting Lost Pines Board member how they feel about Cyrier’s support!
Linda Curtis
I have held back from publicly stating things I said privately in our endorsement session with Golemon, or I hadn’t quite fully investigated to my satisfaction by then. Golemon’s turn on us this week has changed all that for me. And, yes, I have to face the public humiliation that I had been conned by this man. So, I’m making this information public now and there is more to come. I hope you will share this with your neighbors in Lee, Bastrop, Caldwell, Karnes and Gonzales counties before Golemon does real harm to our efforts.
1. Golemon failed to disclose approximately $28,000 in expenditures in his 8-day report for his last campaign in the special election last February (2015). It took him until June 3, 2015 to correct it!
(See Golemon’s 8-day report here.) Golemon should have been fined at least $100 per day for failure to report these expenditures but he was never fined because under Govt. Code 571.0771 if you check the box that says the following, the Ethics Commission takes no action: “I swear, or affirm, that I am filing this corrected report not later than the 14th business day after the date I learned that the report as originally filed is inaccurate or incomplete. I swear, or affirm, that any error or omission in the report as originally filed was in good faith”.
Well, OK, but then in his explanation of the correction, Golemon wrote, “The political expenditures which were made from personal funds were not recorded.” I guess that means he had no idea what was coming out of his own personal bank account. Seriously?
2. Golemon campaign reports on the Texas Ethics Commission website reveal that he hired John Higgins to work on his last and present campaigns. Higgins, formerly Chief of Staff to Rep. Tim Kleinschmidt, is on probation for stealing $9000 from the District 17 office with fraudulent travel vouchers.
3. At a recent debate, Golemon falsely accused Cyrier of voting for HB 37, who voted against it after it was loaded up and deformed with poison pill amendments by legislators under the thumb of the Austin lobby. Cyrier originally co-authored the bill, a good bill intended to pull the sheets off of “dark money” in Texas – the practice of hiding unlimited political contributions behind non-profit organizations and trade associations. Golemon utterly failed our questions about this and other open government questions, with confusing answers. Expect more of this from Golemon and don’t fall for it! (See PS below for more.)
4. At our endorsement session with Golemon, he pled poverty to fight Cyrier’s donors claiming he hadn’t the money to put out a mailing on water. Then, after he lost our endorsement, somehow he found the money to put out a mailing to belittle John Cyrier’s and our water efforts, crowing that he “won’t sell you down the river.” After all we did for Golemon last February, the ingratitude was stark.
Talk to your neighbors, share this message and call me if you want to help get Golemon some “home training”. As my mom used to say about people like this, ‘he ain’t got none’.
PS We gave equal opportunity to both candidates for our endorsement with a lengthy survey on the issues – on our website here for Cyrier and here for Golemon. Their answers are revealing.
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