Local realtor and former mayoral candidate Steve Myers is crying foul over actions by a Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors committee to support mayoral candidate Sen. Mack “Bodi” White through the organization’s statewide political action committee.
The GBRAR’s governmental affairs committee voted Wednesday to request that the Louisiana Realtors PAC make an early donation to White’s campaign. The GBRAR does not have its own PAC but funnels money to candidates through the statewide PAC, which is obligated to honor the request of the local association.
The committee’s decision came even though its members did not have an opportunity to interview any of the candidates running for mayor and qualifying for the fall election is still more than a month away.
“To select a candidate with no interview process, no vetting process is just stinky politics,” says Myers, who ran as an independent in the 2012 mayor’s race. “We are doing the same thing we complain about: rigged systems and backroom deals.”
Myers, who has sat on the governmental affairs committee for several years, says this is the first time he can remember the committee voting so early to support a candidate and that at least one committee member spoke of the need to “weed out” some of the candidates in the crowded field.
He also thought it odd that the Louisiana Realtors’ CEO Norman Morris spoke to the group before the vote and urged them to seek the early donation from the state PAC board.
“I knew something was amiss,” Myers says. “This was a railroad job. The fix was in.”
Morris acknowledges he spoke to the group, though he denies there was any “backroom deal.” He says the statewide association felt it was important to make a case for White, who is a state senator and also a real estate broker.
“We went over there and made a recommendation, even though the local board ultimately made the decision,” Morris says. “We just felt like if you are going to take a stand you may as well get out early on rather than wait until the end to get involved.”
But Myers says White is not even a realtor and that one other announced candidate who is—Darryl Gissel—was not given an opportunity to even address the committee. Myers is not supporting Gissel as of yet, he says, but he takes issues with the fairness of the vote.
GBRAR Executive Director Herb Gomez says White is a realtor, though he concedes White was not listed in the realtors’ database until this morning because “there was some confusion on us sending him invoices for dues and stuff but it has been cleared up.”
As for Gissel, he says he is disappointed in the process.
“This is dirty tricks to favor one candidate,” he says in a prepared statement. “I expect better from my fellow realtors. The rank and file dues paying members should protest.”
Myers says he will officially complain to the state PAC and request at its next quarterly meeting that the request from the GBRAR committee be reconsidered, though he fears by then it may be too late.
“But I will bring it to the attention of the state board to try to avoid this kind of abuse in the future,” he says.
—Stephanie Riegel
