Backtrack

Sue Lovell makes news again for cornering news media with some spin.

Sue Lovell took issue with my coverage of Election Night that characterized her as "narrowly" escaping a loss to challenger Michael "Griff" Griffin, a private investigator.

The returns show that Lovell got 53 percent, while other incumbents with challengers got higher margins: Clutterbuck (77 percent), Johnson (77 percent), Noriega (66 percent).

So what happened? Lovell claims that she purposely did not campaign, instead choosing to spread her "political capital" to three other council hopefuls: Jolanda Jones, Wanda Adams, and James Rodriguez. Lovell gave money to all three.

Rodriguez won outright, and Jones and Adams each made runoffs. "I won three times last night," Lovell said.

...

But why did "Griff" do so well? Lovell has answers to that, too:

1) Early voters were driven to the polls by churchs opposed to the HISD bond, she said. And some church voters don't like Lovell because she's gay.

2) "Griff" has run six times before, so he has name recognition.
Unlike Johnson's first-time challenger in District B, Kenneth Perkins, for example.

Problem with that spintastic effort, as one commenter notes, is that Sue actually did BEST on the early vote and absentee vote. She suffered most on Election Day, winning a paltry 52%. Nevermind reality when delusion will do?

Sue's now established a record of doubling back to media when they dare to report the truth. She harrassed the Houston Voice for describing her as a Lesbian in the title of their otherwise congratulatory article on her SEIU-fueled win two years ago. And she also had to corner Kristen Mack to backtrack from a comment that indicated she broke City campaign finance law in that same run. By now, the pattern is obvious.

Oh, and now that her 2010 ambition has been "outted," it'll be curious to see what plan of attack she has for all those church-going voters who don't live in City of Houston - among others. Has she not now just outted herself as the weakest possible candidate to think about a countywide run?