Harker Heights election wraps up with Michael Blomquist victorious as mayor

In this episode of the Inside Killeen podcast, Deputy Managing Editor Dave Miller talks about how fraught the recent Harker Heights election was, and the surprising turnout in the runoff for mayor of Harker Heights. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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SPEAKER_02 0:25

Welcome to the Inside Clean podcast brought to you by KDH News. My name is Kevin Limity. I'm the local government reporter here. And today we're going to be talking about the Harker Heights election, which recently got wrapped up after a runoff for the mayor spot. And I'm going to introduce uh someone who knows more about the Harker Heights election than anybody else in this room. And and I I would think a little in most of the city at City, the clean Harker Heights area as well. Dave Miller, he's the deputy managing editor of KDH News as well as the opinion editor. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Fine, Kevin. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Oh, oh, not so bad. So there was just a runoff election, and it's coming off of like a pretty like eventful like election cycle for Harker Heights. I think even more so than it was for Kaleen. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Sure. It's almost like a tale of two cities, as they say. The first part of the election, which wrapped up with the regular municipal election on May 2nd, was rough and tumble. I mean, we had allegations of people stealing signs and moving signs, destroying signs. We had all sorts of name-calling and finger pointing about various things, including somebody uh that the mayor supposedly had fake people doing endorsements on his website. We had the mayor pro tem at the time. She had an issue with a fraudulent credit card charge, which she says was done by somebody who was working for her, and she had since paid the debt. But I mean, it was it was crazy. And we had a third candidate in there, Scott Airy, who was was kind of swinging with both of them, and and it got pretty crazy. I mean, uh for the for about a week or two there, it looked like it was really going to come unglued. But the second part of it, the runoff, which just culminated with the Saturday election, in which Mayor Michael Blumquist won by 130 votes, that one was quiet. I mean, we had about a 10-day early voting period there where the candidates were out by their tents in their city hall parking lot. They were campaigning, they were waving to people, they were talking, and nobody was saying boo about the other. It was, it was seen to be just kind of the first part was forgotten, or else people just decided it was time to move on. I don't know. But the first part definitely got some attention around both Harker Heights and Colleen because it was just so out of character. Heights usually has quiet elections and uh not too much going on as far as controversy, but this definitely broke the mold on that.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah, and the runoff election between Michael Blomquist and Lyndon Nash, that was just this past past weekend.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Yes, that was June 13th, Saturday.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

That's right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I remember when it was somewhat in like the middle of like the election season, and I was kind of busy with my own beat having to do with uh the city of Kleene's elections, and you know, I was approached by somebody from the school board of KISD of all of all places, and they they told me, hey, I mean, they're talking about these signs being brought down, and they were spraying really weird and bizarre like spray paint on like each of the sides.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

Yes, I think the phrase Z music was being was being put on the signs. I don't know if that was a local group, if it was a gang, if it was somebody just you know had a business. Nobody quite knows what it was, but it showed up on about six or seven of the signs.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yeah, I mean there were like furies that like it was some guy trying to like promote his music, and he just happened to pick the campaign signs for a bunch of these Harker Heights candidates to like kind of promote his music. Or I even heard something like, and none of this is confirmed, by the way. I should pre I should make sure people understand, but I heard that that Z music was like some kind of AI artist of some kind that was like was like being promoted for whatever reason. And very bizarre. Yeah very bizarre.

SPEAKER_03 4:28

Nobody seemed to know what it was about. And the the thing that was interesting about it was that the Z music logo or script was only showing up on the signs for Michael Blumquist and for I can't think of her name, is it? Jen. Jen McCann. And those two were kind of running as a as a ticket almost. Jen served two terms on the Heights Council. She had to step down for term limits last year, and then she decided she was going to get back involved and take go after the place four seat that Linda Nash had to abandon because she was term limited. She was running for mayor, which is not, you know, you can still do that, run for a different office. But so anyway, that that race was kind of interesting too because she and Michael ran together. And Roxanne Flores, who ended up winning the place four seat, is somebody who works for the city of Nolanville as their outreach coordinator, been very active with volunteerism and that sort of thing in local cities and in the arts. But anyway, she uh she ended up winning that. But the only people who had the Z music showing up on their signs were McCann and Blumquist. So who knows whether it was, you know, they were saying, Oh, it's it's staged, it's done by one of the other candidates, you know, because they don't like us, but nobody ever really got to the bottom of it. So it ended up being nothing. Yeah. I mean, it's as they say, a big nothing burger in the long run.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Yeah, but it was very interesting. And you know, and it was surprising too that there was so much like uh vitriol coming out of the Harker Heights election when meanwhile in Kalleen, it was at least a mayoral one, but I think overall it was relatively peaceful. So just very interesting stuff.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

Yeah, Kalene had all their craziness before the election in the filing period when everybody was playing musical chairs on the council.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Yeah, that was a very strange thing to happen too. That was, of course, when uh first I think it was Riakos, no, no, sorry. It was Jose Segara who resigned, and then he left the council because that's what the charter said to do. But then we found out that Riakos Adams, who was running for mayor, also resigned, but stayed on, and then he became the he was since he was a mayor pro 10 when Nash King resigned, uh he became the mayor. And and Solomon, also the councilman for District District 2, and now is the clean mayor, wh winning his election, he ultimately took he ultimately stayed on the council as well, but ended up taking the Tom Merrill seat.

SPEAKER_03 7:01

So yeah. And they were allowed to, just to clarify that the state has a holdover provision in there that if too many people leave a council, the the other ones are uh the people who resign subsequently are allowed to stay on in their s even after they've resigned.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Right. But the charter, like which is something that Cigar brought up a lot, like says that they were supposed to resign. So and you know, Cigar made that a part of his campaign, but it I don't think it really worked out too well since he didn't win. Anyways, uh getting back to the Harker Heights election, again, I mean, I mean, other than some of the stuff that we talked about with some of the signs being like vandalized and some of the vitriolic stuff, there were some other things that happened as well. I mean, I recall there being some some other controversies. Can you talk a little bit about some of the people?

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Hello, everyone. Jacob Brooks here, managing editor of the Kleene Daily Herald. You're listening to Inside Kaleen, our way of bringing you deeper into the stories that shape the Kleen Fort Hood area. We love producing this podcast and keeping it free for everyone to enjoy. But the truth is, the local reporting that fuels these episodes requires real resources. Whether it's our daily print edition, our breaking news coverage at kdhnews.com, or this very podcast, community journalism depends on listeners and readers like you. By purchasing a digital subscription to kdhnews.com, you aren't just getting unlimited access to our reporting, you are directly investing in the reporters, video journalists, and editors who keep our community informed and hold our leaders accountable. Help us keep the the stories coming. Head over to kdhnews.com slash subscribe today to find the plan that works for you. You can sign up for less than a dollar per week. Thank you for listening to the Inside Caleen podcast, and thank you for supporting local news.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

Yeah, and I think I think the biggest one that got the most attention was the racism issue, which you know it's unfortunate that that got introduced into the into the campaign. But to be to be fair, let's let's go back a bit. The NAACP, the local branch, posted on its website or it's on its Facebook page, a poster that was sponsored by the state NAACP, which said black the vote, and then it said, you know, our lives depend on or vote like our lives depend on, something like that. Which is a perfectly legitimate message to be sending out, I think, in national elections where you have problems with uh due process and and rights and and incarnation, uh, in incarnation, people who are being incarcerated, you know, with without without having their trials in a timely manner. All these things are are huge and they dis disproportionat the minority populations. And so that's a legitimate thing to put out there, I think, you know. And and then also it's just a good idea to encourage any population, you know, either the population as a whole or different groups to take advantage of your right to vote and do it. You know what I mean? That's that's that's the way a lot of people saw it. It was just encouraging the black population, the black community to get out there and and take care of their voting rights. I mean, do it, you know, vote. Michael Blumquist read it wrong, or he the way he read it or chose to read it, was that it was encouraging local community to vote for black candidates. To be clear, Michael is white, Linda Nash is black. Right. Um, you know, and she was hoping to become the first black mayor of Harker Heights. She, as it was, she was the first black woman elected to the city council back in 2020. So, you know, there was there's a lot of history behind it, but you know, for whatever reason, Blumquist looked at this and said, okay, they're coming out against me. They're saying, you know, telling the black members of the community, vote for the black candidate. Well, Linda didn't see it that way. Scott Airy didn't see it that way. A lot of people who just looked at the ad in abstract and said, okay, maybe this wasn't the best time to run this ad, but the message behind it is probably pretty, you know, innocuous. And I think it probably would have been better if it had had maybe a little subtext under it instead of saying vote like your lives depend on, whatever, saying, you know, no matter who you vote for, make sure you vote, or something like that. It would have been a little bit less, you know, leaning towards one or the other. But I think overall, I think maybe Blumquist took it a little too personally, or he he tried to make something out of it that it wasn't. Yeah. But it all it stirred things up, and he was the one stirring it. I mean, and every this had been on the website on the on the Facebook page for the NAACP branch for like two or three weeks, well before early voting started, and he just noticed it. And he called it our our paper to call attention to it. And so, you know, he's the one that started that story. Whether it hurt him or helped him in the regular election, we don't know. It's a three-candidate race. The odds of him coming out of it without a runoff, which in Harker Heights, you need to have more than 50% of the vote to get it, you know, to get the the win. He ended up with 42%. Linda ended up with 38%, and Scott ended up with like 20%, something like that. So with Scott in there as the third candidate, the likelihood of his scoring a win over 50%, especially against a strong candidate like Nash, probably wasn't going to happen. So we don't know whether that skewed things one way or the other when he made an issue out of that. But in any event, they both went to the runoff, he and Nash.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of interesting things about that that are worth noting. One of them is that even though like the NAACP is an organization for the betterment of the black population, like black people, I don't think that that's like they're like they like they're not like let me just give you an example. When I was at a town hall meeting, the NAACP was tabling an event, and I went up there and they were like, Do you want to get to register to vote? Because this was when I just had moved to Texas and I had not like tried to register to vote yet. So I was like, Yeah, sure. Like it's so they're like just so they're also involved in stuff like voter registration and they don't like discriminate, like they'll sign up whoever wants to sign up. And so that's one and also, you know, the same thing with like some of their annual gatherings and stuff like that. Like, like it's it's not exclusively black people, so you know.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

No, and anybody can join, they make it they make a point of that, you know, and they're they're they're for for equal rights for everybody, you know, all all across the US population. You know, if anybody's having their rights denied or you know, they're being discriminated against, you know, they definitely care about it. So you know, in this case, it was just one of those myopic things. I think, I mean, I hate to call it like it is, but I I think Mr. Blumquist was a little bit too sensitive about it. I think if he had just ignored it and grumbled in his, you know, to his friends or whatever it was, you know, it probably wouldn't have stirred things as much as it did. And I think uh I know the NAACP branch, Tanika Driver, Moultrie, who, you know, has been in here on our podcast, she was a little bit frustrated by it because she didn't see it the way it was being interpreted. And you know, other people in town kind of thought it was being made too much of, too. So I don't know, but it was you know, it injected race into a into a election. And a lot of people would say, well, but you know, having that on the website or on the Facebook page is what injected race into it. You know, it's it's all in the perception. So you know, if I had just seen that on the website myself, you know, I'm exposed to a lot of Facebook pages and a lot of websites and stuff, I might have kind of scratched my head at that bottom statement on there about voting like your lives depended on it in a municipal election. Yeah. Municipal election, and by by definition, is supposed to be nonpartisan. Yeah, you don't run as a Democrat and you don't run as a Republican. But let's be honest, Linda was the former Bell County Democratic chair. She served uh as the chair while she was on the Harker High City Council, which she could do because it wasn't a paid position. Michael Blobquist is extremely connected to members of the Republican Party in Bell County. So, in a way, just by their being there and people knowing who they were, it did kind of inject the uh partisanship into uh the election, which in some cases is not there. You don't always know, you know, who the mayor is supporting outside of the city. You don't always know where they stand politically. You know, you may have a guess, but you know, unless they do something like Jessica Gonzalez and Clean and runs for JP in the Democratic Party, you don't know where their political affiliations lie.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Yeah, I mean I mean that's another thing that I wanted to also mention. Because you started to kind of say it about like how like their message resonates particularly on a national level. But one thing that I found, and I still find it hard to explain this to people who are not very invested in in local politics, but I feel like local politics it matters very little like what party you agree with on the national level because the because local politics is all about the running of a local municipality, and it just it's really just about who performs that function better. It's not I mean some people might like disagree like with uh Trumps and Republicans and stuff like that, or the Democrats, blah blah blah blah blah. But I I I think that there's a good reason why the politics locally for the most part is nonpartisan. And I think it makes complete sense that people keep that in mind when they when they vote.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

Right. Well, I think Brian Burt, who's a fairly new city councilman in Harker Heights, he just got elected last year, he made a pretty good comment. I can't remember if it was in connection with that NAACP story or something else, but he was saying a pothole doesn't care whether you're a Democrat or Republican.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

That's kind of exactly what I'm driving at. Maybe I'm not saying it so eloquently, but but I'm doing my best. And you know, and it's unfortunate that like that happened, but yeah, but you kind of m made mention of the fact that once the runoff was over, things kind of seemed like they were normalizing a bit. And you know, Michael Blumquist has been mayor before and he now he's and he has been re-elected. So I mean I mean, just just and you as a resident of Harker Heights, you probably like know better than anyone how how things have been since like since he became he he was in office. And you know, I covered the Harker Heights council meetings before, and it's a very different atmosphere than covering the Clean City Council meetings. Like in Harker Heights, they have a whole table for you and they and they give you a uh a printed out agenda packet, and sometimes they even give you a bottle of water, which I've always appreciated because like at least at the Clean City Council meetings, like those nine-hour meetings you can get first day.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Yeah, I would think so. Well, the thing about the Harker Heights City Council meetings, and you know what, this is kind of what led to this in the first place. Linda wasn't planning on running for mayor, she filed on the very last day, and uh Scott Ary filed just I think a day before. So for the entire 30 days of the voting period, or I should say of the filing period, Blumquist looked like he was gonna be unopposed. And same thing for McCann on the running for the place for seat. They both looked like they were gonna be unopposed. At the last minute, Roxanne Flores files on the last day, Lyndon Ash filed on the last day, Scott Harry filed just before the last day. And from what I've heard, the two council members who the newest two council members, Bert and Jesse Miles, talked to Scott and asked him to run. Now, you know, they they just thought that there needed to be a choice in the election. There needed to be, you know, somebody else. Well, after that, then you know the last day, Linda decided she was gonna run. So now we've got two people running against against Blumpqwist. And you know, that that kind of splits the vote. There, that's a problem there. I think if either one had been running by themselves, you know, the it's all all bets are off on it. But you know, you're gonna split the the vote, you know, the people who want the status quo versus the people who want, you know, change. Yeah, and you know, you the people who want wanted change ended up voting for Flores. She got about a 70-vote win over McCann, even though McCann was a two-term incumbent, you know, prior to her having to step down. And Blumquist won by only 65 votes, or 68 votes, I think it was, in the original election. Now we get to the runoff, and the big question was: where are the Airy voters gonna go? Are they gonna vote against Blumquist? Because Aries kind of an anti-he's kind of an anti-establishment guy. He has problems with the way the city handles the tax rate and you know the veterans' exemption, all that sort of stuff. He has something to say about how the money's been spent and the level of reserves for the city. But where are the where are they all gonna go? You know, I mean so he had like 200 votes. Where are they going? So they had three choices. I mean, they could either go for Nash, they could go for Blumquist, or they could stay home. And in the reac in the runoff, Blumquist doubled the number of votes, the margin. He had a 130-vote margin over Nash at the when things were all done, said and done. So I don't know if you can make any analysis of that. You know, is it the was it the airy voters that put them over the top? Was it new voters coming in? But one interesting thing, and I mentioned this in an editorial, and I thought actually it wasn't the editorial, I think it was the election night story. But 71 more people voted in the runoff than in the original election. That just doesn't happen. Usually when there's a runoff, the it drops off tremendously in the turnout. People figured it's done, or they said I've done that, or I'm not coming back for one vote, you know, one race. And to have more people in the runoff tells you. The level of interest in Harker Heights, yeah, that we had this. So we had 2300 votes or close to it, like uh 2300 votes and in the runoff, which is a really good size number for you know random Saturday in June.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Do you think there's any chance that more people might have participated because they've suddenly felt like there was more at stake with or like it did like the original election did not exactly go as they thought it was gonna go?

SPEAKER_03 22:28

That's a good question. I mean, it's hard to know what people's motivations were, but I have a feeling that both candidates had had strong support. I don't think a lot of Linda's voters were gonna go anywhere, and I don't think a lot of Michael's voters were gonna go anywhere. The question was could they retain all the people who voted for them the first time and then get some more, you know, to make the difference? And just to hear both candidates talk on election night, it was is obvious that you know the strategies worked to some degree, but you know, there was gonna be a winner and a loser. So, you know, it's it's it's it's hard to say exactly how it came out. But now we've got Blumkist with another three-year term. He'll be term limited after this one's over. They can only run serve two consecutive three-year terms. And the city's facing some issues. I mean, we've got the disabled veterans exemption, it's affecting them just as it is affecting Colleen, not to the same number extent, but percentage-wise, it took more than a million dollars or four million dollars last year off the top of their uh property tax revenues. You know, the unrealized, I guess you can't say it's a loss, but it's unrealized property tax revenue. And that's gonna put some crimps in your budget, you know, and suddenly things you've got to stop with services, or you've got to cut back on programs or cut back on employees. I mean, there's something you've got to do to make ends meet. And Harker Heights has been facing that situation now for the last couple, three years. They got a re a reimbursement from the state uh for the first time last year because of a change in the state law for the the the Zebald veterans exemption, but it was only about 900,000. They still, you know, they're still 300 or 3 million short. So that's still gonna that's still gonna impact the budget. So he's got to deal with that. The city council is a bit factionalized at the moment. It was that way when uh Nash was on there. We had it generally, it was a 3-2 vote. We had her and Bert and Miles and on one side, and it was Sam Hallaby and Shane Hodiak on the other side. And whenever there was a controversial vote, not something like just a regular change in a contract or you know, signing off on some resolution, it seemed like it always broke that way. So one of the interesting things that'll be coming down now with the new council is how Flores is gonna be how she's gonna vote in that mix. Is she gonna side with, you know, the the the Burton Miles side, or is she gonna side with Ms. Hodiak and Hallaby side, or is she just gonna kind of be independent? Like, you know, it's just then she's gonna go back and forth depending on the issue. That's an interesting dynamic, and it used to be that way with Klean City Council. They used to have a lot of four or three votes.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Yeah, I was just about to ask you, do you think that that the city council being, as you say, factionalized is a a net benefit or or bad for the city of Park Highs? Because I because right now the city of Kaleen, the council, the last council was more or less on the same page about everything, and now it seems like it's a little bit more split. And I was just wondering like what what you think about that. Do you think it's better that there's more conflict, or do you think it's it's better because I could see it both ways.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

Yeah, I I think it's a net positive just because you don't want one party rule, or in or in the case, you don't want you know, rubber stamps on everything. Bert and Miles seem to be they tend more towards social programs and more spending and increased services. You know, they they seem to want to add to what the city's doing more often, whether the money's there or not. Hodiak and Halavi are definitely the fiscal conservatives. And the and I mean they, you know, if there's a tax increase or a fee increase or anything that's going to cost more for residents or or add to the city's bottom line as far as expenditures, they're very cautious about supporting it. So unless it's something really has to be, I mean, here's a pretty perfectly good example of it. Recently, the Hopp, you know, the Hill Country Transit Company, or was it Hill Country Transit District. Yeah. Anyway, so the Hopp, the the bus service, which is now a microtransit service, ride sharing service, they weren't covering parts of Harker Heights. They weren't covering anything south of 2410. And, you know, that area was kind of being excluded, even though the city was paying uh $65,000 a year for the service. So Bert talked to the people at the uh Hill Country Transit District and said, you know, what can we do? And they came back with a with an offer for $20,000 more. The city would get an additional bus and they would get service south of 2410. Although it wouldn't be the entire city, it would be six out of the 11 square miles for Harker Heights, which is, you know, and they also had included a quarter that went into Clean to go to like Lowe's and Coles and that sort of thing. And so I don't know why that they added that in there. They're the only city that has that. But anyway, so Bert and Miles were definitely in favor of it, and so was Nash. All three of them were just saying, you know, the more the more residents we can serve, the better. You know, this is all about people who don't have transportation, they don't have a car, they don't have it, or they have to share a car and they don't always have it available when they need to go to the doctor or the store, whatever. Halliby and Hodiak were just like, nothing to add. They don't want anything else for the taxpayers. They don't want to add to the bottom line. They didn't want them to have to pay for this, you know, especially if it's not everybody was going to benefit. You know, if it's benefit a few hundred people, not everybody should have to, you know, pay that bill. So it was extremely hard line down the middle as far as how the the country, uh how the how the council was split. And now with Nash gone and Flores in, and they haven't done the final budget yet. We'll see how that how that package pays off. Is it gonna stay the same as that's proposed? It's gonna be reduced, it's gonna be adjusted. So these are the kind of things that that Blumquist is gonna have to deal with as mayor now because you know he's kind of gotten used to how everybody votes and where to expect there to be some friction. And, you know, it's gonna be kind of a little bit of a learning curve, as it is for the new council member. I think Flores, you know, she hasn't served before and she's gonna have to get her feet wet and before she learns the city's finances and stuff. But overall, I think they've got a good group of council members, and I know that back to your original question, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I think whenever there's dialogue, it's a good thing. Even if it you may not agree with the the the conclusions of some of the council members, but you know, the fact that they're talking about it and putting it out there for consideration, I think that's a net positive.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

Yeah, no, I definitely agree with you there. I speaking from my experience covering the Clean City Council, I feel like it's always a little bit weird when people make decisions on controversial subjects and they all agree. It's like that you would think that there was at least some kind of disagreement there. Right. But, anyways, that's all I got for now. I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this because you know a lot about this issue, and you know, you've really done such a great job covering it. So that's Dave Miller. Thank you so much for coming on, sir.

SPEAKER_03 29:53

Thank you, Kevin. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

And that's our podcast, the Insight Clean Podcast, brought to you by KDH News. Amida Botchway is our producer. My name is Kevin Limity, and have a very nice day.