Democracy Comes to Clear Lake

We had some fun in my neighborhood last weekend. You see, the maintenance association here held elections recently and the race for Oakbrook ended in a tie, 72 to 72. The board, who ousted a dissident member last year, voted to seat the incumbent, George Muths. George voted to seat himself. The challenger, Roberta Toppin, had to sue the association to force them to follow Texas election law and hold a runoff election.

I was nervous about the runoff. In the days before the vote, hundreds of yard signs appeared in the neighborhood. Mr. Muths also had a website, where he claimed to not be influenced by any political party, while he pointed out that his opponent, Ms. Toppin, was a democrat and a precinct chair. (Democrat! Mercy, she might be a Stalinist, or Satanist or something.)

The runoff was Saturday, but it wasn’t until Monday that we heard the results through the grapevine. There were as many early votes as total votes in the original election. Mr. Muths more than doubled his total. But Ms. Toppin almost tripled hers. Got to vote for a winner for a change. The board will be installing her tonight. Next, they’ll be ginning up some scheme to remove her, but for now the people have spoken. I’m proud of us the way I was when we crossed party lines to vote for Bill White for mayor, just because he was the superior candidate, or when Tom DeLay had to look for votes up in LaPorte, because people here already knew him.

Viva la revolution!