Police Chief Chronicles Part II: The Smartest Guy Doesn't Always Win the Election

OPINION — Please forgive me, as much of Part II is fairly personal, but it is important to introduce the characters for the barnburner coming next in Part III.

Our company is too small, and we have no ability to separate our revenue from the news production. Large newspapers hire a publisher to gadfly around town acting like he (or she) has nothing to do with how the editor-in-chief reports the news. But the publisher does. Trust me. Yet there’s plausible deniability, and it’s an advantage of having a newsroom with a staff of 50 and a sales team with a staff of 50 on the other side of the building. At The Dallas Morning News, where I worked for a while, the writers were tucked away on the fourth floor, and we sales guys on the first floor didn’t even know they were up there, much less who they were. Still, we’d get hit with threats from large advertisers because they didn’t appreciate the story about the corruption in the Prestonwood neighborhood where the News publisher Jim Moroney lived.

“Hey, don’t cut my commission because my publisher pissed you off. Besides, everyone read it and saw your ad,” I’d plead. It usually worked.

Despite his so-called plausible deniability, you better bet the publisher was involved with the story about his neck of the woods… and involved in the politics in Dallas that were thrice as nasty as they are here.

It’s memories like these, like the San Angelo police chief elections, that make me want to quit the news business, and I tried in 2022. I ran for county judge. I was tired of the news grind and wanted a new challenge. Besides, after watching around two dozen local elections and evaluating the candidates’ good moves and bad, I wanted to try myself. Nothing can elevate your empathy to sympathy for a political candidate like being one. I learned I practically had no empathy.

Years before my own candidacy, I thought it was weird that Liz Grindstaff, a candidate for SMD 5 councilman, would record my interviews with her. But I learned why. As a candidate, you’re out there all alone. You’re scared. You’re worried about what will become of you should you lose. Will you go broke at the end of the election? Or will your business thrive because you met so many people? Or will everyone hate you and call you a loser? Worst of all, can you handle being a loser and getting back to running your business? On the other hand, if you won, could you afford to live on the public salary that was less than what I was making at the time?

The answer to all of those questions is that running for office is a bad financial move, and losing can be devastating for your confidence. No one gives a damn about your run for office either. You lost. You’re a loser. There’s no boost in sales for losers. It took me two years to recover. Maybe it would have been less had there not been COVID. When I walk into a room, I still have a sixth sense that detects fellow citizens who did not vote for me, even to this day. I don’t have a therapist; maybe I should get one.

My only recompense was from former Tom Green County Judge Steve Floyd, who urged me not to run for the position from where he was retiring. He was worried about the death of the Standard-Times and the existence of local news at all. Who, he asked me, would watch the city council’s budget and tax rate? The county would do fine without a journalist’s shining light, he joked.

“You’re the only one left in San Angelo who will report the news,” he said. His next question was what was my plan for a replacement if I won? I didn’t have one he would be satisfied with. But I wanted the challenge of an election, and I was tired of the constant criticism. Maybe the stalwart epitome of journalistic prowess, KLST’s Carolyn McEnrue, would finally step up to the plate should I excuse myself from the news grind. In the end, it would not matter.

I immersed myself in the bribery trial of former police chief Tim Vasquez after my loss. You’d think it would be therapeutic. It wasn’t. I relived the 2008 and 2016 police chief races. I relived the vitriol of our police department when it wasn’t on its best behavior, and that occurs during election time. I watched Tim Vasquez on the stand admit what I said in my piece in 2007, in so many words.

‘Had I not spent so much time in bars and instead gone to church, I wouldn’t be here on the stand today,’ he admitted. I left out the name of the woman involved.

He was found guilty of bribery and other charges before being sentenced to federal prison for 15.5 years. The indictments and trials were, in part, a testament to how nasty San Angelo’s police chief contests are. Everything Vasquez was convicted of originated with accusations during the various election cycles. Now, one of the police department’s own was sentenced to rot in federal prison for the rest of his productive life, and it’s tragic. I don’t think the punishment matched the crime, but some do because San Angelo police chief contests are nasty, and Vasquez probably outlived his welcome, serving as chief for 12 years from 2004 until 2016. The prosecutor was U.S. Attorney Jeff Haag. If pinched buttocks can’t land Vasquez in prison, certainly leading a band named Funky Munky will.

In the courtroom, McEnrue took copious notes.

A cast of characters from the past decade were paraded onto the witness stand, including my Aggie classmate Liz Grindstaff. She was a one-term city councilwoman and probably the smartest councilwoman ever, excluding the current mayor, of course. Being a friend, at the Lubbock Federal Courthouse while she awaited to testify in the trial, she had to needle me that I lost the race for judge. Everyone I know does. It doesn’t make me money and never aids the recovery of my confidence, but I still don’t want to pay for a therapist.

“You know, Joe, the smartest guy doesn’t always win an election,” she said. It was almost out of the blue.

Then it hit me. Liz lost her race to Lane Carter, and sorry, Lane, but Liz was a smarter councilwoman. She had a master’s degree in it. She wasn’t as shrewd, though, and Carter, despite his disarming boyish smile, is shrewd. Carter eventually won the judge’s race, edging out Todd Kolls in the runoff. The voters had already kicked me to the curb on primary election day. I endorsed Carter in part because I wanted to see what made him tick, and besides, Kolls was a Mike Boyd production (see yesterday’s Part I).

I don’t know if KLST’s McEnrue ever published a piece about the Vasquez trial, but she was sure to go on camera after each day’s proceedings on the Lubbock courthouse steps to declare that he was there. Steve Floyd was probably right.