Below is a letter sent during the 2017 President-elect election because of perceived misconduct by State Bar staff and officials.
Ms. Michelle Hunter, Executive Director
Mr. Frank Stevenson, President
Mr. Jose “Joe” Escobedo, Jr., Chair of the Board
State Bar of Texas
1414 Colorado
Austin, Texas 78701
We write the Bar this open letter to lodge a formal objection to the Bar’s unfairness, one-sidedness, and misconduct in connection with the ongoing runoff election for President-Elect. The State Bar Executive Director Michelle Hunter sent an email Monday evening that clearly was designed to oppose one candidate (Joe Longley) and benefit another (Chad Baruch). That was highly improper. Unfortunately, that latest impropriety is part of an ongoing course of conduct by Bar officials and staff that undermines the integrity of the election process and ultimately damages the image of the State Bar.
The State Bar Act, in § 81.011 of the Government Code, provides that the State Bar is “a public corporation and an administrative agency of the judicial department of government.” Needless to say, government should be scrupulously honest and neutral in conducting an election. Indeed, if a government agency or employee uses state resources to benefit one candidate over another candidate, that raises serious issues concerning misuse of state funds.
To recap just some of the Bar’s other efforts to put its “fingers on the electoral scale”:
- In the March issue of the Texas Bar Journal, the Bar did not run Joe Longley’s profile, with the profiles of other candidates. Instead, the Bar ran only the profiles of the State Bar insider-chosen candidates. This was in spite of the Bar Rule requiring that “The names of ALL NOMINEES for the office of president-elect shall be published in the Texas Bar Journal . . . .” [Article IV Section 11(C)]. Section 11(B) allows petition candidates (like Joe Longley) to present petitions for nominations for State Bar President up until March 1—so the Bar could not know the names of petition nominees, like Joe, until March 1.
The Bar staff knew Joe Longley was running as a serious petition candidate, and he requested that the Bar wait until the March 1 deadline had passed before running any profile of any candidate until all candidates could be included. The Bar refused. The Bar knowingly and intentionally acted to benefit the two candidates hand-picked by the Bar’s Nominations committee, and did so in violation of the Bar Rules.
- In the April issue of the Bar Journal, the Editor-in-Chief (who is also the Bar’s Executive Director), Michelle Hunter, again played favorites, interjecting misleading “editorial commentary” to Joe Longley’s answers to the posed questions—while offering none for either of the other two State Bar insider chosen candidates. That was unfair, misleading, and manipulative.
- Then our current State Bar President wrote a President’s Page that was, at best, misleading. In applauding the State Bar’s contribution to Sunset review, he completely failed to mention that the Sunset Commission staff proposed abolishing our right to vote on disciplinary rules, while he and other Bar leaders remained silent and took no action to preserve the rights of Texas lawyers to vote.
- The Bar’s nominations committee sent secret emails to other candidates, without copying Joe Longley or explaining the special procedures that the committee was following, in part to benefit those candidates.
The Bar’s partiality and one-sidedness in the election for President-Elect are highly improper. We request that the Bar immediately cease this ongoing course of misconduct, and take remedial steps to allow Joe Longley and his supporters to communicate a response to the Bar’s actions, through use of the Bar’s email list. We also request that the Bar immediately email this letter to all members of the State Bar.
Jesse Ferrer
Domingo Garcia
John Howie, Jr.
John Black
Steve Baron
Robert White
Hartley Hampton
Brian Blevins
Jim Perdue, Jr.
Tom Rhodes
Ben H. Langford
Dean Boyd
Donald Kidd
Jim Mitchell
Nelson Roach
Bill Edwards
Alex Barlow
Mikal Watts
Francisco Guerra
Russell Budd
John A. David, Jr.
Richard Daly
Steven R. Davis
Todd Clement
Douglas Monsour
Glenn W. Cunningham
Juan C. Hernandez
Erin Murphy
Marc Stanley
Lisa Blue
Michael G. Guajardo
Brent Walker
Austin Tighe