A white, antigay activist who said he was tired of “corruption and shenanigans” on the Houston Community College’s Board of Trustees pulled off a startling upset in the board election this month after running a campaign that strongly implied he was black. Now the Democrat he defeated, a 24-year veteran of the board who actually is black, has demanded a recount.
The ousted trustee, Bruce A. Austin, who was the board’s chairman, has accused his Republican opponent, Dave Wilson, of waging a dishonest campaign. “He executed a fraud that undermines the integrity of the political system,” Mr. Austin said.
Mr. Wilson’s campaign leaflets included photographs of smiling black faces—images that he pulled from the Internet—and urged voters to “Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson.”
The fliers also stated that Mr. Wilson had been “endorsed by Ron Wilson,” which is the name of a longtime black state representative from Houston. The fine print noted that the Ron Wilson who had endorsed Dave Wilson was the candidate’s cousin, but failed to mention that the cousin lived in Iowa and was not the former Texas representative.
“What are students going to think of a person who has plotted from the beginning to deceive voters?” asked Mr. Austin, who had campaigned on promises to help reform remedial education and get more students to graduate on time.
Mr. Wilson’s election to represent an overwhelmingly black, Democratic district for a six-year term is just the latest controversy for one of the nation’s largest community-college systems, which enrolled just under 70,000 students this fall.
Some board members have come under fire in recent years for steering contracts to friends, relatives, and political allies. Meanwhile, the institution has struggled to create and help operate the first community college in Qatar. And after a former chancellor, Mary S. Spangler, took an extended medical leave, the college is now seeking a permanent replacement for her.
Defending His Tactics
Mr. Wilson, an electrician turned activist, said he was looking forward to jumping into the fray. He likened the college to the Titanic. “If it stays on the same course, it’ll end up sunk,” Mr. Wilson said. “I’m hoping to help steer it in another direction.”
He defended his political tactics, saying voters were well aware of his race. He ran an unsuccessful campaign in 2011 against Houston’s openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, in which he railed against a lifestyle he considers “immoral and unnatural.”
“If the voters complain that they were deceived, then they have to admit they voted based on race,” Mr. Wilson added. “The only ones who are complaining are my opponent and the liberal media.”
Asked whether his campaign had intentionally tried to lead voters to think he was black, he said he had simply engaged in “targeted marketing.” He compared his advertisements to the way General Mills gave the bumblebee mascot for its Honey Nut Cheerios a hipper image by teaming him up in a new commercial with the rapper Nelly.
And he said his fliers had been a response to a “racist” move by Mr. Austin. “He put out a mailer saying that Dave Wilson is a right-wing hatemonger with a big picture of me,” said Mr. Wilson. “He said I advocated bringing back chain gangs to clear highways.”
Robert Schechter, a former board chair who resigned in January, said the new board member had been stirring up controversy for years. “Mr. Wilson has had a very checkered history with the college, reflecting either an inability to grasp issues or deception,” he said. At one point Mr. Schechter asked a deputy chancellor to sit down with Mr. Wilson to explain the issues.
Mr. Wilson maintains a blog, laced with antigay vitriol, in which he regularly lambastes college officials, accusing them of misappropriating taxpayer money and of spending on students overseas while cutting scholarships for students back home. The blog also accuses the former chancellor and vice chancellor, whose contracts were bought out, of pulling off “a $1.2-million sting on HCC and the board, when they jumped a sinking ship as they laughed all the way to the bank.”
Mr. Schechter worries that Mr. Wilson’s election will set back efforts to clean up the board’s image and move forward.
Regaining Community Trust
Last year Houston voters approved a $425-million bond issue to pay for a new health-care-education building for the college, as well as technology and facilities upgrades. The vote came after the college’s trustees passed an ethics policy pledging to keep their distance when contracts were being awarded.
In 2011 the board publicly censured one trustee, Yolanda Navarro Flores, after an investigation found that she had used her influence to steer a bid to her son’s construction business and that she had obtained free consulting services from a vendor. The board also publicly rebuked two former trustees for similar conflicts.
“It took a tremendous amount of energy to regain the confidence of the community and to get the bond passed,” Mr. Schechter said.
Meanwhile, the college’s efforts to expand its global footprint and make up for falling state revenues suffered setbacks when its five-year, $45-million contract to start Qatar’s first community college ran into complications.
The partnership agreement between Houston Community College and Qatar’s Supreme Education Council, signed in May 2010, calls for the Texas institution to license its curriculum and to lend faculty members and administrators to the Qatar college. As of August 2013, the deal had netted Houston a $1-million profit, Mr. Schechter said.
But the arrangement hasn’t been without trouble.
At the time the agreement was signed, the understanding on both sides was that classes would be coeducational. But the Qatar government later decided that men and women had to be taught separately. That raised questions about whether an American college that receives federal money can legally operate a program that way.
Then there were questions about whether credits earned there could be transferred to American or other four-year universities. Mr. Austin insisted that that was never the plan; Houston was simply performing contract work to advise the Qatar college.
Skeptics have questioned whether Houston and other colleges that have expanded their reach overseas have rushed into partnerships without doing their homework.
But Houston officials say the arrangement is making money for the college and enhancing the global reputation of an institution that enrolls more international students than any other community college.
As for Mr. Wilson’s complaint that the Qatar college is draining money from the home institution, Mr. Schechter responds: “You can have a legitimate argument about whether a college should engage in entrepreneurial enterprises to make money, but you can’t lie about the facts, which have been explained to him on multiple occasions.”
Correction (11/13/2013, 8:27 a.m.): This article originally misspelled the name of a rap musician. He is Nelly, not Nellie. The article has been updated to reflect that correction.