District 45: Republicans Aim to Shake Controversy and Reclaim Seat

by MELINDA RIVERA

Residents of Hays and Blanco Counties have a lot on their plate this election cycle and it begins with The Texas State Representative District 45 seat, headed to a run-off between long-time Hays County resident, Kent “Bud” Wymore IV, a local attorney, and Carrie Isaac, the wife of former Rep Jason Isaac.

The current Representative for District 45 is Democrat Erin Zwiener of Driftwood, who is completing her first term and seeking re-election and is awaiting the winner of this runoff. Zwiener won on the strength of the “Beto Wave,” thanks to Robert Frances O’Roark’s rise in popularity and run against Ted Cruz for United States Senator in 2018. It was Fortuitous for the Republican Party that “Beto” did not win that race because it was very close. The “Beto” movement lost momentum in Texas during the 2020 Presidential Campaign run. “Beto” and his gun-grabbing rhetoric were crushed in the Democrat Presidential Primary and as “Beto” watched his political relevancy fade away it appears as if the Democrat momentum faded with it. With the “Beto Wave” now a distant memory as it swirls down the draining swamp of Trump hating Democrats, the Republicans have a very good chance of recouping this seat provided they choose their candidate wisely.

The first candidate, Carrie Isaac, is an on-again off-again resident of District 45. The Isaac family moved to Hays County shortly before Jason’s run at State Representative and moved out of the District during his last term. The Isaacs then moved back into the District to qualify for Carrie’s campaign, however their residency is somewhat dubious.

Bud Wymore, when asked if he knew if the Isaac family had finally moved into the county, explained the dynamic of the Isaac’s “residency” in District 45. “In March 2019, Jason and Carrie accepted, through a special warranty deed, the transfer of a home in Woodcreek, Texas from longtime family friends of Carrie Isaac’s parents and political donor,” Wymore explained.

“The transfer of the house was on a five-year owner-financed deal with no down payment and no stated monthly payment.” said Wymore who added, “In December of 2019 they extended their lease in Austin on their single-family residential home for another year through December of 2020.” The question is, where is the Isaac family actually living?

Wymore said he knew at the time he launched his campaign that he would be facing Carrie Isaac. As a longtime resident of the district, Wymore said he knew the importance of having a State Representative who is deeply invested in the district. His goal is to take care of the families who live in the District, which includes his own family.

“My family moved here in the early 1980s my dad was a custom homebuilder and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. When the real estate market went belly up, my dad went out of business and took a job in the insurance industry, my mom went back to teaching. She was an elementary school teacher and eventually principle of the public schools in the Hays school district, said Wymore”

“I graduated from the public schools in the Hays School District and eventually I went to Texas State University and worked my way through law school (St. Mary’s University). After doing that, I built my law practice in this community and my wife and I are raising our four kids in the same public schools that I grew up in.” Wymore went on to say he has been “very intentional” about letting people know his home address because this draws a sharp distinction between him and his opponent.

Wymore ideologically has issues with politicians who are flippant about living somewhere other than the District that they are representing. He believes the Representative should have a vested interest along with the voters of the District and that involves actual residency. The arrangement the Isaac’s have with the homeowners and the lease in Austin certainly raises flags as to how vested Carrie Isaac is in District 45 — will she be serving the District or personal and business interests? Voters in Hays and Blanco Counties deserve an answer.

In stark contrast to his runoff opponent, Bud Wymore has lived in District 45 since the early 1980s. During his time in law school, Wymore also served as the Hays County Republican Party Chair, becoming one of the youngest to serve in that capacity in Hays County history. Wymore’s legacy when he stepped down as Party Chair is that he successfully pulled the county’s Republican Party out of the financial strife he walked into when he took over the role and brought it back to prosperity. Wymore, practices law out of The Wymore Law Firm in Hays County and is still involved heavily in the Hays County Republican Party and currently serves as its General Counsel.

If the Republicans are going to successfully regain this seat, they will need a candidate who is both transparent and vested in the community. Bud Wymore does not have character or logistical issues the jury is obviously out on Carrie Isaac. This gives Wymore the advantage by affording him the ability to speak only on the issues surrounding District 45 without personal attacks which appear to have some merit. The Democrats in Hays and Blanco Counties must be licking their proverbial chops hoping for Carrie Isaac to be the opponent in order to exploit the problematic personal, political and business interactions regarding her husband’s campaign, the family residency, and her non-profit organization and other non-profit organizations which, on the surface, seem to be extensions of her campaign.

Jason Isaac was Representative from 2011-2019, and instead of running for State Representative, again, he opted to run for Congress a race he did not win. While Jason served as State Rep, questions arose regarding his decision to spend his campaign resources on their Austin residence which was serving as their primary residence and located very near the private school their son attended at a time when the legislature was not in session.

Carrie Isaac is the head of the Digital Education and Work Initiative of Texas (aka DEWIT), a non-profit organization supposedly aimed at connecting disabled veterans among others to jobs. According to tax filings, DEWIT over $250,000 in 2018 but, of that amount, a stipend of $1,200 was given as a stipend to Veterans and $63,750 was spent on “Contractors” which turned out to be none other than its Executive Director, Carrie Isaac.

To further complicate matters, the 2018 Tax filing for DEWIT had “No” checked in the box with the question of whether any officer, director, trustee or key employee has a family relationship or business relationship with any other officer, director, trustee or key employee. Clearly, this was not true either, because two members of the Board are connected to Alegion, who by Carrie Isaac’s own admission DEWIT had partnered with, and was the only company listed that had actually hired a veteran, the others Isaac divulged could not be mentioned for confidentiality reasons according to Isaac.

One of the Board Members of DEWIT, who is also an investor in Alegion is Robert “Hank” Seale. He not only is reportedly responsible for donating the more than $250,000 to DEWIT, but he also is a substantial campaign donor to Isaac — Seale has given more than $20,000 to her campaign. Seale was also a substantial campaign donor to Jason Isaac for the eight (8) years Jason was Representative.

Daniel Borochoff, who serves as President of CharityWatch, a national charity watchdog organization. In an interview with the Austin American Statesman, Borochoff said he believes that this type of relationship puts board members in the position of being influenced by campaign donations.

“They ought to seek out more board members,” said Borochoff, “so they can have more impartial board members, so they can work toward the best interest of the organization rather than their own personal interest.”

This isn’t to say that there will be any preferential treatment given to Seale or Alegion, but to the average person these issues certainly do not pass the proverbial smell test, and Carrie Isaac has too many of these type relationships that are questionable if nothing else. The concerns over the questionable actions goes beyond DEWIT, or the mendacious answer on the DEWIT tax return, or the Isaac donors, the questionable decisions made by the Isaac’s goes even further back to Jason Isaac and his controversial use of campaign funds.

The question of misuse of campaign funds by Carrie Isaac’s husband Jason was raised in an article by Cyndy Barton & Anita Miller, Hays Free Press published on December 4, 2019. In the article, Attorney Eric Opiela, a Republican, seemed to question the legality of Isaac’s expenditures, though the Democrat attorney Buck Wood said he did not see a problem. Opiela, who also served for a time as the state Republican Party’s Executive Director, questioned the legality of the Isaacs’ use of campaign funds for Jason’s apartment home in southwest Austin, In Opiela’s opinion, it comes down to intent. Did Jason Isaac intend the apartment to support his official work as the representative, or was it for personal use? On March 29, 2018, Jason Isaac announced on his Twitter account that he had taken a new job in Austin as president of a public policy organization. Jason Isaac stated he was “eager to get to work expanding [the organization].”

It was only eight days after that tweet that Jason Isaac spent the campaign funds to purchase the apartment in Austin. “Just because you list something as an officeholder expense on a finance report doesn’t make it one. The facts here certainly have the appearance of using campaign funds for personal use rather than the performance of one’s duties as a public official,” Opiela told the Hays Free Press.

“Residency questions are difficult to prove as a matter of state law,” explained Opeila. “It’s easy to claim to reside in a district without actually living there. It’s not so easy to have a candidate disqualified from the ballot.”

“I think the conventional wisdom at the outset was that my opponent had name ID and would get more institutional money. But we had both raised about $150,000 total about a week before early voting started,” said Wymore, adding that based on their polling numbers, he was in the lead at that time. “At that point, there was a group called American Federation for Children based out of California, who in early January of 2020, created a new nonprofit corporation in Texas called Texas Federation for Children. One single individual out of California donated half a million dollars to that organization. Texas Federation for children then proceeded to spend several hundred thousand dollars in my race on behalf of Carrie Isaac. They ran daily TV ads, radio ads and sent out direct mail pieces and in the parts of the County that I had not vigorously walked you could see my lead begin to decimate.”

The influx of several hundred thousand dollars by one California based non-profit Organization with a Texas name, and a California donor was not enough to win Carrie Isaac the nomination, but it certainly has added another red flag to a campaign that had too many as it was. Wymore, is not the win at all cost type of candidate – but he is a winner, nonetheless, and as more voters familiarize themselves with this race, it is safe to say when the controversy is shaken from this election tree, it won’t be Wymore who falls.

//pf