By Alexander Hale (GOP Nominee, TX-07)

Perception vs. Reality:

The beauty of the Houston Chronicle piece is that I finally get a chance to counter, and to lay things bare in this Congressional Race for TX-07. I’m going to go through the article’s claims piece-by-piece, and provide what I think is an unbiased and clear view.

I want to question the endorsement’s undergirding claim: That Representative Fletcher “brings lots of federal funds back to Houston and has consistently shown a willingness to work across the aisle to advance bipartisan legislation.” This is the thesis supporting her supposed status as a hard-working member of the Texas delegation, and as Houston’s “model” representative.

So let’s start on the Federal Funds topic.

First, lots of money coming back to a city like Houston should be table stakes. Anyone could, and should, bring a lot of money back to Houston, but the Representative has on-record failed at executing when it comes to securing funding for our city. The ROI is not there.

I’m a finance guy. I’m used to the world of alpha and ROI, and when I look at her ROI, it’s low. If a manager tells his investors to expect $26 million in returns and then delivers $2 million, nobody calls that a win. They call a meeting…and the numbers I used here are not hypothetical. The Southwest Houston Redevelopment Authority (the people trying to build a resilience hub in Gulfton and Sharpstown) asked for $26.6 million through her office this year. Only $2 million came back. Bellaire asked for $10 million for Cypress Ditch…and got $1.1 million. Fort Bend asked for $8 million for Keegans Bayou, and got $960,000. Across the three years since her party lost the gavel, the district asked for $195 million and only received $35 million: eighteen cents on the dollar (FY2024, FY2025, FY2026). Any fund that returned eighteen cents on the dollar would have no investors left. This district has had no choice, and it’s time to give them a better investment option.

But now let’s talk about her own bills, and the bills that she “co-led”:

Again, I spent time in the swamp in my younger years. I saw how Representatives, once enthused by a bill that another colleague wrote, would slap their name onto bills as a co-sponsor. It’s akin to when someone bears the brunt of the group project, but others want to take credit for it. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher has, on her own accord, passed 2 bills (3 pages total) in 8 years in Congress: a post office renaming and a two-page FEMA eligibility fix. The “thirteen bills” that the Chronicle credited to her are made up of these 2 thin bills, plus 11 that she either co-led or that were carried inside larger legislation. These were the two signed-as-written bills: a post office renaming and a two-page FEMA eligibility fix. The other eleven are either her text riding inside someone else’s bill, or someone else’s bill with her name on it. The Mystic Alerts Act is Congressman Pfluger’s; her name is one of four on the first page. I bring all this up simply to say that my opponents is incredibly gifted at jumping in on group projects. Eight years in, she’s been carried by good partners often enough to claim good grades, and the paper graded the group, not the student. She is very good at looking busier than she is, and even our local paper’s fallen prey to her tactics…Even when it comes to flooding, she tries to take credit for what Rep. Culberson, her predecessor, brought back–something the Chronicle itself acknowledged in 2018, when the money that finished Project Brays, Hunting and White Oak bayous was allocated by the Army Corps in July 2018, six months before she was sworn in. So yes: I find Representative Fletcher’s Legislative output lacking.

The Bayou Study: A check that hasn’t cashed:

The Buffalo Bayou study the Chronicle article credits her for was funded in July 2018, six months before she took office. Eight years later: no Chief’s Report, no authorization, not one dollar of construction. The 2024 water bill ordered the Corps to finish it; the Corps sent back a list of options instead. The 2026 water bill, which passed the House last month, orders them to finish it again. She inherited a check and still hasn’t cashed it. That’s the pattern I’m warning this city about: not malice, but apathy: eight years of a member who files, waits, and announces, and pushes promises made to voters onto the next electoral cycle.

Not hard-working, but apathetic and ignored:

In the 118th Congress (last term) Rep. Fletcher introduced 10 bills (45th fewest of 435 members), got 0 out of committee, had 0 enacted “including via incorporation,” had 0 Senate companion bills, held 0 committee or subcommittee leadership posts, and got bipartisan cosponsors on 4 of her 10 bills (16th percentile). The line: “Ten bills. None out of committee. None into law. Not one with a Senate partner.” And these aren’t my numbers; they’re GovTrack’s, for her most recent full term. Her bills are uninspiring and far-from-compelling, which is why she’s only passed 2 bills of her own after almost a decade in the U.S. House.

Destroying the hook she hangs her hat on: flood mitigation:

But I talked to a friend of hers who told me after my asking him “what has she actually done for the district?” that she helped with the flood mitigation in Harris County. This is commonly the response that people will give when defending Lizzie Fletcher. Even her campaign website says she “led the bipartisan effort to release $4 billion in federal disaster relief funds, which was signed into law by President Trump.” But read each word carefully. The $4 billion was appropriated by Congress on February 9, 2018, eleven months before she was sworn in, in the same disaster bill John Culberson (her predecessor) helped write. HUD allocated $4.3 billion of it to Texas that April and then sat on the rules for eighteen months. The pressure to release them came from Governor Abbott, Senators Cornyn and Cruz, Land Commissioner Bush and the entire Houston delegation, whose letters to the White House and OMB are dated January and February 2019. Senator Cornyn filed the bill to force the release on May 9, 2019. Six days later she filed the House version, with eighteen other members’ names on it, asking for $16 billion across nine states; it never got a vote. What moved HUD was Section 1102 of a disaster bill the Appropriations Committee wrote and the President signed on June 6, giving HUD ninety days to publish. HUD published on August 30. The money went to the Texas General Land Office, and in the state’s first billion-dollar competition in 2021, Houston and Harris County received nothing. So the “$4 billion” she “released” was appropriated before she arrived, pushed loose by a senator’s bill and a governor’s letters, delivered through a committee’s deadline, and sent, in the first round, to every part of Texas except the one she represents. She was one name of nineteen on a bill that didn’t pass. On her website, she says she “led.” I’m tired of letting her get away with this, and I’m fully calling her bluff when it comes to her “flood mitigation efforts.”

The Santa Claus Fallacy:

The Representative has chosen to brand herself as an almost-mythic Santa Claus, responding to every letter she receives. In our interview, my opponent did say “I've received almost a half a million letters and emails and phone calls since I've been there, and I respond to every single one.” Now, it’s rich that this is on record for a few reasons:

  • I have talked to constituents who have indeed said they did not receive a response from Representative Fletcher.
  • Responding to every single one is irrelevant if it is not done in a professional or a timely manner. I have heard others complain about her office’s glacial pace.

With this, I’d love to challenge my readers here to chime in and express their chagrin at her office’s ineptitude, and to share personal stories on how she didn’t respond to these…the Representative isn’t Santa Claus (he isn’t real, after all) and gimmicky-claims like this one should not be taken seriously. I’m asking people on the internet right now: raise your hand if you didn’t get a response, or at least not a timely one.

But enough written words…let’s talk.

Lastly, I’d like to challenge my opponent to a debate. Words are cheap. Let’s let actual voters hear more of our bantering and sparring, and let them decide who they want representing them and why.

The model Representative should flex her muscle and put my goal of flipping this seat to rest. Unless she has (as I am concerned she has) atrophied away in the swamp that is DC…I want Lizzie Fletcher to debate this with me. It is only right to voters. And I especially want to do this because I’ve block-walked door after door while on this campaign–and it hasn’t just been Republican homes. And no one seems to know who Representative Fletcher is.

Sources

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