REPENT AMARILLO Leader Is Crushed In City Election

David Grisham is a self-appointed preacher (and unemployed security guard). He is also the leader of a tiny organization called Repent Amarillo. He and his few followers have received national news coverage for trying to burn a Quran (he failed) and for a YouTube video showing them shooting a blow-up Santa doll (he thinks Santa is a heathen). They have also picketed (and threatened) community people, bands, and organizations they think are "sinful".

Recently, Grisham (pictured) became a candidate for mayor of Amarillo. Several national blogs and others got upset at this. They seemed to think that in an area as conservative and religious as the Texas Panhandle Grisham would actually have a chance of winning the city election. They need not have worried. While Amarillo is a very red area (and very religious), it is not filled with people as insane as Grisham.

That city election was held yesterday, and Grisham finished in tenth place out of eleven candidates. He could not even get 100 votes (and you know his followers all went to the polls). In a city of nearly 200,000 people that's a pretty pitiful showing. In fact, the transgendered woman who ran for mayor got about four times as many votes as Grisham did. You know that has to chap his bigoted butt!

Here are the results of the mayoral election:

Paul Harpole...............11,428 (77%)
(establishment candidate)

Roy D. McDowell...............1,867 (13%)

Sandra Dunn...............387 (3%)
(transgendered candidate)

Drew Alexander...............300 (2%)

Steve Dawson...............221 (1%)

Jim Brokenbek...............141 (1%)

Rodney Johnson...............125 (1%)

Ryan Vigil...............116 (1%)

Grady Traves...............104 (1%)

David Grisham...............98 (1%)
(Repent Amarillo nut-job) 

William Jean...............23 (1%)

So anyone who was worried that Grisham and his Repent Amarillo cohorts were some kind of growing social movement can rest easy. They are far closer to social outcasts, and the election has exposed just how tiny and ineffectual they really are. They basically had their heads handed to them by the people of Amarillo.

In other election news, it looks like the city's monied establishment had a very good night. Their candidate, Paul Harpole, won the mayor's race easily with about 77% of the total vote. I can't say that was unexpected since there really wasn't a strong candidate in the field to oppose him.

I was disappointed in the "single member districts" proposition outcome though. Amarillo is far too large to still be electing city commissioners at-large, but the proposition to create single-member districts was badly defeated (11,116 to 3,517). The establishment had run TV commercials with the mayor saying property taxes would double if single-member districts were created. It was a lie and made no sense, but evidently the scare tactic worked. It looks like it's going to take a court order to get this changed and spread the political power to all parts of the city.

And of course, the election was held on electronic voting machines with no paper trail. So there's no way to know if the votes were counted as cast (and no way to do a recount). That needs to be changed. It'll probably have to take a court order to change that too, since the Republican city leaders see no problem with it (because they control it).