Brimer faces serious challenger in Democrat Davis

By Matt Pulle | Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Sen. Kim Brimer’s in the middle of a tough fight — and don’t believe he doesn’t get that

Tarrant County state Sen. Kim Brimer, a white-haired, cigar-chomping Republican right out of central casting, likes to pretend that challenger Wendy Davis doesn’t exist, refusing to debate her or even mention her name to the press.

But don’t buy his act; after all, he doesn’t. Since Davis announced her candidacy, the long-time incumbent has shelled out $50,000 to his campaign consultant in as telling a sign as any he knows his District 10 seat is in jeopardy.

While two recent polls give Brimer a small lead, both give him totals at below 50 percent, an ominous sign for any incumbent. And the challenger is not your typical sacrificial lamb. She’s a former five-term Fort Worth council member and Harvard Law grad, whose candidacy has been covered by newspapers across Texas.

Then there’s the apparent scheme to throw her off the ballot. In what could have been an election on the issues between two intelligent, if ideologically differing candidates — we can dream, can’t we? — the Brimer vs. Davis battle has been waged largely in the courtrooms, where the challenger keeps on winning and wasting campaign funds. It looks like that was the point all along.

The unpleasantness started rather clumsily when three members of the Fort Worth Professional Firefighters Association filed a lawsuit claiming she wasn’t eligible to run for higher office. The union has clashed with Davis on several issues from pensions to collective bargaining rights. But firefighters have another reason to loathe the former council member: Their big-time consultant, Bryan Eppstein of The Eppstein Group, conveniently enough also draws a regular check from Brimer.

The firefighters’ complaint alleged that Davis hadn’t resigned from her council seat before she filed. A judge ruled against the firefighters, but that didn’t deter Brimer, who filed an almost identical lawsuit six months later. Another judge ruled against him, and Brimer promptly appealed. Don’t hold your breath that the third time will somehow be the charm for the anti-Davis folks. It’s almost impossible to imagine that a judge will shrug off two other rulings and throw a serious challenger off the ballot.

For her part, Davis is using the litigation to make light of Brimer’s non-campaign-campaign, which takes her seriously behind the scenes, while dismissing her publicly.

“It shows that we have someone who doesn’t want to campaign on issues and is looking for another way out besides going to the ballot box,” Davis tells Texas Watchdog. “He has refused to debate me — the excuse he uses is that he doesn’t want to debate someone who he doesn’t view as a legal opponent.”

The challenger adds that Brimer’s legal challenge is likely doomed, noting “it will be interesting to see how he responds to a request from a debate from this point forward.”

We tried to call Brimer and his consultant but never heard from either of them. Considering how much money the incumbent is spending trying to toss his challenger of the ballot — $17,000 to Houston attorney Tom Phillips, to say nothing of the firefighters’ separate legal bills — he might want to get his Web site up and running. After all, he does have $1.4 million in his campaign account, around a cool million more than his challenger. But as of Thursday afternoon, less than two months from election day, Brimer’s page was still under construction.

If the white-haired lawmaker ultimately awakes from his public nap, he could give voters an interesting choice between a pro-business Republican with a keen knowledge of how Austin works and a loyal Democrat who has made cleaning up North Texas’ notoriously polluted air one of the centerpieces of her campaign. Interestingly, Brimer surprised observers on both sides of the fence when he sponsored legislation that would have encouraged cement kilns to use modern technology to slash noxious emissions. The bill died in the House.

If Brimer is the reliable pro-business incumbent — even his cement kiln bill largely had the support of the biz crowd — his opponent is running a traditional Democratic campaign, telling the Fort Worth Business Press that she would like to re-regulate the energy utility market, the home insurance industry and higher education.

The Brimer-Davis race could be the classic clash of a Republican and a Democrat. But for Brimer, maybe that’s a problem. At a time when Texas may be turning a lighter shade of GOP red, particularly in changing urban areas like Tarrant County, Brimer needs to fight for votes. For any long-term incumbent, that’s a tough task. Sometimes it’s just easier to call up the lawyers.

Read more from Matt Pulle on political consultant Bryan Eppstein: Einstein? No, Eppstein: Fort Worth political consultant plays both sides of the fence.