Pasadena city races playing out quietly
After being sworn in as Pasadena’s mayor four years ago, Jeff Wagner vowed to be a unifying force in a city with a growing Latino population that often felt shortchanged when it came to political clout and city services.
“I stressed that if I became mayor, Pasadena was Pasadena to me. … What I meant was, we’re all in it together,” Wagner, a retired Houston police officer, told the Houston Chronicle in September 2017.
As Wagner seeks a second four-year term, it’s far from clear if he has bridged the divisions in Pasadena, a working-class suburb of Houston that is also Harris County’s second-largest city.
Wagner did successfully push to settle a voting rights
the 11th Region of Texas, recused Phillips in January 2019, saying it came down to “what it looks to the public as to what the judges did.” The motion for a new trial is pending in front of a different judge.
Attorney John Zavitsanos, a partner at AZA, denied that there was any correlation between the luncheon and the awarding of fees. The new judge on the case later confirmed that the defendants would receive the full amount, according to court records.
Brown also found during the recusal hearing that the law firm did nothing wrong, according to a court transcript. The new attorneys who were being sworn in had watched the Hotzes’ trial, and Zavitsanos said he felt it would be fun to have the same judge they observed conduct their ceremony.
Phillips spent possibly fewer than 20 minutes at the lunch, where she ate “a $15 salad,” he said.
“It’s just not the case that the lunch played any role in the awarding of fees,” Zavitsanos said. “In retrospect, I do regret inviting her. … It did not occur to me that this would be such a big hullabaloo.”
Before the plaintiffs filed a motion to recuse Phillips, she and AZA firm members never disclosed her participation in the luncheon, according to the state commission’s warning.
Jeff Joyce, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said his closing arguments from the recusal hearing best represented how he felt at the time.
“When this happened, I was some kind of mad,” he said at the hearing. “Nobody can convince me that there’s a reasonable question about the judge’s impartiality from that setting.”
Beyond the public warning, members of the commission ordered Phillips to obtain two hours of additional education related to areas of avoiding the appearance of impropriety and proper ways of conducting extrajudicial activities.
The commission cited three rules in the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct: A judge should not convey the impression that someone is in a special position to influence them, a judge’s extrajudicial activities shouldn’t cast reasonable doubt on their capacity to act impartially, and a judge’s extrajudicial activities shouldn’t interfere with their judicial performance.