The Corpus Christi City Council won’t just see an inevitable lineup change in November — it will see the splitting up of a five-member majority vote that supporters have dubbed the “Fab Five,” who have served as the core actors in the city’s most controversial decision this year.
Whether a break-up of the Inner Harbor desalination voting bloc is a good thing or a bad thing — and whether the term “Fab Five” is flattering or if it’s a pejorative — appears to depend solely on who you ask.
The label — a reference to City Council members Gil Hernandez, Sylvia Campos, Carolyn Vaughn, Eric Cantu and Kaylynn Paxson — has been most associated with Inner Harbor desalination decisions, twice representing a majority vote of the council that had defeated advancing
two separate Inner Harbor desalination contracts.
Several council members pointed out in interviews with the Caller-Times, however, that the uniformity of that vote hasn’t been across the board but has touched specific issues, primarily citing plans for the proposed Inner Harbor desalination plant.
The group making up the “Fab Five” isn’t a monolith, said Bill Chriss, an independent political and legal historian.
“The people who make up the ‘Fab Five’ are by no means uniform in political character,” he said. “You’ve got Democrats and Republicans, you’ve got pro-business people, you’ve got more pro-taxpayer-type people. You’ve got pro-development people, you’ve got anti-development people,” he said. “The Fab Five’s really a coalition of disparate parts; it’s not a monolith.”
What that may look like in the upcoming term is a question, with at least three of the nine current council members leaving the nine-member body.
Campos is stepping away from her post, as is City Councilman Everett Roy, who has at times voted with the minority and at times with the majority.
Hernandez and Paxson are running against one another in challenging Mayor Paulette Guajardo for her position.
City Councilman Roland Barrera, considered among the minority-four vote, is termed out.
It leaves four incumbents, not to include Paxson or Hernandez, seeking reelection to their seats: City Council members Vaughn and Cantu, considered part of the five-member majority vote, and Guajardo and City Councilman Mark Scott, both considered part of the minority-four vote, vying to retain their offices.
Under the premise of a 5-4 vote symbolism, it would mean losing at least two members of the five-member majority, and one member of the four-member minority, with Roy voting with and against the five-member majority at different times.
In interviews with the Caller-Times, council members and political analysts weighed in on the concept of the “Fab Five” — also, at times, called the “Fatal Five” or “anti-desalination five” — and how that dynamic on the council, at times at substantial odds, may or may not influence voters’ choices in November.
Paxson was contacted for this story but did not provide comment.
The vote drivers
The genesis of the “Fab Five” label isn’t clear, although most agree it emerged in some of the early votes related to the Inner Harbor desalination project. The five members have voted in favor of other water projects.
The nickname, though, was generated not by the council, but instead supporters of the majority-five’s policy positions. It just stuck.
There’s at least some element of an “anti-establishment” sentiment to the five-member majority, Barrera asserted, noting that his nickname is the “chaos crew,” in part because he believes some of the votes introduced uncertainty in direction.
There are always individuals who “shake things up,” but new policymakers need “to learn about the system and how it works” and improve on it, Barrera said.
“That's how you get funding for projects,” he said. “That's how you get initiatives going.”
That includes accomplishing long-term projects, such as water planning, park improvements and developing new fire stations, Barrera said.
The “Fab Five” term, Barrera said, is just an “alliteration that works into politics.”
It doesn’t represent chaos, wrote City Councilwoman Sylvia Campos in a Sept. 22 message to the Caller-Times.
“It's called democracy,” she wrote. “Our city has been [led] by the same old people. They don't like it when we upset the apple cart. When have we had such a split on council? It's been decades. Healthy democracy is never neat.”
There isn’t a nickname for the minority-four in the most recent City Council vote, Scott said — partially because there hasn’t been a consistent “four” vote.
Roy had voted against the contract that would further design of the Inner Harbor project last year — making the vote against approving it 6-3 — while voting to endorse a separate contract for the project earlier this month, making it a 5-4 vote.
Hernandez said he hadn’t given the Fab Five label “a second thought,” noting that there had been a similar nickname given to a five-member majority in a past council — “The Nickel.”
He, like several others, also pointed out that there had not always been a 5-4 vote when comparing the votes between last year and this year.
The group encompasses different ideologies in terms of political affiliation, Hernandez said, and each had voted for their own reasons.
Some — like his — were more to do with financial concerns, and others were more aligned with environmental concerns, he said.
“All I can do is vote on the information that’s in front of me and make the best decisions I can possibly make,” Hernandez said. “All that other stuff to me is just noise, and I don’t pay a lot of attention to it other than acknowledging that it’s part of the political process.”
Calling the council members the “chaos crew” is intended to imply that there is “so much chaos on council that things aren’t being done,” Hernandez said, asserting the descriptor is inaccurate.
“We went from an absolute disaster at the city where nothing was being fixed … to where we are now,” he said, naming street, water, wastewater and stormwater improvements.
Vaughn, similarly to other council members, said the "Fab Five" moniker was associated with desalination and that there were not consistent 5-4 votes breaking down on the same lines in other matters.
Cantu asserted that the group was “fighting the establishment that’s been in the city for decades.”
“I feel great about that label when people say the Fabulous Five because we’re all the Fabulous Five, protecting the taxpayers of Corpus Christi,” he said.
Impact on the election
It’s possible a similar dynamic could be formed in the next council slate, Hernandez said, pointing out that the slate changes every two years.
But if a similar dynamic formed, it wouldn’t “manifest itself right away,” he said.
“It usually takes about six months of working together … where you find out where they line up on who works together and who doesn’t,” Hernandez said.
Scott said he believed the dynamic could be a “driving issue in the November election.”
“I think the community is immensely frustrated with this council in general and with the votes not to pursue Inner Harbor in particular,” he said.
Roy also believes that it could play a role in voters’ decisions and whether they agreed with the five-member majority.
“There are certainly people who knew what they stood for,” he said. “It’s the majority of the voters that are going to win. So we’ll see exactly, ‘What did the people want?’ The people are going to have the opportunity to stand and say, ‘This is who we want and this is who we backed.’”
Guajardo wrote in a Sept. 23 message to the Caller-Times that the election “will be decided by the consequences of real decision making.”
“This nickname does not secure our water supply, protect our credit rating, repair a street, or keep a family safe,” Guajardo wrote. “I am proud of the City Council members who have stood steadfast in support of building our much needed water supply.”
There are advantages to being an incumbent; for example, it may be easier to raise money and gain endorsements, Chriss said.
But dissatisfaction with national issues, such as rising health care costs, as well as local issues, such as water, will play a role, he said.
“I think there’s a general mood in the electorate, from top to bottom, no matter what race you’re talking about — I think this is going to be a change election,” Chriss said. “But I think if you’re an incumbent, you have more of an uphill battle than you would have had anytime in the recent past.”
Kirsten Crow covers city government and water news. Have a story idea? Contact her at kirsten.crow@caller.com.
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This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: A council majority was named 'Fab Five.' Will that influence election?
