One of the main talking points of Houston Mayoral Candidate Marty McVey has been his claim to have turned around "over 60 struggling companies". This is a fine record, if true, and an achievement of which a candidate should be proud.
However, when asked to provide details, McVey has responded vaguely. Worse than vaguely (rudely) in many cases and has steadfastly refused to provide even a partial list based on "client privacy" concerns.
This seems like an odd tack for a candidate whose primary qualification claims are based on his business acumen, an acumen that he has suddenly become unwilling, or unable, to provide. It could be that there are legitimate privacy concerns on the part of his clients. There could be non-disclosure contracts or other clauses in his engagement contracts that prevent this disclosure, things that a release could easily resolve if a candidate needed to provide support for a remarkable claim such as this one.
One would think that there are at least a handful, among the 60-plus struggling companies he has bailed out, that would be willing to sign such a release in support. Even more curious, Mr. McVey has a page where you can endorse his candidacy but not a page where you can view who has endorsed him previously.
I attempted to reach out to the campaign but their "contact us" page does not list an e-mail. Another odd oversight from a campaign. A review of the other campaign's websites finds endorsements to be rather prominently listed so it's unclear why Mr. McVey is keeping his so tightly under wraps.
The other possibility is that Mr. McVey does not have a list of "60-plus struggling companies" that he has turned-around because said list does not exist. Or that he was not highly involved with that number of companies at all. Unfortunately, because Mr. McVey seems content to cast dispersions at those asking, we may never know where the truth lies.
While I don't foresee this mattering in this election (based on polling the candidate will be lucky to break the 2% barrier in actual votes) it could become more important should he choose to run for another office such as City Council in the future.
In 2012 the inability of Rick Perry to name the 3 Federal agencies that he wanted to cut resulted in one of the biggest campaign gaffes in modern history and effectively marked the end of his serious political career. In 2015 you would think that an inability, or unwillingness, to substantiate a claim as significant as the one McVey is making would mark the end of his as well.
This blog is going to reach out to the McVey campaign and request some support for this claim. Should have provide it, we will update with a new post as applicable.
