So you think you want to run for public office in Garland? Never forget—it's a very, very, very small town.

Would-be Garland candidates take note: your goldfish-bowl lives are about to begin. Even though forms are now available online, the petitions are not and require a personal visit and signature at the City Secretary's office. 

"Don't want you to think I didn't speak to you on purpose," barked a top supporter of District 2 City Councilmember Anita Goebel, a wannabe Garland politico and one of the many Anita supporters that does not live and does not vote in District 2.

The setting was the funeral of a former Garland officeholder who passed away in early 2016. The individual making the statement earlier had edged past me in the forward pew, seeming to ignore my wave while the individual broadly and overtly greeted everyone else within eyesight.

After the service the individual circled back around with that curious statement—as though underscoring to me the intended slight. Strange, I thought but kept mum.

At a funeral came the first not-so-subtle message I had done something terribly off-track. At a second one few days later, that packet I picked up randomly had definitely lit up the grapevine. Would-be candidates can be prepared for lots of inquisitions.

Just days later another high-profile, local funeral occurred. Certain key civic leaders, usually always cordial in public, averted their eyes or quickly found others to corner or visit with when Kay and I approached them during the after-service reception.

Why were these people acting so weird? What had suddenly gone wrong?

Plenty, I was to learn over the next few days.

I had violated the unwritten rules of The Club, the small, exclusive group of Garland kingmakers that gets to say who runs for spots in local election—Garland's political elite, some of whom don't actually live or vote in the city or a district in which they like to meddle.

This curious and tight Garland fraternity is composed of some current and former city councilmembers, current and former mayors, businessowners, real-estate investors, and other political operatives in this "small" town, which I might mention also is the 87th-largest city in the U.S. and the 12th-largest in Texas.

A few days beforehand, I had innocently, without gaining The Club's advance permission, stopped by the City Secretary's office to pick up the packet for filing for the upcoming 2016 city council election. I had heard much about these mysterious packets, so with an election coming up soon, I knew they would be available. On a lark, I decided to stop by the City Secretary's office and request a packet to see what was in it. I was immediately struck by how thick it was.

How dare I do something so outside the proscribed way of doing things?

I had already expressed my support for our incumbent city councilmember, Anita Goebel, so I never dreamed that the action would be picked up and twisted by The Club's rumor mill and would paint a target on me.

I was merely curious, with no intention of running unless Goebel for some reason decided she'd had it with politics and wanted to bail, as some current talk had suggested. What forms did one have to file? I wondered. What did filing cost? What personal financial data was one required to release? Could anyone obtain it? Dozens of questions filled my mind—questions that could be answered only with a packet in hand.

I thought it was a bit unusual that I was required to sign a form stating that I had obtained one of those election packets. I attributed that to regulation city procedures but still pondered, Who needed to know who picked up one of these?

The next day I dropped by Mayor Douglas Athas' office to visit with him about a totally unrelated matter. "Now what's this about running for office?" he immediately hopped off-subject from my conversation. He had jumped to the false conclusion, as did a number of other members of The Club, that I was planning to run for the District 2 council seat against incumbent Anita Goebel, who at that time was a political ally of his.

Athas quickly advised me—un-soliticed by me—that I would lose if I ran against Goebel. Very difficult to unseat her, an incumbent, he counseled.

Who said anything about running against Anita? I wondered. I told him I had no intention of running against Anita, that I was only curious about the "election packet" that was always spoken of in such hushed and reverential tones by all the political insiders in town.

I had a difficult time getting Doug back on track to talk about the matter for which I had gone to see him. He seemed almost preoccupied with my having obtained the packet.

I emphasized to him the word "NOT" when I answered him. "I am NOT planning to run unless the office is vacated, which I don't expect it to be."

However, I wasn't certain he heard my emphatic "NOT".

That night I began to receive the first of five phone calls, in rapid-fire order, from members of The Club inquiring about my intention of using the election packet.

Only one District 2 voter contacted me. The others who made calls lived in other districts or not in Garland at all.

Former District 2 City Councilwoman Perky Cox called to encourage me in my presumed race against Goebel. (As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Perky had wanted me to succeed her in 2012, but I declined at the end of Perky's final term to make the commitment. Goebel won after Perky and Perky's candidate, Eric Redish, had a parting of ways on the night of the general election in which Redish narrowly lost; without Perky's support Redish fell to Goebel in the runoff election.)

"What race against Goebel?" I inquired, still puzzled. "I have said I am not going to run against her."

But the election packet? Perky queried.

Just curious, I stated again. Picked it up on the spur of the moment. How had she known?

City-hall grapevine, she reported.

Exactly opposite of Athas (as one would expect from two earlier enemies), Perky argued that I should, indeed, square off against Goebel in 2016.

Not gonna do it, I asserted. End of conversation.

Later the person who didn't not "speak to me on purpose" at the funeral wrote on a Facebook page resounding praises for Anita and a barb aimed at every citizen of District 2—no one in District 2 was capable of succeeding Anita in office, the person vowed.

No one? That was a really odd thing to say, I thought. Such a bold statement coming from someone who didn't even live in our district seemed weird at best. 

The next morning the phone rang and I heard the voice of an influential local operative, who again lives outside of District 2. "So what IS the deal with the packet?" I was asked. "She hasn't been a bad council member."

"Wasn't planning to run against her," I said. (What is that supposed to mean? I pondered. Had someone stated in 2016 she was a bad councilmember? Certainly not I.)

I repeated to him my by-now broken-record answer I gave to Perky and the mayor as well as many others who called or stopped me wherever I went. Should I just make a placard and wear it upon my body any time I went out in public? 

And so it went for several days until filing for open council seats in 2016 ended. The cold shoulders, the averted eyes, the blank stares—all from people I had once presumed were friends. The strategically placed phone calls. Now I know better. As Mayor Athas had told me the first time we met shortly after he was elected, we are associates—never friends.

That experience was truly my first tipoff about Garland's rigged election system.

In 2016 (just as she had in 2014) Goebel ran unopposed and was re-elected to her third and final term by herself and other sitting councilmembers. Kay and I congratulated her on her win.

With this system in place, is it any wonder so many other elections here are canceled because there are no opponents running against the incumbents? The gig was clear: people not in The Club or blessed by The Club have little chance of winning city elections. The Club will make sure of that!

Is it any wonder councilmembers such as Goebel get elected with about 2 percent of the vote of eligible voters in their districts. No wonder the majority of current city councilmembers were never actually elected by the public—only by the city council itself, after only one candidate filed and others were discouraged—I would even use the term bullied—from filing to run. No wonder everything in this town seems so rigged by that tiny group of well-to-do Anglos with a sprinkling of non-whites thrown in for cover.

No wonder members of The Club frown at the thought of our rising percentage of Hispanic potential voters actually registering and voting. My political tutor once told me to forget my pledge that if I ever ran for public office, I would do everything within my power to bring in the disenfranchised voters such as the Latinos.

Candidate forms, minus the necessary petition forms, are available confidentially at the city's website. Click on City government, then on City Secretary button. Those forms are number 4 on the list. The petitions still must be picked up at City Hall. At that point the would-be candidate's intentions are public record.

As I have emphasized in this blog, councilmembers are PRESUMED to be elected for three full two-year terms. It is presumed that they will be re-elected automatically unless they have performed badly in office. If you ever doubt the power of the incumbent, listen to Monday night's city council work session (January 8) at which proposed changes in the city charter were discussed. How many times were the words uttered (or the concept espoused) of "three two-year"s? The incumbent WILL be there for six years, the underlying theme is heard over and over.

In case you missed it (it wasn't exactly widely trumpeted), January 17, 2018 is the first day a potential candidate for the upcoming May municipal elections can pick up and turn in a packet, including the marked petitions for their supporters to sign and which must be certified by the City Secretary. The last day for filing is February 16. These dates were first posted on the city's website on January 3, 2018.

Thanks to District 5 Councilman Rich Aubin, who in his early days in office at my suggestion requested that the packet be made available to the public on the city's website. City Secretary Rene Dowl says she does not know—and does not try to find out—who downloads the online forms.

These petitions to be signed by candidates' supporters are not available online and can only be picked up in person in the City Secretary's office. Naturally, one has to sign for them, giving all pertinent personal information—everything The Club needs to launch its campaign.

That list of those picking up petitions or filing for office is available to anyone by request made to the City Secretary's office, according to the Texas Open Records Law, states City Secretary Dowl. Dowl says by law she must make the information available to anyone requesting the list.

Based on my experience two years ago, my hunch is The Club will know within seconds after you pick up your packet and will be sharing that information with one another—cherrypicking along the way who to support, who to harass, and who to bully.

Such is political life in this very, very, very small Texas city—second largest in Dallas County—and yet a veritable tiny burg where political life is concerned.