Name that party--Waller County, Texas

Houston Chronicle:

At a convenience store two years ago, Hempstead alderman Paris Kincaid Jr. giddily accepted a $3,000 bribe as if it were his weekly paycheck.

He then warned his benefactor, a demolition contractor, to stay mum.

Nobody needed to know about the corrupt culture permeating rural Waller County northwest of Houston: “We ain’t going to talk about it,” Kincaid told the contractor. “It’s just like a holler in the wind. You don’t hear nothing.”

Three days later, Hempstead’s mayor pro-tem, Larry W. Wilson Sr., brazenly walked the same contractor to the back of his Dodge Charger parked in front of Hempstead City Hall. He opened the trunk, and the contractor placed $5,000 inside.

Wilson declared afterward: “You got the contract. It’s yours!”

Both Hempstead officials have since been forced to resign after pleading guilty to soliciting kickbacks in exchange for city contracts and will be sentenced this summer. Their meetings and conversations with the contractor, who was working undercover for the FBI, are documented in surveillance recordings and court records. The two will join the former Brookshire mayor and public works director from the opposite end of Waller County — Keith Woods and Henry Cheney — who were arrested last year and are already serving time in federal prisons for the same crime.

These cases hint of a systemic problem in Waller County that has been the target of an ongoing FBI probe that began four years ago.

The county, dotted with wildflowers and known as home to the state’s oldest historically black university and an annual watermelon festival, is quickly gaining another reputation — for public corruption — as more federal indictments are expected by this summer.

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Later we learn that the defendants are all black as was the contractor who went to the FBI and was wired for the described events. No where does it mention the political party of the politicians accused of corruption, but if black politicians in Waller were Republicans that would be unusual enough to be the lead. Like many Democrat controlled areas there is an embedded culture of corruption. That is another reason why the party should be named and held accountable.

The contractor is one of the heroes in this story. Unfortunately his business has suffered as a result of his actions to help law enforcement.