10-1 Ticker... Run-off Election Updates!

The Steve Adler campaign has gone after opponent Mike Martinez's "fight for the ­middle class" mantra with a mailer attacking the "$2.3 billion mistake" – the 2008 East Texas wood-burning power purchase – and other Council decisions that Adler says have driven up costs on taxpayers...

The Martinez campaign has announced a Dec. 10 Get out the Vote rally featuring national leaders of AFSCME, the Laborers' Inter­na­tional Union, and the Interna­tion­al Assoc­i­ation of Fire­fighters (Parque Zara­goza, noon)... How to Waste $20,000: Sunday's Statesman featured a two-page ad attacking alleged "Invisible Man" David Butts (longtime Austin campaign consultant) for allegedly "controlling the City Council" along with other (unnamed) lawyer/"fixers." The ad – paid for by the previously unknown "Coalition of Austin Neighborhoods" – urges readers to vote against four of "Butts' candidates" in the run-off, but curiously omits two others, including mayoral candidate Adler, Butts' major client in this cycle... D4's Laura Pressley campaign announced that opponent Greg Casar had declined her invitation to a public, free-form "conversation" between the two candidates, although the emails she released, between the campaigns, reflect unresolved negotiations on the format... The Pressley campaign also distributed a flier, purportedly from "your neighbor" (identical illegible signatures) providing a link to a campaign video apparently produced by "GrassRoutes Public Rela­tions" (run by Matt Armstrong, and primarily devoted to right-wing state Republican causes). The firm's website also leaves readily accessible, on neighboring links, local and statewide voter lists with additional personal information... Meanwhile, another curious video of Pressley has surfaced, this one a 2012 segment of the cable access Trailer Park Show, in which she informs Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo and especially Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton that they have a "constitutional responsibility" to end Transportation Security Admini­stration security searches at ABIA. The county sheriff's absolute legal authority is a theory beloved of right-wing "posse comitatus" groups; Hamilton and Acevedo deferred to the federal government on airport security... A Sept. 2013 post by D6 candidate Don Zimmerman accuses same-sex marriage advocates of attempting to "overturn natural law with political legislation," dismisses homosexuality as an immoral "choice," and concludes: "If Americans don't have the integrity to defend natural law, why should nature's God defend America?"...

Unfair Funds?: D3 run-off candidates and siblings, Susana Almanza and Sabino "Pio" Renteria, may be ineligible for money doled out from the Austin Fair Campaign Finance Fund. Set up to assist candidates, and funded through donations, candidate filing fees, and fines from campaign contract violations, the $83,966 was split equally between Almanza, Renteria, and D7's Leslie Pool; however, the Austin Bulldog and Election Austin blogger Dylan Tynan note that both of the D3 candidates filed too late (under section 2-2-11 of City Code), effectively disqualifying them from the roughly $28,000. City Clerk representatives were not available for comment before press time.