Elections

What’s Steve Adler Done for Austin?

This mayoral candidate has given significant time,
energy, and money to numerous important causes

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2014
Part 2 of a series
Posted Thursday, May 1, 2014 2:45pm

Stephen Ira “Steve” Adler has for decades been an attorney specializing in eminent domain cases to protect the rights of property owners in condemnation proceedings.

But what has he done to demonstrate he has the skills needed to lead Austin into a new era of grassroots governance, in which for the first time every area of the city will have a representative seated on the council dais?

Plenty, according to the leaders of numerous significant organizations.

Adler started law school at the University of Texas in summer semester 1978, fresh out of Princeton, and immediately jelled with fellow law student Eliot Shapleigh, a future Texas state senator.

Shapleigh said in a recent interview that after serving three years in the Peace Corps he entered law school at the same time as Adler. Both were slow to graduate, Shapleigh in 1981, Adler in 1982.

“We took off a year and worked for Procter & Gamble,” Shapleigh said. “One of his friends in Princeton had a connection and Steve and I went over there and learned how to take a product and market and got an experience in life.”

For Adler, earning money was essential: “I took off a year-and-a-half after my first year to make some money to finish law school,” he said.

Shapleigh said, “We got to be really good friends, played on the touch football team against a guy who defended (President Richard) Nixon, Charles Alan Wright. ... Our team was set up to defeat Wright... (but) I broke my thumb so we got beat pretty bad.”

Adler and Shapleigh formed a lasting bond that included being best man at each others weddings. Adler married Melany Maddux in 1989 and they divorced in 1995. In 1998 he married Diane Tipton Land, president and CEO of DT Land Group Inc. The couple celebrated their 16th anniversary last month.

In 1996 Adler helped Shapleigh, an El Paso Democrat, achieve a come-from-behind election victory for a seat in the Texas Senate, then served as his chief of staff and later general counsel during the legislative sessions of 1997 through 2005.

“He wanted to do pubic education and in a few short months he was the expert on school funding formulas and how that works,” Shapleigh said of Adler's quick mastery.

Steve Adler Wants to Be Mayor

He views the 10-1 system as a gift and an
opportunity to restart, revitalize city government

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2014
Part 1 of a series
Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2014 2:58pm

It may have been inevitable that Stephen Ira “Steve” Adler, a soft-spoken attorney, would one day want to lead the City of Austin into a new era of governance.

Adler is one of three children born to Lee Elliott Adler and Selma Adler. He was born in Washington. DC, March 23, 1956, and raised in that city and in Maryland, where he went to public schools. He grew up steeped in the culture of national news and political coverage broadcast from Washington by CBS television, where his father worked. As a boy he sometimes found himself in the studio with legendary journalists Eric Sevareid, Roger Mudd, and White House reporter Dan Rather, with an occasional visit from New York-based Walter Cronkite.

As a budding 17-year-old high school senior Adler clerked for Congressman Gilbert Gude, R-Maryland, in the Capitol. It was 1973 and the Watergate hearings were underway that summer. Adler said he sat in on the Senate hearings on the only day, June 27, 1973, when John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono also attended the hearings. At the time Lennon was appealing a federal deportation order that sprang from President Richard Nixon’s disdain for Lennon’s political views and influence.

Forty years later, in an exclusive interview with The Austin Bulldog, Adler said, “That was one of the highlights of my life. I sat behind John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It was pretty cool.” (Unfortunately he didn’t get into the widely circulated photo shown here.)

Adler arrived in Austin in 1978 to attend law school at the University of Texas. He was fresh out of Princeton University with a bachelor of arts degree. “I worked and they gave me a scholarship, which is the only way I could go to the college I went (to).”

Over the ensuing decades Adler has spent a lot of time, energy, and money supporting nonprofit organizations and political causes. (The next story in this series will provide an in-depth examination of these community service endeavors.)

Now he wants to be Austin’s next mayor.

“I think that when you find yourself in a city that you love that has been so good to you, that’s facing the challenges that it’s facing with a new government restart, making it an absolutely crucial moment in time, and you are able to be able to help, I don’t know how you don’t do that. I don’t know how five years from now you look back and say, ‘I was in a position to be able to do something and I didn’t do it.’ That’s why I’m running.”

A new mayor for a new government

Dafoe Offers to Settle for $40,000

 Settlement invitation for Mayor Leffingwell would avoid
lawsuit, depositions, and trial for Election Code violations

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2013
Posted Thursday March 21, 2013 1:26pm

Clay Dafoe—who along with former Council Member Brigid Shea ran unsuccessfully against Mayor Lee Leffingwell in his 2012 reelection bid—has invited the mayor to settle without litigation Dafoe’s claim for damages by paying him $40,000.

This in lieu of the potential for more than $65,000 in statutory damages that could be awarded if Dafoe were to prevail in a lawsuit over Leffingwell’s failure to timely file accurate campaign finance reports as required by the state Election Code.

Mayor Leffingwell did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment about the settlement offer or to a voice message left with his chief of staff, Andy Mormon.

Election Code Section 254.231 makes a candidate who fails to report campaign contributions or campaign expenditures that are required to be reported liable for damages to opposing candidates in twice the amount that was unreported and reasonable attorney’s fees incurred in the suit. (If judgment should be rendered in the defendant’s favor the defendant is entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees.)

The Austin Bulldog’s investigative report, published March 5, showed that Leffingwell’s 2012 mayoral campaign did not account for $32,716.54 in funds. In addition, his 2009 campaign left more than $40,000 unaccounted for. (See Lee Leffingwell 2009 and 2012 Campaign Finance Reports Analysis .)

Dafoe Hires Law Firm Over Mayor’s Misreporting

Clay Dafoe, third-place finisher in
2012 mayoral election, first to act

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2013
Posted Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:12pm
Corrected Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 9:45pm

Clay Dafoe has followed through on his previously stated intent to take legal action against Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell.

This afternoon, Austin attorney Bill Aleshire of Riggs Aleshire and Ray PC told The Austin Bulldog, “Our law firm has been retained by Clay Dafoe to hold Lee Leffingwell accountable for violating the state campaign finance laws in the mayoral campaign of 2012.”

In a phone interview this evening Aleshire added, “We will let the facts take us where they go and we will not take any action that’s not in good faith.”

“That’s all we have to say at this point,” Aleshire said, “but there will be more later.”

(Disclosure: Aleshire is The Austin Bulldog’s attorney in a Texas Public Information Act lawsuit that is still pending.)

Attempts to reach Mayor Leffingwell this evening for a comment were unsuccessful. A listed home number has been disconnected. A phone call to his chief of staff, Andy Mormon, was not answered. A text message sent to Mormon’s cell phone requesting a comment from the mayor was not promptly answered.

Two phone messages left for Dafoe were not returned. Aleshire later informed The Austin Bulldog that, “Mr. Dafoe will not be commenting directly.”

Grounds for lawsuit