A League of Women Voters candidate info questionnaire has come up again in the Denton City Council Place 5 race, with Daniel Clanton pointing out it originally misstated the education background of his opponent, Brandon Chase McGee, who called it a “simple mistake” that has been corrected.
Clanton included the questionnaire in a lengthy Saturday social media post after it was initially brought up at the April 14 League of Women Voters of Denton candidate forum for City Council candidates. Clanton and McGee were both in attendance and traded blows throughout the night, including when Clanton introduced the issue.
The LWV questionnaires are available online for each of Denton’s three municipal races. The Place 5 questionnaire currently states McGee is a graduate of both the University of North Texas and Collin College in McKinney, with a Bachelor of Science in history and political science. It adds he did postgraduate work at the Texas A&M University Bush School of Government.6
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But originally, the questionnaire stated McGee had a master’s degree in public administration from UNT, as well. At the forum, McGee acknowledged the error and said it had already been corrected.
“I work 12 hours every day, and I’m very proud of that,” McGee said. “I needed someone, a young man in college, to help me out filling out some forms. So as I was dictating to him, perhaps he got it wrong. … When you call me and I get something wrong, it’s not a big deal to me. I just fix it.”
Clanton brought up the questionnaire again in his post Saturday, where it was included as one of multiple criticisms of McGee and his campaign. He wrote, at one point, that “my opponent has shown that others do his work.”
“He’s going to be overseeing the city — he has to do the work,” Clanton said Monday. “He’s responsible for his own product, and yet he left it to somebody else and did not check it.”
McGee, also reached Monday, said a UNT student helping with his campaign ended up filling the questionnaire out for him after they talked about some of the answers. It got put up before he had looked it over, he said, and he corrected it when the error was brought to his attention.
“Ultimately, it’s my fault. I’m not at all shifting blame to anyone else,” McGee said. “There is nothing to see here; it was a simple mistake. I have never claimed to be a person who is perfect.”
Early voting for the May 7 election began Monday and runs through May 3
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