You know the type: opportunists. They lick their fingers and stick them in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. If it’s blowing east, they go east. If west, they go west.
They proliferate in politics, voting for proposals they’ve previously opposed and opposing ones previously supported. It’s all a matter of timing and which position seems most advantageous at any given moment.
They often take positions on issues of concern to vested interests for the sole purpose of allowing well-heeled lobbyists to “persuade” them to reverse themselves.
They move in and out of office with similar calculations, frequently landing lucrative jobs in the private sector with firms that have benefitted from their “public service.”
Todd Hunter has taken a whirl through the revolving door more than once. The Corpus Christi attorney served as a state representative before going to work as a lobbyist for the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA). In 2008 he got elected to the state legislature again, where he subsequently became a vocal critic of his former employer.
Last month, Channel 2 Investigates published a video showing Rick Daly of insurance litigation firm Daly & Black touting his connection to Hunter at a July presentation to the City of Ingleside.
“What we’ve done is team up with Todd Hunter,” Daly boasted. “Because we knew that there was going to be a political aspect to all this and in order to get everybody made whole and to get the cities back up and running, you got to have a combination of people who know the law, and people who have political connections and people [who] have money and people who can do the work, and that is why we put this team together.”
Daly & Black has handled 231 of the more than 300 lawsuits that have been brought against TWIA since Hurricane Harvey made landfall.
Daly & Black contributed $10,000 to Hunter’s 2016 re-election campaign, but Hunter assured Channel 2 that he hasn’t “profited much” from his collaboration with the firm.