TX SEN: More Bad Press For Watts

[Updated--at end--with info about Celis contributions to Watts]

As if everything we’ve heard about Democratic Senate Candidate Mikal Watts isn’t enough to make us worry about all of the ammo Republicans will have on him if he is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, now it appears he may have illegally accepted case referrals from an alleged non-lawyer who has recently been caught chasing nude women into gas stations while wearing a bath robe and sporting a sheriff’s badge— a story YaGottaLoveIt at South Texas Chisme broke on the blogs this morning.

Sound bad? It’s really a tempest-in-a-teapot kind of thing, but, imagine how much worse the Republicans will make it sound when they run a TV commercial of a nude woman in a gas station being chased by a guy in a bathrobe with the headline, “This is the kind of man wealthy, liberal trial lawyer Mikal Watts does business with.”

Though Watts only gets a passing mention in the last half of the story—and very well may have, as many did, believe the person who was the subject of the story was a legitimate business man—you can, from the selected excerpts below, how the Republicans will be able to take this out of context if he is the nominee to oppose John Cornyn:

“Mauricio Celis with the law firm of CGT Law Group International does not have a law license in the state of Texas nor does he have a license to practice law anywhere in the world,” announced Henry in the paid TV spot.

[...]

Even before Henry’s public call-out, Celis was at the center of a bizarre Sept. 17 incident in which a naked 25-year-old woman ran into a Corpus Christi convenience store about 4 a.m., initially claiming she was fleeing a sexual assault.

According to police, Celis appeared in a bathrobe, flashed a sheriff’s deputy badge from nearby Duval County and told officers he would take custody of the woman.
[...]

In Texas, the unauthorized practice of law is a felony. It is also illegal for lawyers to share fees with non-lawyers or for non-lawyers to own an interest in a law firm, with certain narrow exceptions.

[...]

Other Corpus Christi firms are believed to have taken lucrative referrals from CGT. But with Celis now under attack, not all of them wanted to confirm it.

“I’m not going to talk about that. I’m providing no information,” said Craig Sico, a principal in the firm of Sico, White & Braugh, when asked about the referrals.

Mikal Watts, an even bigger fish in the local legal pond, acknowledged the relationship, but downplayed it.

“It’s not a major part of my business. There may have been one or two cases in the past few years,” he said.

It’s highly unlikely Watts did anything wrong, to be quite frank. And, given the way that this Celis guy operated, I doubt that most attorneys working with him knew he was actually a fraud. But, you can just see the writing on the wall here: this is the kind of ammunition that the Republicans will have if he’s the nominee, so we’ll have to be ready to deal with it.

[UPDATE] Another twist: Celis gave Watts a $4,600 contribution earlier this year. Info here, here.

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