Qadri Campaign Workers Accuse Opponent of Attempted Intimidation

Campaign workers for incumbent City Council Member Zo Qadri are accusing one of Qadri’s opponents, the former professor Rich Heyman, of attempting to intimidate them outside a polling place on the University of Texas-Austin campus. Heyman vociferously denies the charges, replying that Qadri’s supporters have taunted him and tried to block him from speaking with prospective voters. 

On Thursday, Oct. 29, a photo circulated on social media showing Heyman speaking with UT police officers outside the Texas Union, where members of both campaigns have greeted voters over the last week. Two of Qadri’s workers told the Chronicle that UT police arrived after one of them called to complain that Heyman had gotten uncomfortably close to her. 

The worker, who did not wish to be identified, described her experience of the encounter, saying it occurred after she and Heyman had competed for the attention of a voter and while no other campaign workers were present. 

“All of a sudden, he starts getting so close to my face and I start backing away,” the worker said. “And he keeps coming towards me, and I’m kind of up against this stone part of the stairs, and, like, I can’t really get around him. And he starts filming, and that’s when he puts his phone in my face, and won’t go away from me. And I said, ‘Rich, please back away. Will you please step away from me? Will you please give me space?’ And a girl hears this happen, and she actually turns around, this bystander, and runs next to me, and puts an open umbrella in the middle of me and Rich, so that he’ll finally get off of me.”

The worker added that she did not believe Heyman showed the video to the UT police officers. “I don’t think that video will go anywhere, because I’m just shaking, and I’m like, ‘I cannot believe that that happened.’”

Heyman denied the worker’s account in very strong terms. “That is totally, 100% false,” he said. “No, no, no, no. There were no umbrellas. Absolutely not. That is an out-and-out lie.” Heyman showed the Chronicle a photo and short video that he said he took of the worker during the interaction, neither of which shed light on it. He also supplied his own account of what occurred. 

“She and I were approaching a voter, and I got to the voter first by stepping in front of her,” Heyman said. “And she suddenly started saying, like, kind of yelling at me, ‘Get away from me, leave, step back.’ I mean, I don’t even think I was facing her. I can’t remember exactly what happened, and I just kept talking to the voter, and I ignored her. And then, like 20 minutes later, half an hour later, the police showed up, and they had this complaint that I was intimidating her, threatening her or something, which was so absurd and ridiculous.”

Thursday’s incident followed other instances of what Qadri supporters are characterizing as aggressive campaigning. One person, not a member of Qadri’s team but affiliated with a campus group, also described feeling physically uncomfortable around the candidate. Meanwhile, another encounter partially caught on a video taken, according to Heyman, by the same campaign worker who called police shows Heyman standing close to another of Qadri’s campaign workers, Adit Raha, on Oct. 27. “Don’t interrupt me and don’t say ageist shit about me,” Heyman tells Raha, pointing his finger. Raha responds, “Say what? What’d you say? I couldn’t hear you. What was that?”

Heyman referred to the accusations from Qadri’s campaign workers as “dirty politics 101.” He said the interaction with Raha occurred after Raha taunted him for being old and interrupted him as he tried to speak with voters. “Adit did that thing where, as I was talking to two voters, he stepped between us, nudged me out of the way, interrupted me in mid-sentence,” Heyman said. “And I had repeated, I told them over and over again, ‘Stop interrupting me. Let me talk to voters.’”

Raha denied taunting Heyman over his age and accused the candidate of being overly aggressive. “It seems to just be a pattern of intimidation, maybe like harassment almost, or basically harassment in some cases,” Raha said. “Since early voting began, I’ve had multiple volunteers come up to me and tell me, ‘Hey, I really want to help poll-greet and volunteer, but I don’t want to be around Rich when he’s poll-greeting.’”

UT officials have not clarified whether a complaint was formally filed with police by Qadri’s campaign workers. Qadri declined to comment on the allegations.

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