So Before You Vote: Another Update About Adam McGough

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Photo from votemcgough.com

Photo from votemcgough.com

Update April 26: After talking to Adam McGough’s campaign manager and analyzing more utility bills, we have issued an apology to the Adam McGough for City Council campaign.  Apparently the family’s utility usage was NOT that out of the ordinary, for a family of three boys, despite the low electricity usage records we were sent by a source.

If you’ve been keeping up, you may be familiar with the residency issues surrounding city council District 10 candidate Adam McGough. If not, plenty of primer to catch up with is here.

And maybe you saw that Highland Park ISD concluded its investigation and decided not to press the matter further. So it’s over, right?

Well, thanks to a source, we have come in possession of something that casts some more questions on McGough’s story that his wife and children lived in the condo while he maintained their residence in Lake Highlands – electricity usage records.

Sarcastic Side-Eye Baby is dubious about this.

Sarcastic Side-Eye Baby is dubious about this.

The condo was a one bedroom, and allegedly Lacy McGough and their three children lived in it the entirety of two and a half school years, until they pulled their kids in favor of private school at this year’s winter break. I found a handy calculator here, and even with allowing for energy-efficient appliances, their kilowatt usage should’ve been around 1,636 kw each month.

What did the McGough’s use? Well, let’s put it this way – they either have the world’s most energy efficient, off-the-grid-solar-panel-using-cold-shower-having family, or um, they maybe didn’t live there the whole time.

There, I said it.

Here are the months of usage we have. Maybe they used more at some point. But for real, this is a dream electric bill for four people. For instance, their April 2014 bill was 658 kilowatts. October 2014’s bill was 480.  To put this in perspective, the average electric hot water heater pulls somewhere between 380 and 500 kilowatts per month, and your average fridge uses about 150 kw.

So yeah.

Wanna see the rest of the documents? Click below.

Adam McGough info 2 (1) Adam McGough info 1 (1)

Bethany Erickson lives in a 1961 Fox and Jacobs home with her husband, a second-grader, and Conrad Bain the dog. If she won the lottery, she'd by an E. Faye Jones home.
She's taken home a few awards for her writing, including a Gold award for Best Series at the 2018 National Association of Real Estate Editors journalism awards, a 2018 Hugh Aynesworth Award for Editorial Opinion from the Dallas Press Club, and a 2019 award from NAREE for a piece linking Medicaid expansion with housing insecurity.
She is a member of the Online News Association, the Education Writers Association, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
She doesn't like lima beans or the word moist.

14 Comments

  1. CANNON FLOWERS on April 21, 2015 at 11:07 am

    I can’t even vote for Adam McGough, but this story and all related to it is so NOT entertaining. We/You have much better/bigger things to accomplish in this life. The McGoughs are apparently just trying to get their kids a good education, etc. Tell us something good and stop looking for negative — really tiring.

    • Bethany Erickson on April 21, 2015 at 11:13 am

      Here’s why it is important – circumventing rules is something we may have become accustomed to in our politicians, but should we? This whole story started because if he lived in Highland Park, he would not have been eligible to run for the seat he is running in. So people rightly began asking questions.

      If you want your kids to have a Highland Park ISD education, then move to HP, and run for a council seat there or a county seat that would allow you to live anywhere in Dallas. It’s really pretty simple.

      And the many comments and emails I’ve gotten during this election season about this very issue leads me to believe that people are still interested in candidates who will at the very least not assume they’re stupid.

    • Wylie Follower on April 21, 2015 at 11:49 am

      Don’t you have bigger and better things to accomplish in the life other than troll for McNo? You say you can’t vote in D10 but you sure want us to give him a free pass for manipulating the system. Tell you something good? It rained again today. We need the rain. What do we NOT need? Another one of Rawlings cronies taking up residence at City Hall which is why this is good to educate those in D10 on who they might or might not want to vote for.

  2. John M on April 21, 2015 at 11:15 am

    I question the accuracy of that calculator, I live in a decent sized one bedroom condo (1,000~ sqft) and I still use less than 1,600 KWH when running my central electric heat in the coldest of winter months and my home is hardly energy efficient, I think I have an 85 gallon hot water heater..

    In fact, the past February I used less than 800 KWHs.

    Which is not to say I believe them that they were living there full time, I just think your math might be off by quite a bit.

    • Bethany Erickson on April 21, 2015 at 11:22 am

      Those calculations are based on 4 people, because there were four people living there, allegedly.

    • Joanna England on April 21, 2015 at 11:26 am

      Running enough hot water for one adult shower/bath and bathing three kiddos is going to consume a whole lot more electricity than one adult, plus running a dishwasher, a refrigerator, washing clothes, keeping the lights on, TV/media, etc. for a family of four is going to consume a lot more power than one person.

    • Matthew Vorwald on April 21, 2015 at 12:57 pm

      The “calculator” is wholly inaccurate. As a two-adult household living in a similar area a year ago, I never paid more than $80/month for electricity — and I lived there full-time with no extraordinary modifications to lifestyle or equipment. The claim here that the usage is abnormally low is not grounded in factual basis. This is very ordinary for a one-bedroom unit.

    • Matthew Vorwald on April 21, 2015 at 12:59 pm

      The article also works under the premise that all four people were using electricity under this bill, whereas that was never claimed to be the familial living situation.

  3. Candy Evans on April 21, 2015 at 11:33 am

    Here’s why this story is important: the fact that people in Dallas base their real estate choices on school districts and the lengths they will go to to educate their children. That is what we are trying to do here with our look at DISD. Do I blame the McGough’s? Not for a New York minute. But I also believe we have to have honesty in our City Council reps, perhaps now more than ever.

  4. Blake Reynolds on April 21, 2015 at 1:17 pm

    Is the shower even electric? Most are gas.
    Small apartments are not known for big bills.
    October is the most mild month around here. The high on Halloween was 68 degrees.
    Are you saying they had no fridge? Of course they did.
    And the doorkeeper swore under oath that they were there each day and had things like kids dressed for soccer games indicating why they were coming and going.
    Whenever I have lived in an apartment, utilities were very cheap with people on all sides also heating or cooling you have good insulation from the heat or cold..
    And maybe they tried not to waste money, kept lights off and generally tried not to make the 2nd place more expensive than necessary.

  5. Popcorn Eater on April 21, 2015 at 3:42 pm

    Curious amount of going to bat for McGough, and it’s clear nobody actually read any links or any of the documents.

    Impressive collection of sock puppets, sycophants and trolls Mr. mcGough has.

  6. Matthew Eibell on April 21, 2015 at 7:21 pm

    I love the site but must admit it’s enough of what Adam Mcgough might have done wrong. At lot of speculation but no hard facts. Here is a hard fact Adam taugh a class at local community college which I attended , and was nothing but the good professional then as he is today.

  7. Patrick Slidell on April 21, 2015 at 7:33 pm

    Bethany,
    I couldn’t agree more and thanks for having the courage to say what we all thought. His family didn’t live there. This is so concerning because Adam has betrayed our trust. Repeatedly. I realize it is easier to fabricate a ruse when the victim may be nameless. More generally, Adam tried to take advantage of LH voters and succeeded in taking advantage of our HP neighbors because they are good natured and likely didn’t want to carry the burden for a fight that is mostly ours.

    I ask anyone who has been betrayed, is it more forgivable/honorable when betrayed and the person admits their betrayal and apologizes? Or is it better for that person to double down when faced with the truth? I expect the former out of my friends, family, and colleagues. Why should anyone asking for our vote not be held to that or an even higher standard?

    To all Lake Highlands residents, it is clear this issue has divided us. That’s the beauty of our elections. We can agree to disagree. Between now and the election, I plan on doing my part to take as much support from McGough as possible. Anyone that can repeatedly lie directly to me, you, and our entire community, even when given the chance to come clean and ask for forgiveness will ever deserve our support. In fact, I feel some level of punishment is appropriate and I hope someone that has that authority will take it upon themselves to take some punitive action for his continuous and willful deceit.

    Regardless of the outcome, my commitment after the election is to work with everyone in our community to unify as a single voice. Lake Highlands has always been bigger than one person or one issue so let’s continue to fight for our respective cause until the election and remember to come together after our votes have been cast.

  8. Kevin Caskey on April 23, 2015 at 1:51 pm

    My number one personal goal is to live honorably and a life that can be a positive example to others…I have had the pleasure of being a fellow baseball dad with Mr McGough and I have seen that he does just that. Many parents go to great lengths to better the lives of their children and I personally won’t fault someone for doing such.

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