If you ask one faction, it all started on a cool night in January 2021 when Sean Skipworth drew a ping-pong ball out of a top hat to win a tied election and become the mayor of Dickinson. Or maybe it really
began six months later, with the hiring of the city manager.
Or, perhaps, both.
If you ask the mayor, he wouldn’t be able to pinpoint exactly when it started. Maybe from the moment he stepped into office. Maybe from the day he started making changes that some people didn’t like.
But something started not too long after he got elected, something that’s closed its jaws on the town and not let go for the past few years and now threatens to drag everything down with it.
It’s gotten so bad that a private investigator has dubbed the mayor the “Dick in Dickinson,” the mayor has gone on the record accusing his own police department of a coverup, and two of the biggest names in Texas lawyering — Tony Buzbee and Rusty Hardin — are poised to duke it out over a single apartment complex
in a town of 20,000 (a perhaps unexpected sequel to the duo’s last bout: Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial
).
A copy of a 2023 Dickinson visitor’s guide sits in a mostly empty conference room at the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce.
Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
The squabbles have real-world consequences: taxpayers’ time and money, a steady drumbeat of lawsuits and their associated costs, a drag on what the City Hall administration says it is trying to accomplish. An effort to recall the mayor for good. And an alleged incident of police brutality brought a flurry of
media attention to the town — an encounter that family members say left a man with a brain bleed and the officer involved free of consequences.
Though the threads connecting the issues and the fallout are, at face value, tenuous, those involved can’t help but bring each and every one of them up in almost the same breath. No one can articulate a tangible motive for the other side beyond the gain and loss of power — land, monetary, political. But no one can quite say to what end.
At times, the contention bubbles over in city council meetings. After the mayor read the rules of engagement at one meeting in September — no personal attacks, no vulgar or profane language — dozens approached the podium to speak their minds.
“It looks like the only new sales tax dollars being generated are from liquor sales consumed by the city manager, paid for by our tax dollars!” one man said.
“I’ll put the city on notice, I’ve been blocked from the social media page to be able to comment,” another person warned. “Fix it or I’m gonna file a lawsuit.”
“This is a joke,” said a third.
The mayor sat at the head of the horseshoe, resigned.
**
Rain falls at the intersection of Interstate 45 and FM 517 in Dickinson.
Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
Dickinson sits around 30 miles southeast of downtown Houston along Interstate 45, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stop on the way to Galveston between League City and Texas City. The community, founded in 1850 but not incorporated until 1977, lacks the quasi-historical center of other little Texas towns. Rather, every major thoroughfare has a certain sense of sameness. Strip centers feed into strip centers, with a few local restaurants popping up here and there.
“There’s a strong undercurrent of history and pride,” said the town’s mayor, Sean Skipworth. “But at the same time, it’s in the middle of all these changing communities and so it’s changed a lot itself. It’s this sort of a contradiction, right? Because it’s very old and very established but had to change quite a bit.”
Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc on the town in 2017, flooding around 80% of all homes and structures. Shops along the main drag through town sat vacant for months while business owners struggled to recover, many without flood insurance. Some people doubted the community would ever be able to claw its way back.
A crawfish walks through the rain at Zempter Park in Dickinson.
Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
But Dickinson rebuilt, and the rhythm of small-town life returned. For some, the town pulse reverberates from Ronnie’s Hog Heaven, a dark bar with an oversized American flag on the back corner and bras (mostly beige with a pop of pink) hanging from the ceiling. A thick incense of smoke greets visitors.
Lindsey Crutchfield, who has lived in Dickinson since she was 8, pours mugs of beer and cleans up spills from behind the bar. She loves the town mostly because of the people.
Domingo Torres is one of her regulars at Ronnie’s. Born in Mexico, he grew up in Dickinson. He spent many a high school night drinking in the cemetery and, occasionally, egging passing cars. It didn’t take him long to yearn for a life outside Dickinson. But after several years away from friends and family, he moved back.
“I love being close to the area where I grew up,” he said. “I’m close to the water, and the beer is good.”
A man fishes in Dickinson Bayou. Dickinson was severely impacted by Hurricane Harvey.
Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
Both Torres and Crutchfield said they don’t pay much attention to local politics. Crutchfield researched the issues but felt they didn’t concern her slice of Dickinson.
“They’re all so focused on their council issues,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like they have much to do with us.”
In many ways, the story of Dickinson politics is the same as American politics writ-large, Torres said. "A lot of those who are the angriest are just following in the footsteps of their fathers.”
Others look back with nostalgia. For many years, Dickinson was simply a little community where factions might squabble from time to time but would always come back together, said Dawn King, president of the now-defunct Dickinson Chamber of Commerce. Everyone was ultimately proud of the town’s 200-year history and its
greenery and its snaking bayou.
“We have a lot of lovely wildlife that lives along the bayou; we have alligators, we have herons, all the things that make us just beautiful,” King said. “The thing we’re not super proud of is some of the people.”
Dawn King, president of the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce, said she worries for the city's financial future.
Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
**
As the feuding factions have grown increasingly frustrated with one another, so too has the list of perceived wrongs.
There are allegations of dodging open records requests, a toxic City Hall culture, abuse of code enforcement powers, land grabs, money grabs, power grabs, shady business dealings, conflicts of interest, illegal meetings, wrongful terminations, obfuscation, retaliation, mismanagement of taxpayer dollars, flagrant lawbreaking — volleys that have only escalated in recent months with media attention, legal posturing and an effort to recall the mayor.
Mayor Sean Skipworth, 41, got into politics because he was a government nerd from a young age. He listened to talk radio and followed political news and, needless to say, was an avid The West Wing fan. Now, he teaches politics at the local College of the Mainland. Before becoming mayor, he served on Dickinson’s city council.
He did not expect things to ever get this bad.
Dickinson Mayor Sean Skipworth said he's endured increasing vitriol over the last few years.
Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
“I think it was like, there’s actual substantive change coming on,” Skipworth said. “So I feel like then it started to become a little more serious for them.”
One of the most serious issues to come out of Dickinson involves allegations of police misconduct and a subsequent investigation that, the mayor said, was little more than a cover-up by the former police chief and his administrators. (Former Police Chief Ron Morales denied allegations of a cover-up, saying the city only learned about the matter because it was already contained in police reports.)
In February 2022, police officer Michael Kinsley threw a homeless man, Michael Scurlock, to the ground while responding to a call about a minor crash, according to body camera footage. After the takedown, Scurlock appeared disoriented. (Kinsley did not respond to a request for comment.)
Kinsley transported Scurlock to jail — even though Scurlock was the one who had been hit by the car. A review of jail videos showed Scurlock touching his head, slumping against the wall, urinating without standing up.
A video frame grab shows Michael Scurlock as he is confronted by an officer who arrived at the scene of a minor accident after a car hit Scurlock. Dickinson Mayor Sean Skipworth called what happened to Michael Scurlock little more than a cover-up. The former police chief disputed that characterization.
“I’m hurt,” Scurlock said during his booking, according to a video transcript in a subsequent investigation. And, later: “Help me. Help me…I can’t see.”
Family members say Scurlock was diagnosed with a brain bleed in the hospital after being released from jail. He died in December 2022. The cause of death was listed as Parkinson’s disease.
An internal affairs investigation cleared Kinsley of wrongdoing. But then, a whistleblower emerged, alleging there was more to the story. (In true Dickinson fashion, she brought up the Scurlock incident while being interviewed for an entirely unrelated investigation into allegations a code enforcement officer had abused her powers.)
The resulting report by an outside investigator determined police officers had withheld information from EMS, failed to document Scurlock’s injuries properly, failed to render aid at the jail and omitted critical information in their recountings of the events. The police department’s internal investigation, according to the report, was “flawed and biased.”
“It’s serious. And it’s not a game,” Skipworth said. “It’s not like just small-town politics to cover up an inappropriate use of force.”
(Morales declined to speak at length about the matter, saying an officer had sued the city and he didn’t want to interfere in the case. But he said the private investigator’s claims weren’t accurate.)
The mayor’s opponents accused him of using the Scurlock incident as nothing more than a distraction.
"He seemed to care a lot about a death over a year later. Seemed to care a lot about something that happened under his watch a year ago when he’s in the hot seat,” a Facebook account called “Dickinson Politics Uncensored” posted in an eponymous group. “Can you say MISDIRECTION!”
But for all the people who brought their grievances to city council after the incident became public, no one ever mentioned Michael Scurlock’s name.
**
What exactly the mayor hopes to distract from, according to one faction, is a threatened lawsuit that pulls in two of Texas’ most mega-megalawyers. City Hall shut down an apartment complex that served lower-income residents in late 2022, alleging unsafe conditions. The owners of the apartment fired back by hiring Tony Buzbee. Buzbee did not specify when the lawsuit would be filed or comment on the details of the case – the only real opinion he offered was that the city
desperately needed a new mayor.
The city, in response, hired Rusty Hardin, who was also reticent when speaking about the possibility of a legal battle. (“Makes no difference to me who the city hires,” Buzbee said. “His hiring is of no significance.”)
The owners of the apartment claim City Hall targeted the complex because the administration hopes to put the land into a tax zone, even going so far as to suggest that an unnamed someone had tampered with a boiler.
The suggestion of sabotage came from a video released by Wayne Dolcefino, a former TV station reporter turned private investigator for hire. Dolcefino has been poking around in Dickinson for over a year. He shares his findings in 1- to 13-minute social media videos he releases at a steady clip, one of which generated nearly 40,000 views. Each video has a catchy title like “Quit Dickin Around,” “A Little
Dickinson” or “The Dick in Dickinson” (Sean Skipworth being the aforementioned dick).
“I’m not a fisherman ‘cause I’m from Brooklyn, but it’s a little like fishing,” Dolcefino said. “You put your pole in the water and let people know you’re looking for a fish. And you’d be surprised what jumps out.”
The arms of Dolcefino’s investigation are as many and far-reaching as the tentacles of a squid. His clients in Dickinson, whom he declined to name, have let him follow the story where he thinks it leads – and, according to Dolcefino, the story leads to a vindictive culture at City Hall.
“Some of the descriptions I have heard is that City Hall is now a hot mess and run as a dictatorship,” said Scott Shrader, a former city council member who is helping with a petition to recall the mayor. (Skipworth, for his part, said, “Accountability gets weaponized to be retaliation.”)
Dolcefino has fired a barrage of records requests at the city, which Skipworth called “harassment by PIR” and a “strategy to make things slow down and just tick people off till they want to quit.” He said they have cost tens of thousands of dollars. In March, Dolcefino sued Dickinson for allegedly improperly withholding records.
“He doesn’t like transparency,” Dolcefino said of the mayor.
The city put out a news alert in late 2022 warning that a “hired media consultant” would be putting out “misinformation” to “intimidate the city.” Dolcefino responded that the press release was just as good as a declaration of war, one he wages happily.
The other favorite target of Dolcefino’s videos and City Hall opponents is 39-year-old City Manager Theo Melancon, who was hired in June 2021. Melancon grew up in Louisiana with a police officer as a father and got interested in public service at a young age. The tangible nature of the city manager job appeals to him: He sometimes likes to drive the streets the city has repaved.
Opponents accuse Melancon of being a “bully.”
They point to a warrant issued for an alleged incident of domestic violence in January 2022; the charges were eventually dropped. Melancon said he got into an argument with his then-girlfriend and tried to leave and pushed her to the side when she tried to block the doorway. He was still, he said, terribly sorry about the situation.
Other critics cite a video of Melancon drinking into the night at a bar, allegedly on the city’s dime. (Melancon said part of his job includes socializing with developers.)
Dawn King called the video one of the last straws. “I thought, I don’t want THAT to be creating my city,” she said. “What can come out of a mind like that?”
King ran the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce for about eight years. She began the process of shutting it down, she said, after she alleged Skipworth and Melancon tried to bring it under their control.
“To make that argument, I don’t understand it,” Skipworth said. “There was no beef until essentially one day, a friend came up and told me that Dawn said I’m listening to the wrong people and she is, quote, lying in wait.”
King said the atmosphere in town hampered the work she’d done to bring in new businesses.
“It’s kind of sad,” Morales, the former chief, said. “I worry about my kids and grandkids. What is it going to be like for them?”
**
There was a time, not too long ago, when city council was largely free of fireworks. Citizens came to present grievances that one might expect in a community of its size: a neighborhood rooster that won’t stop crowing, a proposed residential home, the threat of encroaching vacation rentals.
The September city council meeting was nothing like that.
“I wanna say a few things,” Mayor Sean Skipworth said, after an hour-plus in executive session over whether to hire Rusty Hardin and an interlude of blistering public comment. His voice snagged. “The amount of vitriol and just the gaslighting that has gone on and has escalated over the past two years has become incredible.”
He went on: The narrative of the low-income apartment being “peddled” on social media was false. Most Dickinson residents knew, he said, that the city had been right to shut down the apartments. He was sick of the smearing. There had been–
“I’d like to say something,” a woman who frequently came to council piped up.
“You’re out of order,” Skipworth replied.
“No.”
“You’re out of order.”
“It’s–”
“We’re going to have to remove people from the room–”
“I’m not–”
“OK, would you please remove her from the room?”
“That’s just ridiculous, Sean–”
“OK, please leave. Thank you.”
The mayor waited to continue until she’d left the room.
“We can’t even have a discussion anymore,” he lamented.
While some prefer to stick to simplicity and send emails calling the mayor “an ahole and corrupt,” others enjoy more linguistically intricate insults: An election-season billboard dubbed him “Sean Skip-worthless” (wordplay aside, the mayor won reelection). In April 2022, the mayor said someone put a sticker on the front door of City Hall with his picture and a caption: “Con Shitworth.”
Some Dickinson Facebook debates escalate to threats. On a post about the mayor’s alleged corruption, someone commented: “This is Texas, get a rope.”
On another post, a commenter wrote, “These people need purging from the earth.
“You know how long crabs take to clean a corpse. Don’t ask how I know.”
For Melancon, the vitriol has transferred from the screen into the real world. In October, a post in a Dickinson Facebook group detailed his movements with alarming specificity: Driving to Dayton, picking up a rotisserie chicken from Brookshire Brothers, going to Tia Juanita Fish Camp, traveling to Louisiana to stay with family, having a meal at Billy’s Boudin & Cracklins. The post even mentioned the street name of Melancon’s family member’s house, a short, dead-end lane
in a town even smaller than Dickinson.
The post was accompanied by a video of Melancon driving his car into the garage of his brick house.
“It was quite sickening,” Melancon said. “Basically doxxing.”
**
Dickinson will always have its constants. Lindsey Crutchfield will pour beers at Ronnie’s Hog Heaven. Domingo Torres will watch Dickinson High School sports with pride. Cars will race by on I-45. But no one seems quite sure about where the town will go from here.
In early October, private investigator Wayne Dolcefino released a video with a title that was on many people’s minds: “Is Dickinson Doomed?”
Dawn King, mourning the closure of the chamber, thinks: Perhaps. She worries about the coming attorney’s fees, she said, stressing that the city’s financial future is already in dire straits with a lack of sales tax and promised projects not materializing.
By the beginning of 2024, the recall attempt was in full swing, plunging the town further into a vortex of nastiness. Those in favor of the recall went around town trying to get signatures; many of those opposed showed up to speak at a December city council meeting. Skipworth made a Facebook post alleging “signature harvesters” were on school property and had to be asked by police to leave. On Christmas Eve, someone posted a picture of Santa relieving himself into a chimney with
the caption: “Santa makes a quick stop at Sean Skipworth’s.” Some people, Skipworth said, accused him of everything from being a swinger to having an affair with Theo Melancon.
“You have to think about what comes later, who’s gonna want to be in public office that’s watching this,” Skipworth said. “One of their big goals is to get the city manager fired. Who’s gonna take that job? Who would take it? There’s absolutely a cost to it.”
At that fiery council meeting in September, before allegations about what happened to Michael Scurlock became public, before a group of citizens sent out a mailer with enumerated reasons to recall the mayor, before someone followed Theo Melancon across state lines and before a citizen implied that the best course of action to deal with the mayor was to hang him, seven speakers stood up to criticize City Hall.
Corruption, disrespect, lack of accountability, they said. Name-calling, political theater, abject failure to generate tax revenue. Drinking on the job.
The eighth speaker, a man who said he’d lived in Dickinson since 1988, took the mic.
“I think many good things are happening in Dickinson. Maybe there’s a few things that need to be changed or corrected, but there are some good things happening,” he said. “I believe all of you up here have our best interests at heart. Even if I don’t agree with you, I think you have our best interests at heart.”
