Hobbs’ Estranged Wife: He Lied

Surprise, surprise. Former Fort Worth City Council candidate Marshall Hobbs backdated his lease in his attempt to qualify for this year’s District 8 election, according to his estranged wife, Nikee Hobbs. Marshall Hobbs is a pastor and a college adjunct professor at Eastfield College.

Nikee and her husband split up shortly after he lost the May 12 election. She called police on June 9 and accused him of domestic violence and again on Aug. 24 complaining of criminal mischief. She told police he put her in a chokehold, took television sets without permission, and poured bleach on her clothes. Later, she said, he cut off utilities at the house while she was still living there and paying the rent and bills.

“He’s very violent, verbally abusive,” she said. “He is supposed to be a pastor, and he doesn’t practice what he preaches.”

In the days leading up to the election, Hobbs wagged a finger in a reporter’s face and yelled, “You’re the reason the world hates the media!” Weekly scribe Jeff Prince questioned Hobbs about residency issues that seemed to render him ineligible to seek office (“Pesky Facts,” May 2, 2012).

The muscle-bound Hobbs, an avid bodybuilder, chewed out Prince in a public meeting in front of several dozen residents. Hobbs said he had lived on Oakland Boulevard since the previous July, thus meeting a requirement that candidates must live in their district for six months prior to filing for office.

City records, however, showed that water service wasn’t hooked up there until Jan. 2. After the city denied his application on residency issues, he filed a lawsuit and testified in court that he had lived on Oakland long enough to qualify for the ballot. He presented a lease dated July 1, 2011, and he prevailed in court. But he lost at the polls.

Prince tracked down a former tenant at the house who said she had lived there until September 2011 (“Another Hole in Hobbs’ Claim,” May 4, 2012).

“We moved into the house on Oakland in December,” Nikee said. “He backdated the lease and submitted that.”

Their short marriage quickly turned turbulent.

“During the campaign he spit in my face during another altercation,” she said. “I was married to him for about a year and a half. He would have violent outbursts and mood swings. Twice he put me in a chokehold, and I had to call police.”

The Fort Worth Police Officers Association endorsed Hobbs during the general election, but that was before Nikee started calling police and filing reports about her husband’s behavior.

“It’s a shame the police association wasn’t aware of his true character then. I’m sure they wouldn’t have supported him during the campaign,” she said.