This week on Houston Matters, Craig Cohen hosted John Whitmire to discuss his candidacy for mayor. The program requested the audience to call in and ask questions or email them to the show.

The host only took one question, and it ended up being mine: 

“Why would Houstonians vote for a decidedly conservative candidate with a Democratic label that instead of solving problems from the core is using Republican talking points on crime and more. Shouldn’t we be fearful that your support is from major Republican donors who also supported election deniers and funded their causes?”

Whitmire answered: 

“I have a voting record. I voted against most of the things he’s concerned about. I have a voting record on everything you want to bring up. The financial support is the same financial support the current mayor received and some of the same my opponents have had in their receptions, homes, and hotels. Some of the businesses have looked to see who is akin to being a public servant.”

His answer may have impressed a few, but it would be dangerous to believe him.

Funded By Republicans

Whitmire’s claim that his donors overlap with those of Mayor Turner or his opponents’ donors is at best dubious, and closer to completely false. Whitmire’s finance chair is Tilman Fertitta. Only one candidate’s finance chair is a billionaire who gave more than $250,000 to Greg Abbott, $100,000 to Dan Patrick, and $20,000 to Ken Paxton in the last year alone.

Only one candidate has taken massive funding from Mattress Mack and Richard Weekley, some of the main local funders of Alex MAGA Mealer. Mack gave Mealer more than half a million (with a “M”) dollars; Weekley kicked in $400,000 of his own. They’ve both rained large amounts of money on John Whitmire.

Mealer infamously launched a bogus lawsuit to overturn the 2022 Harris County election, crying sour grapes after losing to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. In the home stretch of that election, John Whitmire took a veiled shot at Hidalgo based on an absurd lie regarding the funding of Harris County law enforcement.

I’d dispel Whitmire’s nonsense myself, but Hidalgo’s response at the time was better than any phrasing I could come up with: 

“It’s not just funny, it’s sad that someone would echo that. You know why John Whitmire’s saying that? Because he’s running for office and he’s willing to pander just like these Trump sycophants are willing to pander and say the election was stolen.”

Of note in that cycle was that MAGA Mealer was given $100,000 by a far right PAC called Defend Texas Liberty. Defend Texas Liberty has since been busted directly hiring, supporting, and strategizing with notorious Nazis, including Nick Fuentes.

The only candidate with funders who are tied into the Defend Texas Liberty web is John Whitmire. Any implications otherwise are false.

And that’s the problem. At a time when democracy is under fire from far right influences at the local, state, and national level, we don’t need a mayor who was funded by their friends, nor one who thinks he can “work with them.”

Going Along to Get Along (With Extremists)

Negotiating with people who don’t believe in democracy is always dangerous. It should be a prerequisite to any candidacy and anyone engaged in that candidacy, even (maybe especially) in local elections.

As my brother Neil Aquino says as part of his Houston Democracy Project: 

“A shift in how these races are run will only happen if Houstonians take the lead. It is moderate and mainstream to insist freedom be protected. Without democracy, there is no public safety. It is extremist to look the other way. Our candidates and officials must meet the challenges of the day, and by signing up to serve as our elected leaders have a responsibility to do so.”

John Whitmire has quite often said he wants to get along and leverage his relationships with “Austin.” And this much is true: John Whitmire has deep relationships in “Austin.”  He has been there for more than fifty years. But what does he mean when he says “Austin?” 

Whitmire is the only Democrat in the Texas Senate with a committee chair. That chair was given to him by the head of the Senate, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. In the Texas House, many Democrats chair committees. When Patrick originally entered office, Democrats had nearly one third of the chairs. The chamber was more balanced.

But now, at the suggestion of conservative activists and Texas Republican Party Chair Matt Rinaldi, the Senate is down to one chair, and the only one they found acceptable was Whitmire.

Has that moderated or changed the agenda of the Texas Legislature?

No. In fact, our most recent Texas Legislative session has been one of the most painful, extremist, heartbreaking sessions ever. Greg Abbott’s beloved Death Star bill prevents cities from making their own regulations within state law. The state aimed a gun at our elections, eliminating our elections administrator and granting themselves the right to intervene based on extremely thin administrative complaints. They mandated armed guards at schools. A bill to raise the age to purchase assault rifles from 18 to 21, heavily supported by the community of Uvalde after its tragic school shooting, failed to pass; the Uvade shooter was notably under 21, so the bill could prevent similar events in the future. Big oil received sweetheart production incentives. Climate bills “withered.” Trans bashing was all the rage as rightwing lawmakers used kids as fodder in their culture wars. And now we are in for a special session focused on privatizing the Texas school system through a voucher scam. 

Did John Whitmire vote “the right way” on many of these policies? Sure.

But did his relationships with “Austin” help us?

No. The only person they helped was John Whitmire, who was named by Texas Monthly as one of the worst legislators of the session, partly because of the way he used his pulpit as a Senator to push rightwing talking points that he believed would bolster his mayoral race this November:

“He turned the Criminal Justice Committee, which he chairs, into a platform for monologues that seemed tailor-made for voters who watch a lot of alarmist TV news. “Seniors come up to me and say, ‘Senator Whitmire, please do something, because we don’t leave the house after five o’ clock,’ because they’re afraid,” he declared at one hearing. 

The fact is Houston is getting safer. Homicides have dropped 28 percent from last year, and overall violent crime is down 12 percent in the first quarter of 2023, compared with the same period last year. That didn’t stop Whitmire from shepherding bills through his committee aimed at locking up more defendants before trial. “Harris County has been ground zero for the fight over criminal justice, and he’s been missing in action,” said a Houston criminal-justice reform advocate.

Maybe Whitmire is just ensuring that donors such as Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta and Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale continue to fund his mayoral campaign. It’s a pitiful way to behave in what could be the last session of his long legislative career.” 

The Wrong Approach in the Wrong Era

2023 is a very dangerous time to play games with Texas Republicans, who are currently brimming with Nazis. Whitmire’s connection to the wrong donors and willingness to play ball with them put us all in danger, no matter what party label he wears.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Charles Kuffner analyzed the race a few days ago, and walked away with a conclusion that was similar to the one I have:

“I have two major reservations about his candidacy. One, which I’ve touched on before, is that I think bringing DPS troopers to Houston, even on a scope-limited basis, is a bad idea. They’re not accountable to a Houston Mayor, and so unleashing something we can’t control has all kinds of downside risk. If we had a trustworthy state government – hell, if we had a state government that wasn’t bent on our destruction – I could be talked into this. But we don’t, and as we should know from decades of horror movies, letting the vampire into your house never ends well. Ask Kirk Watson about that.

Two is a broader expression of that first point. Senator John Whitmire, with his fifty years in the Capital and personal relationships with anyone who ever was anyone in Austin, is confident that that experience and those personal relationships with the various power brokers and other People Of Influence will be to Houston’s benefit as Mayor. And again, if we had a non-malevolent state government, I would not only agree with that, I’d tout it as a unique strength that Whitmire has…

The problem is that many of those challenges are the result of the state putting its boot on our neck. Even before the “Death Star” bill, there’s been an inexorable march towards taking away the ability of cities to govern themselves. Republicans in the Legislature and their seething primary voters, including those who live in these cities, see us as a decadent force that needs to be dominated. They’re not interested in nice bipartisan solutions to thorny problems; quite the reverse. I don’t doubt that John Whitmire could get Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and Dade Phelan and whoever else on the phone and tell them what Houston’s needs are (and aren’t) and ask them to help us out. What I do doubt is that they will see any reason or incentive to do their part.” 
In other words, Houston doesn’t need a mayor who will sit down for supper with state MAGAs.

We need one who will stand up to them.

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