<\/p>\n
Houston Mayor John\u00a0Whitmire speaks at a Hurricane Beryl press conference alongside\u00a0Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Public Utility Commission Chairman Thomas\u00a0Gleeson and state emergency management chief Nim Kidd, July 15.<\/p>\n
Raquel Natalicchio\/Staff photographer<\/p>\n
If you want to understand why Houston City Hall is currently embroiled in a heated debate<\/a> over immigration policy, you have to understand how Mayor John Whitmire was shaped by his long political career in the Texas Senate.<\/p>\n That resume may sound pretty similar to his predecessor, Sylvester Turner, who was a state representative for nearly 27 years. But the Texas Senate and the Texas House could not be more different \u2014 and those distinctions explain an awful lot about what\u2019s happening at City Hall.<\/p>\n You see, the state House is nominally run by the Speaker. That leadership role is elected by the members themselves \u2014 the inmates are in charge of the asylum. Accordingly, speakers have an incentive to prioritize consensus-building and representatives\u2019 individual agendas over large partisan goals. As Rep. Pete Laney, the last Democratic speaker, used to put it: \u201cMembers, vote your districts.\u201d Finding success in the Texas House requires building relationships with politicians who represent all sorts of different districts \u2014 and all sorts of different interests. It takes communication and compromise.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Whitmire, on the other hand, spent 40 years in the state Senate. That legislative body operates under the thumb of the lieutenant governor \u2014 who, unlike the speaker, is independently elected by the voters. Finding success in the Senate relies less on building coalitions and managing relationships with other senators than simply being in the good graces of the powerful lieutenant governor. When he was a young state senator, Whitmire was lucky enough to have Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock as a political patron,<\/a> as longtime Houston political writer\u00a0Tim Fleck put it. That\u2019s how Whitmire ended up chairing the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, got his name on the Texas Monthly\u2019s list of \u201cten best\u201d legislators and built his reputation as a serious lawmaker.<\/p>\n But Whitmire is still acting like he\u2019s just another state senator rather than the independently elected mayor of the fourth-largest city in the United States. Only there\u2019s a different political head honcho one step above him on the political totem pole: Gov. Greg Abbott. Consider how quickly he wants to yield to Abbott\u2019s insistence that the city repeal its immigration ordinance. The new policy requires Houston police officers not detain people beyond the legal purpose of a stop. So let\u2019s say a cop pulls someone over for speeding and their database shows a civil immigration warrant, the officer is still required to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but not wait after issuing a ticket for federal agents to arrive.\u00a0<\/p>\n Abbott believes the ordinance interferes with immigration enforcement. That\u2019s not what Whitmire seemed to think when he voted for it. But he quickly changed his mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n As he said at a Tuesday press conference<\/a>: \u201cThere\u2019s only one opinion that matters, and that\u2019s the governor\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In Whitmire\u2019s political world, the members aren\u2019t free to vote their districts.<\/p>\n The problem with this attitude is that the people of Houston didn\u2019t elect a mayor to follow the governor\u2019s orders or play legislative games \u2014 they elected someone to lead. That\u2019s where Whitmire struggles, especially on immigration issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n This ordinance vote isn\u2019t Whitmire\u2019s first immigration flip-flop. After President Trump was elected in 2024, the mayor insisted that HPD officers didn\u2019t assist<\/a> federal deportation efforts. At the time, he said enforcing immigration wasn\u2019t the city\u2019s job<\/a> and declared Trump to be a \u201cdemagogue.\u201d Then the mayor changed his message.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m not going to say that we’re not cooperating with ICE, because that’s frankly not true,” Whitmire said<\/a> less than a year into the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n He also played a game of political two-step during the day of the vote itself, claiming that city officials didn’t check immigration status despite local media documenting a litany of cases where people called police for help<\/a> only to have ICE called on them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Inconsistent on his message. Inconsistent on his vote. One can imagine that these sorts of political shenanigans might work in the state Senate, where the goal is to sneak language into bills without anybody noticing and do whatever it takes to get your legislation passed as long as the lieutenant governor is happy. But when you\u2019re the executive, it\u2019s weak. If anything, Whitmire comes off looking less like a Bob Bullock-style statesman and more like a different senator trying for an executive role \u2014 John Kerry. The Democratic nominee for president infamously stumbled<\/a> on the 2004 campaign trail when he tried to explain his position on a military funding bill, saying he \u201cactually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s basically Whitmire\u2019s position on immigration \u2014 and it landed the city in the exact sort of fight with Republicans in Austin that the mayor long promised he would help<\/a> Houstonians avoid.\u00a0<\/p>\n Turner, on the other hand, was able to navigate politically tricky waters \u2014 George Floyd protests<\/a>, for example \u2014 without unduly angering either police or most activists. In fact, throughout his time in office, Turner built a reputation as someone who moderated on his policies and built consensus around controversial issues. When I wrote about his first term for Texas Monthly<\/a>, I was pleasantly surprised to talk to business leaders who supported his 2015 opponent, Bill King, but backed Turner for reelection specifically because he reached out to them and seriously considered their perspectives on issues facing City Hall. In fact, the only time Turner seemed to lose control over local politics was when the firefighters union \u2014 which has a history of refusing to compromise<\/a> \u2014 circumvented political processes at City Hall and forced a referendum vote to get themselves pay parity with police.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t hard to imagine a mayor like Sylvester Turner working from the very beginning on immigration, getting all of the interest groups to the table, being bluntly honest about how\u00a0HPD does and doesn\u2019t work with ICE, and coming up with a compromise that helped to turn down the temperature \u2014 and maybe even improved local policies, too.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Of course, that would require someone who learned how to be a politician in the House rather than the Senate. But more than that, it would take leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Mayor John\u00a0Whitmire speaks at a Hurricane Beryl press conference alongside\u00a0Gov. 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