WE’VE GOT A LOT OF WORK TO DO
PHOTO CREDIT: Ed Schipul
Houston has put yet another city council election season in the books. Most of the city hardly noticed, as only 18% of us went to the polls. It seems election fatigue (we literally have two special elections for the state legislature coming next year as well as a delayed election for City Council District B, and we just finished two rounds of voting on local races) combined with the fact that local elections take place in odd-numbered years has made for low turnout.
That aside, these elections still had major cultural and political implications for our city. Each race told us something about the candidates and about cross-sections of the city.
Let’s look one by one:
MAYOR’S RACE
Sylvester Turner trounced Tony Buzbee handily in our mayoral race. This was not guaranteed, but it seemed to be the most likely outcome, even after Turner squeaked into office in his first mayor’s race and missed the cut for avoiding the runoff in November.
Most striking is that Buzbee turned out to be exactly what the Left had been saying he was for the entire cycle: a Trump-backed bigot. The day before the election, his campaign sent out an anti-trans mailer worthy of Steve Hotze, a hit piece leveraging pseudo-Christian discontent from rabid right Repos toward the trans community. That same day, Trump (who Buzbee has given hundreds of thousands of dollars) sent out a text encouraging voters to back Buzbee. When asked about the text, Buzbee said he was facing a “corrupt politician” and would take all the help he can get”.
Taking help from a corrupt racist politician to take on another corrupt politician doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that’s all water under the freeway. At this point, Turner is Mayor, catalyzing a recent common sentiment in cities across the United States: relief at the defeat of rabidly rightwing neofascist candidates coupled with disappointment at yet another neoliberal victory. Sometimes, you run out of options; that’s just how elections work.
The Left flank of the Democratic Party and Mayor Turner can now return to fighting among themselves and occasionally working together, though there is less leverage on Turner given that he is term-limited and has even more support on City Council than he had before the election. Activists will still pressure him over homelessness, group home ordinances, confederate monuments, the city building a bridge to be crossed by charter school advocates from City Hall to HISD, baby jails, the environment, and other issues. But in the meantime, for at least a little while, everyone will celebrate just a bit of relief from the prospects of Tony Buzbee packing City Hall with bigots.