With Covid Money Gone, Cash-Strapped Houston’s Mayoral Candidates Forced To Temper Their Campaign Promises

On Saturday, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and a Texas state senator, John Whitmire, will face off in a runoff election at Houston centering on the Democratic city’s relationship to the Republican state government as well as two issues almost all American cities are grappling with — post-Covid crime and a housing crisis. The runoff was triggered after neither Ms. Jacskson Lee nor Mr. Whitmire were able to win an outright majority in the city’s election in November. Mr. Whitmire received 42.5 percent of the vote, and Ms. Jackson Lee received 35.6 percent in the initial election.In a University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll from October, Mr. Whitmire appeared to have the advantage in a head-to-head race against Ms. Jackson Lee, leading her 50 percent to 36 percent.Early voting before for the November election began just days after audio was leaked to multiple Houston news outlets of Ms. Jackson Lee grilling a staffer in an expletive laden rant. It’s not clear how the pre-election scandal might have affected her support.The race between the two Democrats has focused on crime, post-Covid budget issues, and the rising cost of housing in the booming Texas city. It has also focused on the perceived alliances of the two candidates.Mr. Whitmire has made it clear that, if elected, he intends to try to repair the city’s strained relationship with the conservative state government at Austin, where he has served for decades.“The city of Houston has to work with Austin,” Mr. Whitmire said in a debate. “We have valuable state resources that we’re not receiving because of the poor relationship between City Hall and the Capitol.”The state government has worked in recent years to disempower Houstonians from maintaining local control of their city, with the state legislature voting to give power over Houston elections to the Harris County clerk and other county officials.Mr. Whitmire has also signaled his intention to work with Harris County law enforcement in an effort to speed up the processing of violent criminal offenders and to incorporate Texas Department of Public Safety troopers into policing plans, according to a report by the Texas Tribune.Voters expressed support for a change in how law enforcement is conducted at Houston in the University of Houston survey, with 62 percent supporting hiring as many as 600 new local police officers.A majority of respondents also supported a $25 million budget for mental health professionals to be hired to respond to mental health crises — 56 percent — and supported measures to improve the relationship between the Houston Police Department and the Black and Latino communities — 57 percent.A veteran Democratic congresswoman, Ms. Jackson Lee has criticized Mr. Whitmire for his ties to monied Republican donors at Houston and his plan to extend an olive branch to the state legislature, which has antagonized the city in recent years.“I will also be someone who is willing to stand up to a state that wants to overturn our elections [and] wants to ensure that our City Council can’t do their job by passing laws,” Ms. Jackson Lee said at a debate.Ms. Jackson Lee has allied herself with national Democrats and has received support from both Congressman Beto O’Rourke and Senator Clinton, who will be visiting Houston to support Ms. Jackson Lee on Friday.On Housing, Ms. Jackson Lee has promised to appoint a housing czar dedicated to coordinating affordable housing development at Houston. She has also expressed support from new construction incentives, rent control programs, and stronger eviction protections. Evictions soared at the Houston area following the Covid moratorium.Mr. Whitmire has promised to audit the city’s housing and permitting departments and has promised to expand rental and foreclosure assistance if elected.The next mayor of Houston will also be tasked with resolving a budget shortfall that was exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. The city was selling properties to balance its budget before the pandemic and received more than one billion dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act, which helped balance its budget during the pandemic.Now, the Houston’s controller, Chris Brown, is signaling that the city is facing a substantial budget shortfall expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.“The challenge is we’ve become addicted to that money,” Mr. Brown told Houston Public Media. “Instead of using that funding to narrow our structural budget imbalance, which at the time was probably about $180 million, we used this one-time money to fund recurring expenditures.”These budgetary issues will have implications not only for the fiscal well-being of the city but also for other priorities that voters expressed in the University of Houston poll, like street conditions, trash collections, and issues with flooding.Saturday’s election does not only have implications for the future of Houston. If Ms. Jackson Lee is elected, she will have to leave her seat in Congress, which would give Republicans in the state congressional delegation a three-seat majority, up from their current two seat majority.

With Covid Money Gone, Cash-Strapped Houston’s Mayoral Candidates Forced To Temper Their Campaign Promises

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