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Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner on Wednesday defended his record on diversity and demanded an apology from state Sen. John Whitmire over his comments at a mayoral debate earlier this week.
Speaking at a City Council meeting, Turner accused Whitmire of blowing a “dog whistle” when he claimed at a debate on Monday that the mayor had failed to appoint Asian and Hispanic leaders.
Turner said Whitmire had suggested there was only “one look” at City Hall because some top leaders, such as Police Chief Troy Finner, are Black.
“To imply that there is no diversity and there is only one look, that’s a dog whistle,” Turner said. “I’ve lived 69 years. I know when you’re sending a dog whistle. This city deserves better. It deserves better. And I’m not going to let that slide.”
The mayor’s pointed comments came in the waning days of a mayoral race in which support has split sharply along racial and ethnic lines. Whitmire holds a wide lead among white voters and a significant one among Asian and Hispanic voters, according to a recent poll. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s chances rest on high turnout from Black voters.
The campaign stayed relatively tame during its first round, but it is taking on a harsher tone as Whitmire and Jackson Lee vie for support in the runoff. Race has emerged as a flashpoint.
During the Monday debate, Jackson Lee said Whitmire, as chair of the state Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee since the early 1990s, presided over an explosion in the number of Black and Latino Texans sent to prison.
Whitmire said Jackson Lee was trying to divide Houstonians along racial lines. Meanwhile, he attacked Turner, who has endorsed Jackson Lee, over his record on diversity at City Hall.
“We are the most diverse city in the nation, something to be proud of,” Whitmire said. “But City Hall does not represent that diversity. Look at the department heads. Pull them up. Google them. Look at who's running the city of Houston. It's not the Asian community. The Hispanic community is severely underrepresented. Let's practice what we're so proud of. Let's bring everyone together.”
Turner zeroed in on those comments Wednesday. He said many top appointees – including City Attorney Arturo Michel, Fire Chief Samuel Peña, former Police Chief Art Acevedo, Metro chair Sanjay Ramabhadran, Agenda Director Marta Crinejo and Chief Resilience and Sustainability Officer Priya Zachariah – come from the communities Whitmire alleged the city is lacking.
“To say that there is no diversity in the top levels of City Hall is a blatant misrepresentation. He owes me an apology. Quite frankly, he owes the city of Houston an apology,” Turner said.
Whitmire’s campaign declined to comment.
Diversity at City Hall has long been a political issue, with a lawsuit from the League of United Latin American Citizens last December highlighting the fact that the city has a sole Latino City Council member despite Latinos making up 44 percent of the population.
Jeronimo Cortina, an associate professor of political science at the University of Houston, said the back-and-forth brought up the long-running question of whether political leaders need to look like their constituents.
“Descriptive representation means that those who are making decisions are a representative sample of the constituency that they are representing,” Cortina said. “Then, on the other hand, you have substantive representation, and what substantive representation means is that those who are making the decisions are representing the needs and wants of the population they represent.”
Cortina said he was not aware of an in-depth study of diversity in Turner’s administration, which would be complicated by the question of which officials held the most power.
Voters across all ethnic groups expressed a fairly favorable view of Turner’s job performance, according to a Houston Chronicle/Houston Public Media/University of Houston poll released Monday.
The same survey also showed the split in support for Whitmire and Jackson Lee across racial and ethnic lines.
Few of the candidates in the first round of the election sought to highlight racial or ethnic issues, according to Cortina.
The major exceptions were former Metro chair Gilbert Garcia and District I Councilmember Robert Gallegos, Cortina said, “but in a very subtle way, and in a way that is also part of the candidate. Not in a divisive way. It was like, ‘Hey, I'm Latino, I would be the first Latino mayor.’ That is a fact.”
Early voting runs through Dec. 5. The runoff is Dec. 9.
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