A wave of disappointment in Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s performance is growing among Harris County Democrats, but it’s unclear whether their activism will be enough to defeat the mayor in a 2027 election.
Citing Whitmire’s appearance at a Republican fundraiser, perceived support of Trump-era immigration policies, and a city budget that slashed services while granting a historic police funding increase, Harris County Democrats say they don’t want to endorse the longtime politician for another term.
At a June 22 press conference, Democratic Party precinct chairs announced their intent to move forward with an admonishment, a symbolic act that essentially means they will no longer claim the mayor as a member of their party. The Houston mayor and City Council positions are nonpartisan, but Whitmire served as a Democrat in the Texas Legislature for 50 years.
An admonishment takes a long time. It has to go through the party’s resolutions committee and a steering committee before a vote is taken by the County Executive Committee. That won’t likely happen until late September, party officials said.
“It’s an expression of disapproval,” said Mike Doyle, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party.
If it happens, it would be the first time the Harris County Democrats have admonished a Houston mayor. And although it’s just symbolic, it can be powerful. Harris County Dems say the party’s 2023 admonishment of former District Attorney Kim Ogg is likely what caused her to get trounced by Sean Teare in last year’s primary.
“I think there’s no doubt that the attention paid to it, the discussions it caused, her statements about it, the brouhaha overall, in retrospect, was kind of anticipatory of where she’s at right now,” Doyle said. Ogg has stopped short of announcing she’s switched parties but has said publicly she wants to weed the Democrats out of Harris County’s public offices and is likely seeing a Trump appointment as a U.S. attorney.
Whitmire’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Precinct Chair Cameron “Coach Cam” Campbell, a former University of Houston football standout, is among those leading the charge to remove Whitmire from the party.
“There’s one thing that athletics taught me: You don’t have to be friends to be teammates,” Campbell said. “What makes a teammate a teammate is sitting in the boat and rowing in the same direction. Anybody in the boat not rowing in the same direction is not a teammate, and that’s why we’re having this conversation.”
Whitmire won the mayor’s race in a 2023 runoff against Sheila Jackson Lee, who was endorsed by Whitmire’s predecessor, former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. Mayoral terms are four years, and Whimite has said publicly it will “take eight years to fix Houston,” signaling an intent to seek re-election. But if the Dems want him out in ‘27, who’s the alternative?
Houston Controller Chris Hollins’ name was suggested at the June 22 press conference. Hollins ran against Whitmire in 2023 but pulled out of the race when Jackson Lee announced her candidacy. Local government watchers have speculated that at least one current Houston City Council member, District J’s Edward Pollard, could make a run.
Pollard held a fundraiser earlier this month and has about $400,000 in his coffers. Campaign finance reports are due July 15 and may be an indicator of who is planning to make a bid for mayor. But it’s still early; Pollard could be preparing to run for something else. Whitmire raised at least $7 million during his 2023 mayoral campaign, according to reports.
Update: 9 p.m. Monday, June 30, 2025: Following publication of this story, a spokesman for Pollard’s campaign clarified that Pollard has raised more than $1 million.
The fact that Whitmire defeated Jackson Lee, a champion for the Black community, and has frequently blamed Turner’s administration for the problems of today has caused a rift between the mayor and some Black voters, who refer to him as “White mire.”
“A lot of things he does are not transparent, like a thief in the night,” said Doris Brown, a co-director for the nonprofit disaster preparedness group West Street Recovery. “He came in and changed things. He’s a bully. He’s ‘walk away Whitmire.’ Sometimes when we come to talk [during a City Council public comment session], he gets up and leaves. It’s disrespectful.”
Houston, unlike Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, has a strong mayor form of government through which the mayor, rather than a city manager, proposes the budget and hires and fires department heads.
In his first 100 days in office, Whitmire appointed seven new department directors. As of last summer, at least 12 department heads and senior officials had resigned or left his administration. Critics say the new leaders, including Finance Director Melissa Dubowski, Airport Director Jim Szczesniak, Housing and Community Development Director Mike Nichols, Public Works Director Randy Macchi, and Chief of Staff Cynthia Wilson, are “yes men and women,” specifically tapped to do the mayor’s bidding.
But Mayor Whitmire has scored some big wins during his tenure at City Hall, said Nancy Sims, a political science lecturer at the University of Houston.
“Whitmire is a really popular mayor,” she said. “There are factions of the community that are upset with him about bike paths and traffic and METRO. There are certainly pockets of voters who are upset with him, but for the most part, I think the general attitude of the Houston voter is that he’s doing a good job. I don’t think the Democratic clubs passing these resolutions will have a significant impact on him.”
Sims refers to the mayor as “Mr. Fix It,” noting that he’s cleaned up messy police and fire contracts and lobbied the legislature for funding to build a $4.2 billion East Water Purification Plant.
“He wants to fix what’s wrong and get it done,” she said. “A lot of people are unhappy with the long-term financial ramifications of [the police and fire] contracts, but at the same time, he stopped both departments from bleeding personnel. He said public safety was his No. 1 priority and he got in there; the contract had been up in the air for 10 years with the firefighters, and he fixed it. Same with the police contract. He got in there and fixed it.
“Sure, it’s going to add to the city debt down the road, but in the meantime, you’ve got police salaries and fire department salaries that are competitive in the region and you’re not losing everybody you train within a year.”
Whitmire publicly addressed a couple of the key points raised by the Dems at a Tejano Democrats meeting in May. He attended the fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican, because he wants to foster relationships with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, some of whom chair important committees, because they can support federal funding for Houston projects, Whitmire said at the time.
“Nothing has changed in my values and who I am,” he said. “I have to work with people to get things done. It has nothing to do with agreeing with [Crenshaw] on much of his philosophy. It has to do with looking out for Houstonians. We’re underfunded, our infrastructure is broken, but more important is our water supply. It’s very fragile.”
The fundraiser appearance signaled that Whitmire was no longer a teammate, Campbell said.
“Let’s be crystal clear,” Campbell said. “The most important thing in politics is votes. The second most important thing in politics is money because you take that money to go engage with folks and get them to come out and vote. For every dollar that was raised for Dan Crenshaw, and Whitmire had a part in it, was a dollar against Democrats.”
The Houston Progressive Caucus also weighed in on the Crenshaw fundraiser. The Progressives’ mission is to “win elections, build working-class power, and steer the Democratic Party back toward the values of opportunity and justice for working-class Texans.”
“Whitmire’s fundraiser for Crenshaw is an endorsement of his policy priorities,” Houston Progressives said in an April statement. “There are over a million Houstonians on Medicaid, and Crenshaw has and is voting to defund it by over $880 billion. That, the tariffs, the DOGE cuts, and much more will devastate the city’s finances.”
Sims said Whitmire’s appearance at the Crenshaw fundraiser speaks to his “fix-it” mentality.
“I feel like he just walks around with his pliers in his pocket, like, how can I fix it?” Sims said. “It’s like, I need federal money to build my water plant. Let me go talk to the Republicans. How are you going to get it without talking to the Republicans?”
As for whether the mayor is cooperating or collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport Houstonians, Whitmire has said he’s simply following the law. When a person interacts with Houston law enforcement and has an active warrant from ICE or another jurisdiction, officers are required to pass that information along to the agency that holds the warrant, officials have said.
“The City of Houston is not ICE or focused on immigration enforcement but will hold all violent offenders accountable regardless of their immigration status,” the mayor said in a May statement. “HPD enforces state laws and will hold violators of state law, ALL violent offenders, accountable regardless of immigration status.”
Carlos Alvriño, an American citizen and the son of Peruvian immigrants, spoke at the press conference about President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies and how Whitmire appears to be supporting them. Again, the mayor has said that the Houston Police Department is following the law.
Reports of a woman being referred to ICE after calling HPD to report a domestic violence situation surfaced recently, prompting more fear in the immigrant community. Some have said undocumented people cannot report crimes, even if they weren’t directly involved, because they don’t want to be detained or deported.
On the matter of the $7 billion city budget, Whitmire said he’d voted on many budgets in his career and “it’s always easy to find fault.”
“There is no such thing as a perfect budget,” he said at a June 4 meeting. “It’s so easy to be against something, particularly when you don’t have to offer up any solutions. Anyone can be a critic and politicize a budget or any other actions we take.
“I’m proud of the budget. We were told we couldn’t do it, we couldn’t balance it, by political critics. We ignored and went forward. We have a lot of work to do. This is a giant step, but we need to now talk to Houstonians, going forward, about what type of city they want to live in.”
Neurologist Dr. Audrey Nath spoke at the press conference earlier this month, lamenting a planned $2 million cut to the Houston Health Department in the city budget.
“Normally the Houston Health Department receives about half of its funding from federal sources but these have already been slashed, so the Houston Health Department has already had to deal with layoffs and cut hours,” she said.
Because of the funding cuts in the Houston budget, the health department has to decrease services, including its mobile vaccination unit and HIV prevention and treatment, Nath said.
Jake Ortiz, who was injured in a cycling accident after Whitmire made abrupt changes to Austin Street bike lanes, said the mayor’s policies have “real-life consequences for the people who are in the communities that [he] is supposed to serve and lead.”
Thus far, about 50 elected precinct chairs have backed a resolution for Whitmire’s admonishment. The party has about 591 precinct chairs who will ultimately vote on the matter in the fall, Doyle said. At that time, Whitmire and his supporters will have a chance to speak before the executive committee prior to a vote on the admonishment.
As the presiding officer of the Harris County Democratic Executive Committee, Doyle said he had to defer comment on Whitmire’s admonishment, but said he personally finds it “incredibly disappointing” that the mayor attended Crenshaw’s fundraiser.
“That’s not something I would ever see in someone who is supporting Democratic values,” Doyle said. “Helping raise money for people who support Trump’s agenda, lockstep, is never a good look. I think that kind of stuff concerns people. There’s a lot of public concern.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
