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John Whitmire turned a huge war chest, a timely message on crime and distrust of his opponent into a resounding victory over Sheila Jackson Lee in the Houston mayor’s race Saturday, wrapping up a campaign he led from the start.

The influential state senator with modest roots will take office Jan. 1 as a powerful executive overseeing 23,000 employees serving 2.3 million residents, who have expressed growing unease about where the city is headed.

As mayor, Whitmire has promised to hire more police, settle a long-running contract dispute with firefighters, fix the streets and root out waste to ward off a looming fiscal cliff.

He will succeed Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is term-limited.

Both candidates in the nonpartisan runoff were Democrats. As a candidate, Whitmire ran a nearly error-free campaign that tapped into voter anxiety about public safety to build a coalition of Republicans, independents and moderate Democrats.

Jackson Lee, a well-known congresswoman who cast herself as the true Democrat and relied heavily on support from Black and progressive voters, trailed in the first round of the election and never had a breakthrough moment in the runoff.

Whitmire addressed a cheering crowd inside the George R. Brown Convention Center around 9:20 p.m. Saturday with a speech that repeated his campaign theme of change.

Whitmire promised to work with the firefighter and police unions, noting he had visited a police officer wounded in the line of duty on Saturday morning.

“I don’t mind telling folks what a great city we have, but we have great challenges,” Whitmire said. “We will not kick our can down the road any longer. We have so much to be thankful for. Tonight we’re going to celebrate. I want to shake your hands, but in the morning we go to work.”

Multiple news outlets declared Whitmire the winner after early returns showed that he had 64 percent of the advance vote to her 36 percent.

Minutes after Whitmire’s speech, Jackson Lee conceded defeat and promised to work with the winner.

“I am committed to doing what is necessary to make sure this is a great city,” she said.

Her loss sets up a quick decision for the longtime member of Congress. She has a Monday deadline to file papers to run for re-election. Former Houston City Councilmember Amanda Edwards already has announced in the 18th Congressional District race, as has Jackson Lee campaign volunteer Isaiah Martin.

On Saturday night, Jackson Lee did not answer directly when asked if she would run again.

“A public servant is always a public servant,” she said. “I’m alive and well and I’m going to make sure that I have the opportunity to continue to serve this great community.”

Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, predicted she will enter the race.

“I can’t imagine that someone who has had such a successful career as her would let the defeat in a mayoral race be the swan song of her career,” he said.

Longtime leader

Whitmire’s wide lead in early voting in the runoff came after a 6 percentage point edge in the first round.

Jackson Lee may have been doomed from the start by negative approval ratings, Jones said.

“Her relatively low ceiling and Sen. Whitmire’s high ceiling made it a race with an effectively foregone conclusion from the day she entered,” he said.

Whitmire had a built-in advantage as the more moderate of the two candidates in a runoff featuring two Democrats, said Mustafa Tameez, who served as campaign manager for former Mayor Bill White.

“Having two people from the same side, Sen. Whitmire was able to build a coalition that included Democrats and Republicans and independents,” he said.

Whitmire nodded to the coalition in comments at his victory party.

“Garbage pickup is not a Democrat or Republican issue. Houstonians understand that. I bring everyone to the table, and that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

Whitmire also got to work early on building support among Latinos, who make up about a fifth of registered voters. He blasted the airwaves with endorsements from state Sen. Carol Alvarado and U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, both Democrats.

Pointedly, Whitmire began his victory speech by handing the mic over to Alvarado and Garcia.

Garcia joked that since the start of the campaign, she has been recognized as “the one in John Whitmire’s TV ads.”

“And you know what, I said hell yes, because I’m doing everything I can to make sure John Whitmire is the next mayor of Houston. And we did it,” Garcia said.

Nancy Sims, a University of Houston political analyst, said before Election Day that Whitmire presented a vastly different alternative to Jackson Lee than the conservatives who took on Sylvester Turner in 2015 and 2019, she said.

“African-American and Latino voters don’t feel threatened by John Whitmire, so their inspiration to go vote is not as strong,” she said. “When it was Turner versus Bill King, that’s how people felt – he was so Republican-leaning, and suburban-oriented, that people felt like they might actually lose services.”

Low turnout

Turnout was low in the first round, and sparse polling places Saturday suggested that it would remain so for the runoff.

As she walked across an empty parking lot outside the West End Multi-Service Center to cast her vote, Zaira Butler expressed surprise at the lack of interest.

“I thought it would be more packed,” she said.

Even voters who did turn out Saturday expressed dissatisfaction with the field, according to polling place interviews.

“It’s more of a vote against someone than a vote for someone, unfortunately,” said Cheryl Morgan, who cast her ballot for Whitmire at the Linkwood Park polling station.

Whitmire appears to have drawn a hefty share of his total from voters who ardently disliked Jackson Lee. Some Whitmire supporters said his message on crime resonated with them.

“I just feel like he’s more qualified,” said Wendy Ramirez, a 54-year-old pharmacy community liaison who voted at Linkwood Park. “I believe we need police to keep order.”

Sergio Navarrete, a 42-year-old who lives in Fifth Ward, said he believes a bigger police force could address shootings and break-ins in his neighborhood. He said he thought Jackson Lee would represent a continuation of Turner.

“Honestly, I think Houston needed a change,” Navarrete said. “I really did not want Sheila Jackson Lee to win. … A lot of photo-ops. That’s what I see from her.”

Duane Quesinberry, a 57-year-old Mandell Place resident, said he thought Jackson Lee is too focused on race.

“I watched the debates, I gave her a chance,” Quesinberry said. “I tried being objective, and I wasn’t impressed.”

Still, Jackson Lee mustered a sizable share of the electorate. One supporter said she admired the congresswoman’s drive and outspokenness. Niki Wesley, a 54-year-old public school teacher who voted at the Ripley House in Second Ward, said her son once interned for Jackson Lee and got to watch her work ethic up close.

“She’s on the battlefield for my people,” Wesley said. “She’s always everywhere, fighting for some good cause.”

Course of the campaign

When Jackson Lee announced in March that she was running for mayor, she instantly shook up the campaign. In short order, two Black Democrats who had already announced, Chris Hollins and Edwards, exited to run for other offices.

“They had no choice but to get out. The congresswoman had roughly one third of the electorate,” Jones said.

Hollins defeated Orlando Sanchez in the Houston city controller runoff Saturday.

Yet, Jackson Lee’s vulnerability was apparent from the start, Jones added. In a July survey from the University of Houston, 48 percent of voters had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of her, compared to 8 percent of Whitmire. Fifty-six percent of independents and 83 percent of Republicans had a strongly unfavorable view of her.

Her message remained consistent from the start: As a longtime representative in Congress, she has the connections in Washington, D.C. to bring home more federal dollars. She also said she had the vigor to be “the fighter we need to build the city we deserve,” in the words of her website.

Whitmire, 74, introduced himself to voters early, with advertisements describing his 50-year tenure in the Texas Legislature and his encounter with an armed robber in his garage in 1992, an experience he says shaped his views on criminal justice.

Whitmire’s message hinged on his longtime role at the Texas Capitol as chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, where he oversaw sweeping changes in the state’s penal code in the 1990s that helped drive up incarceration rates and later reforms in the 2000s.

He promised to work with Republicans in Austin, while Jackson Lee adopted a more confrontational posture toward state leaders.

By the end of the race, Jackson Lee was echoing the thrust if not the words of Whitmire’s pledge to be “smart but tough” on crime. Whitmire proved more convincing to voters, according to Jones.

“Crime without question was the marquee issue of this race. It’s the one issue that unites virtually all Houstonians, with the possible exception of white Democrats,” he said. “Sheila Jackson Lee realized as well that crime was a top issue for voters. So, she said the right things. The problem is, she doesn’t have the same track record as Whitmire.”

Jackson Lee held a press conference with supporters from around the region Friday afternoon in a last-minute bid to rebut mailers claiming that she wants to defund the police.

“I couldn’t let the election finish … without setting the record straight,” she said.

On other issues, the candidates more often converged than diverged. Jackson Lee tried to find a wedge issue in the race’s final days by promising not to cut city services.

After her disappointing showing in the first round, pundits said Jackson Lee’s best chances in a runoff victory lay in some combination of depressing conservative voter turnout while boosting supporter turnout.

A series of gaffes that began with Jackson Lee reporting a campaign donation from a dead woman continued with her campaign putting out an ad that had the wrong date for the runoff. Overall, however, Jones credited her with a good campaign.

“Her campaign really wasn’t bad. I think she was heavily constrained by not having enough resources,” he said.

Whitmire started the race with $10 million in his campaign account, and he held onto his mammoth fundraising advantage through the end. She had $235,000 left in her campaign account on Nov. 29, compared to Whitmire’s $3.3 million going into the final days, according to campaign finance reports.

Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis mentioned the disparity as he introduced Jackson Lee for her speech Saturday night.

“You were outspent, but you weren’t outworked,” Ellis told her supporters. “Sometimes we fall down, but we always get back up.”

At public forums over the past two weeks, Whitmire deflected Jackson Lee’s attacks while projecting an air of confidence. 

“There were no unforced errors by him. That’s a big deal,” Tameez said. “If the administration runs that way, we will all be the beneficiaries as Houstonians.”

Still, some of the digs from Jackson Lee’s camp clearly left an impression on Whitmire, who began his speech by saying he had been attacked and his record misrepresented.

“Well tonight, I’m smiling, and I’m smiling for the city of Houston,” he said.

Reporters Paul Cobler, Monique Welch and Akhil Ganesh contributed to this story.

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