We’ve talked before about Recall Houston and how that effort may play out, given the many obstacles that any such effort faces. I’ve been very curious to learn more about who is behind this effort and where they believe they are in moving it forward. On Monday, CityCast Houston produced an interview with one of the people behind Recall Houston, which answered some of my questions.
Please note that the Share function I used to embed the above defaults to putting the latest episode at the top. Scroll down for the episode entitled “Can These Houstonians Really Kick Mayor Whitmire out of Office?”, which as of Tuesday, April 22 is the second episode listed.
In short, Alejandro Alegria is the person speaking on behalf of Recall Houston. In terms of the issues and grievances, and the mechanics of doing a recall, there’s not much new. Alegria says they’re fundraising and hopes to have paid and volunteer canvassers out there soon collecting signatures, in neighborhoods that have protested against Whitmire’s car-centric priorities, and at places like Daikin Park and Shell Energy Stadium where there are big crowds. He did say that they were in conversation with some local politicians but couldn’t give any details. The impression I got is that they would like to put something on the November 2025 ballot. Once they start collecting signatures that 30-day deadline to get enough of them kicks in, so when and if that happens we’ll know where we are,
I can’t say I heard anything that made me less skeptical of this effort. I mean, Dallas couldn’t mount a successful effort against their turncoat Mayor, who I’d guess has a lower approval rating than Mayor Whitmire and a much more partisan reason to be targeted for this kind of thing. This stuff is just hard, and takes a lot of money to get going. Whether signature-gathering is in effect soon or not, we’ll surely know something by early July when the June finance reports are in. Either Recall Houston has raised a bunch of money to enable them to do the things they want to do, or, well, we’ll see you in 2027. Stay tuned.