Nothing we didn’t already know, but a nice story nonetheless.
Mayor Annise Parker
Annise Parker keeps a leather-bound journal on the desk in her wood-paneled office in City Hall. If it had a title, she says, it would be: “Would This Have Happened to Another Mayor?” Its pages are filled with her cursive script of the stories she could tell about being the first openly gay mayor of a major American metropolis.
Parker is reserved and wonky, not the sort to tell tales, so the journal remains closed to prying eyes. In fact, she got elected mayor — and was reelected twice — not on charisma or personal narrative but by positioning herself as an effective manager.
Because of term limits, Parker cannot run again, and as the Democrat moves through her final year as mayor, she has left her mark on the nation’s fourth-largest city and become a national figure in LGBT politics. Doing both at the same time hasn’t always been easy.
Parker likes to present herself as mayor first, but her symbolic national significance hovers about her like Houston’s humid air — comforting for some, clammy for others.She was in her fifth year as mayor before she engaged the city in a contentious gay-rights debate, and her handling involved some political missteps.
“I was a gay and lesbian activist in my college days, so that’s always been part of my acknowledgment of the world,” said Parker, sitting at her large antique desk by a window overlooking the tangle of highways that engulfs Houston. “What is different as mayor is I’m not a spokesperson for the community. I am the public face and voice of the citizens of Houston. I just happen to be a lesbian when I’m doing it.”
The piece is one part biography, one part an overview of her term so far, and one part HERO. It’s all quite favorable but as I said nothing new to anyone who’s been living here. The main thing it does is raise her profile before a national audience, which would surely be a boon to fundraising efforts if she does indeed run for something statewide in 2018. Helpful as that would be, as we saw this past year it won’t do much beyond that. Solving the turnout problem is not something a flattering profile can assist with.