The Chron endorses CM Robert Gallegos for re-election in District I.
Robert Gallegos
Two years ago we wrote that District I was the face of Houston’s future, filled with key landmarks, booming growth and changing neighborhoods. During his first term on City Council, Robert Gallegos has seen that transformation accelerate even as the oil economy took a hit – apartments are shooting up downtown, light rail lines have opened, Broadway Street is getting a beautification upgrade and Hobby airport’s first international flights begin on Oct. 15. This dynamic district needs an informed and involved councilman, and Gallegos is right for the job.
While his district undergoes this dramatic change, Gallegos, 56, has worked to remove blight while preserving parts of the community that his constituents want to keep. For example, he successfully pushed Council to save the Gus Wortham golf course from being turned into a botanical garden. But instead of just stopping that forward momentum, Gallegos helped redirect efforts to develop a garden at the Glenbrook golf course.
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With one term under his belt, Gallegos has proven himself a capable and knowledgeable member of council who can build important bridges for the city. Re-elect Gallegos.
With only the Mayor’s race to go, I think we can say that I did pretty well in guessing the endorsements. Good thing I wrote that when I did, too – the Chron did a nice job of getting these all done early. I suppose they will weigh in on the state constitutional amendments, and there are still the term limits and Harris County bond issues here. Anyway, I did not interview CM Gallegos this time – he was still unopposed when I started out, and by the time his opponent jumped in it was far too late for me to go back and do interviews in the races I’d skipped. Here’s the interview I did with him in 2013 if you want to review that. I concur on all points above regarding CM Gallegos and would happily vote for him if I lived in District I.
District I has a great Houston City Council Member. Gallegos strikes me as genuine, sincere, hard working and competent. Excellent write-up on him by the Houston Chronicle
Gallegos has done a good job & will no doubt get re-elected. He still has much of his original supporters, plus much of Garces’ old supporters have since folded into his camp. Herlinda is very extreme and won’t gain much traction. Her own street in the east end, (Mulford), is lined with Gallegos signs, that should tell you something. She has sent out a lot of extremist flyers that further pushed more people towards Gallegos than towards her. Her false claims of local civic clubs endorsing her, when they didn’t, her past of crashing opponents fundraisers and making a scene, and that sort of thing will render her pretty much politically insignificant. There was a small band of resistance to the botanical gardens around Glenbrook golf course that are mad at Gallegos for that, and some of those areas went for Ablaza last time, so they are obviously low information voters who have no problem voting for a fringe candidate, so Herlinda will get some of those precincts, but not enough of them to make a respectable showing.