Woman Runs To Become Houston's First Gay Mayor

The nation’s fourth-largest city, once dominated by Big Oil, is warming to greener options as it chooses a new mayor.

Voters in sprawling Houston, a city crisscrossed by clogged freeways and freewheeling development, are to pick from a low-key field of mayoral candidates that are focusing on public transit, regulated development and environmentally friendly policies.

The November 3 election “really does reflect a major consensus that is surprising for Houston, a consensus for planning, a need for light rail, a need to move beyond oil and gas,” said Stephen Klineberg, director of the Urban Research Center of Houston at Rice University. “It’s reflecting a real evolution of a city reinventing itself for the 21st century.”

No clear favorite has emerged in the race to succeed Bill White, who served three two-year stints that included a high-profile role embracing more than 150,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans in 2005. White, barred by law from another term, plans to run for the 2010 Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate if Kay Bailey Hutchison resigns to run for governor.

The candidates for mayor are former city attorney Gene Locke; three-term city controller Annise Parker; urban planner Peter Brown, an architect and two-term city councilman; and retired Air Force officer Roy Morales, a county school trustee.

Early voting began October 19. If no one wins a majority in November, the top two finishers will meet in a runoff, likely in December.

Locke, 61, would be Houston’s second black mayor. Parker, 52, would be the city’s first openly gay mayor and second woman in the job. Morales, 53, would be its first Hispanic mayor, but is considered a long shot. Brown, 72, who is white, has the most money to spend – much of it loaned from his wife, oil-field services heiress Anne Schlumberger.

Although the ballot is nonpartisan, Locke, Parker and Brown are Democrats. Morales has tried to distinguish himself as a conservative Republican. Houston, which President Barack Obama carried in 2008, is a largely Democratic city, although the surrounding suburbs are conservative.

Houston is about 25 percent black and one-third Hispanic. Its gay population is estimated at about 60,000.