When Annise Parker ran for mayor of Houston, she had an agenda. She was driven by personal motives. She says she wanted anyone to be able to look at Houston and know it was a well run city. She wanted to make Houston the best it could possibly be. This was personally important to her.

“I do have an agenda,” she said. “I have an agenda for the city and you can tell what my agenda is by what my transition teams are looking at in this first two months of office. I have actually one big transition team with five subgroups looking at METRO. I have one transition team working at public works and particularly how we do infrastructure projects in the city of Houston. I have a transition team looking at neighborhood protection and how we can do a better job at taking down derelict buildings and removing neighborhood nuisances. I have a transition team looking at permitting and I finally have a large transition team looking at out W/MBE program for the city of Houston. I want to streamline it I want to improve it. I want to push more contracting opportunities out for small and minority businesses. And the second of the really big transition teams has been looking at housing and all aspects of the housing department. I mean that’s my agenda, nuts and bolts, just bread and butter issues.”

Mayor Parker has a history of service. She has served as an elected official in the city of Houston for over 13 years. She is the only person in the city’s history to serve as city comptroller, city councilmember and mayor.

“I love local government and after six years as city councilmember and six years as comptroller, there certainly wasn’t anybody else available to run for mayor with the depth of knowledge and experience I had, but the most important thing is I truly enjoy it. I’m excited to go to work every day. I care deeply about local government issues.”

Houston also made history by becoming the nation’s largest city to elect an openly gay mayor. It has not been easy, being first. Her election drew both controversy and praise. Praise came especially from the gay community. And controversy from the religious community, who lobbied and picketed against her during the election. Each group was especially concerned about what being first would mean to the nation’s fourth largest city.

“For Houston, it means we have finally reached the point where being gay cannot be used as a wedge issue to divide the community and prevent us from reaching our aspirations,” said Ray Hill, a prominent gay-rights activist and KPFT radio host. “Annise Parker is not our mayor — she is the city’s mayor.”
But David Welch isn’t so sure.

“National gay and lesbian activists see this as a historic opportunity,” Welch told a local reporter. The reality is that’s because they’re promoting an agenda which we believe to be contrary to the concerns of the community and destructive to the family.

Welch, the executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council, which has over 200 members, believes the mayor’s agenda, and that of those supporting her, is for gays and lesbians to take control of city hall. They are also afraid the mayor’s election will lead to the overturning of a 2001 city charter amendment prohibiting the city from providing benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian city workers, which many in the GLBT community considers to be discriminatory.
But while the mayor says she does think the charter amendment should be overturned, and will do so if given the opportunity, she has no intention of initiating the movement.

“I don’t think it is the mayor’s role to overturn a citizen initiated amendment. It needs to come from the citizens. If a petition comes to me to overturn it, I will certainly support it, but I’m not going to initiate it,” she said.

Despite the fact that gay and lesbian voters supported her to the tune of $200,000, Mayor Parker said she does not believe her community expects anything of her but to represent the city of Houston fairly. “I think what the gay and lesbian community expects of me is for me to be a great mayor. They expect me to conduct myself in such a way that I can be a good role model and that I will represent both the city and the community very well at all times,” the mayor said, adding that she would address discrimination against the GLBT community or any other community when it is brought to her attention.

“I want to be aware whenever there is anything that we do as a city that overtly or inadvertently causes someone harm and if that action is based on someone’s race or ethnicity or other status then I have to take action on it and I certainly would,” said the mayor, who is no stranger to discrimination.

While the mayor states the history of the civil rights struggle cannot be compared to that of the GLBT struggle, she did experience issues common to activists of all struggles. The mayor says she became open about being gay at the age of 15, in 1971 when “coming out” was still very unpopular. She became an activist in college during the late 70’s.

Mayor Parker said she “came out” because she has a major problem with hypocrisy. “There are a lot of people who condemn other people and yet hide things they are ashamed of about their own behavior. I had to reconcile at an early age who I was and how I was going to approach the world. And I was determined to try to do so with as much openness and honesty as I could, and that has served me very well over the years,” she said. But her openness has not come without a price.

“Being the public visible spokesperson for the GLBT community in the 70s and 80s was a very different thing than it is now. It was a much more dangerous time. There was a lot more active discrimination. In fact, my colleague in city government, Councilwoman [Sue] Lovell, and I were probably the two most visible lesbian activists in Houston in the 1980s and we received death threats. We had to worry about our safety at times,” Mayor Parker said, adding that she has not had to be concerned about her safety or that of her family since she has become mayor.

Much has changed since she began the struggle to protect GLBT rights. But one thing has never changed, her commitment to the city of Houston.
“I promise to give to citizens and administration of honesty, integrity and transparency,” she said after winning the election. “The only special interest will be the public. We are in this together. We rise or fall together.”