Victory Fund's Annise Parker - Metro Weekly - July 16 2020

COURTESY OF VICTORY FUND
tion, but it would always be after the jump. With all due respect,
nobody reads after the jump. So if they could get you into it that
far, you don't care anymore, you're already hooked. So the coverage
changed. And I raised enough money in that race to go up on
TV, control my own message in a way that I had never been able
to do before. And that's how I was able to be successful.
MW: Did your opponents make an issue of your sexuality?
PARKER: Every piece of literature I put out had some reference
to the resume — "past president, Houston Gay and Lesbian
Political Caucus” — with the word gay and lesbian in every piece
of literature I put out. But also “employee, Mosbacher Energy
Company,” and, by that point, I was president of the largest civic
association in Houston.
It meant people stopped talking about my sexual orientation.
My opponents couldn't talk about it because, “You know, she's a
lesbian.” “Well, duh. It says so right on her own literature.” So it
changed the conversation. There were actually six other people
in that race, and it became more like, “Well, it’s not a problem
to me that she's a lesbian, it shouldn't matter to anybody.” They
had to figure out some way to bring it up without looking like
complete asses doing it.
The weekend of the runoff election, I was against a Republican
businessman who had all the Downtown backing, and I had all
but two of the minority-elected officials in the region who were
with me because I had helped them with their campaigns over
the years. He put out an attack piece, only to black households,
and it was one of those comparison pieces: he was the family
man, I was single. He belonged to his church, I had no known
religious beliefs. This contrast, to say, basically, that I was a lesbian.
And only to black households. I still got 75 percent of the
black vote.
I’d already gathered the support of the leadership. But also,
because of my work on housing issues and neighborhood issues
as a volunteer, I had a network. My best volunteers in that race
were senior citizens. I was a United Way volunteer in senior
services, and I’d had lunch at every senior center in Houston.
I sat there and played dominoes with those little old ladies. So
they were with me. It was a nine-month campaign built upon a
network and a resume built over 20 years.
MW: After you were elected to the Houston City Council, you eventually
became controller and then mayor. What was the nature of
your political battles during those years?
PARKER: City government is the most functional level of government,
because it has to be. It’s about getting trash picked up. It’s
about filling potholes. It’s about making sure that basic services
are performed. I would submit that during my entire 18 years in
full-time public life and three positions, that if you just followed
the votes that were cast in city hall, it was impossible to tell how
people lined up politically. There were philosophical divides
and there were certain things like birth control in city clinics, or
afterschool programs where there was never a pure Republican
or Democratic divide, but where you could see conservative and
more progressive divisions.
But I realized I had spent so long as an activist and as a
spokesperson for the community, that I had to very consciously,
when I assumed office, change my role and change my mindset
— that I wasn't going to be a spokesperson for the LGBTQ community.
I was going to be open, but I wasn’t the spokesperson.
My job was to represent my constituents.
I did engage whenever LGBTQ issues came up, like moving
our Pride Parade from a daytime parade to a nighttime parade.
We had to rewrite city ordinances to do it. Once the community
made the decision to do what they wanted to do and came to me,
then it was my responsibility to make it happen.
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JULY 16, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM