Will He or Won’t He? Sylvester Turner Ponders a Third Race for Mayor

There’s a buzz this week in the local political village that long-time State Representative Sylvester Turner (Democrat, District 139) is mulling over another run for mayor of Houston.  As a young legislator in 1991, Turner ran ahead of incumbent Mayor Kathy Whitmire in the November General Election and very nearly beat out Bob Lanier in a hard-fought and controversial runoff.  Turner’s hope to secede the term-limited Lanier in 1997 were confounded when former Houston Police Chief Lee Brown’s entered the race that year, and when Rep. Turner tried to succeed Mayor Brown in 2003, he ran into the Bill White juggernaut and ran third behind the current mayor and former city council member Orlando Sanchez.  Turner blamed his loss in part on widespread disappointment in Mayor Brown’s six year tenure, which arguably soured Houston voters on black CEOs at City Hall.

If Turner ran third in 2003 when there was no other African American in the field, why would he get in the race this year when a credible black candidate, former City Attorney Gene Locke has been campaigning for seven months?  Two strong black candidates would almost certainly split the African American vote (usually about 30-35% of the total), and might well result in neither making the December runoff.

Here is my take on this question.  Turner is at a very different place in 2009 than he was in 1997 when he reluctantly stayed out of the race and gave Lee Brown a clear path to the runoff and eventual election.  Like most of us, he is 12 years older, and his political future is more limited in Austin where his alliance with Speaker Tom Craddick has become a liability after the Midland Republican was deposed in early 2009.   Congress would be an attractive alternative, but we already have two African American members from Houston, and Turner’s north side district is the 18^th District represented by the younger and more politically entrenched incumbent, Sheila Jackson Lee.  The other local office Representative Turner is attracted to, Harris County Commissioner Precinct One,  is represented by his old enemy El Franco Lee, who beat Turner and two other major candidates way back in 1984 and has held the job since.  But Commissioner Lee was just reelected in November 2008, so there is no opportunity there for three years.  And a race for Countyommissionerwould require Turner to give up his safe Texas House seat, something he is understandably reluctant to do. 

One of the real attractions of a state elected official running for mayor is you do not have to give up your day job to compete, as Sylvester Turner well knows from his 1991 and 2003 races.  So, count that as a big plus for taking another shot.  A second is the very powerful mayor job has attracted Mr. Turner all of his political life as he made clear in his previous campaigns.  Third, Turner really wants this position in part because he feels he was unfairly denied it in 1991 by late-breaking negative news stories that clearly helped Bob Lanier eke out a 53% to 47% win.  Fourth, a late entry would help even the score with former mayors Lanier and Brown, who are in Gene Locke’s corner, as well as Commissioner Lee, a longtime ally of the former city attorney.

 

So there is a lot on the plus side of the ledger for making the race.  The downside is simple:  It is a very hard race for Representative Turner to win.  Obviously, he will have to do a lot better than six years ago when he failed to make the runoff.  But how can he achieve that?  In 2003, as the only black candidate in the race, Representative Turner got about 80% of the African American vote, with Bill White getting most of the rest.  But this time, Gene Locke will surely out-perform White’s 2003 showing, and City Council Member Peter Brown and Controller Annise Parker have made significant efforts in the black community whereas Sanchez ignored this segment of the electorate.  Bottom line:  If Sylvester Turner could win 60% of the black vote this November, that would be a terrific showing in the 2009 field, but that would still leave him well short of what he needs to make a runoff. 

 

So it is even more imperative that Sylvester Turner solve the problem he had in 2003 – that he got almost no votes from whites, Latinos, or Asian Americans.  Turner was a very impressive campaigner in 2003, often out-shinning Bill White and Orlando Sanchez is the 80 plus public forums held around town.  And he had a war-chest of about a million and a half dollars.  This time around he would still bring superior campaign skills to the table, but much less money, plus the history of being a two-time loser.   This suggests to me it will be difficult for Representative Turner to substantially improve his showing outside the black community.  And without that improvement, he would fall well short of making the December runoff.

 

Looking at the ledger, I have no idea what Representative Turner will decide to do.  He seemed to enjoy running for mayor six and 18 years ago.  Maybe the fire in the belly is still there.  And he surely knows this while this race would be a long-shot, he also knows his entry would shake the race up, mostly to the detriment of his old political enemies, and to the benefit of City Controller Annise Parker, whose support base is least likely to be much impacted by what Mr. Turner decides to do.  Stay tuned.  He says he’ll tell us thumbs up or down in a couple of weeks.                 

Dr. Richard Murray

Comments

[sherrie P]

In your first paragraph, sir. Don't you mean "succeed" not "secede"? There is also a misused apostrophe later in the same paragraph (Lee Brown's entered). Are you sure you wrote this yourself? Two grammar mistakes in the very first paragraph. Shame on you!

[Jan]

Sylvester is a GREAT person, and would make a FINE Mayor. I hope he gets in the race!