The Democratic Mayor Who Thinks Cities Are Handling Trump Wrong

John Whitmire is not like most big city Democratic mayors. The 76-year-old, first-term mayor of Houston avoids confrontations with President Trump, courts Republican state leaders and saves his biggest complaints for his own party.

“Sometimes the louder you get, the less people listen to you,” he said of his fellow Democrats. “I don’t respond to Trump — that could be counterproductive. Do I have personal views? Sure, and they’re strong, but why do you want to challenge him?”

With rhetoric escalating over immigration raids and National Guard troop deployments, Mayor Whitmire is betting that the best way to govern a large American city right now is to keep your head down.

“Most major cities are in turmoil,” Mr. Whitmire said. “We’re not.”

His approach, developed over 50 years in Texas politics, may be keeping down the political temperature in Houston, the nation’s fourth most populous city and a diverse, immigrant-heavy Democratic hub deep inside a red state.

But it has not endeared the mayor to his city’s progressives, who would say it’s not confrontation they crave. It’s backbone.

“This is a mayor who has no vision,” said Karthik Soora, a co-chairman of Houston Progressives.

Mr. Whitmire, in a series of interviews with The New York Times, faulted other Democratic mayors such as Brandon Johnson in Chicago and Karen Bass in Los Angeles for loud public challenges to the president over immigration enforcement and other issues that have only deepened divisions. He had particularly choice words for Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York, for what he said was “a horrible record of bringing people together.”

“He’s saying he’s going to arrest the prime minister of Israel? You think that’s how you bring people together? He and me are in different universes,” he said.

Representatives of Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Johnson declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Ms. Bass said the mayor would “never stop working for, fighting for and being the voice of L.A.”

Houston’s elected officials, business executives and civic leaders have long chosen behind-the-scenes deal-making over noisy confrontation. Residents still point to how the city slowly desegregated without the kinds of clashes that took place elsewhere in the South, largely by keeping its efforts under the radar and out of the news.

“It’s the Houston way of doing politics,” said Anthony Rios, a co-chairman of Houston Progressives, which pushes for more city spending to benefit working class residents. “Just focus on economic growth.”

When the city took steps to remove a rainbow crosswalk from its historically gay Montrose neighborhood under pressure from the Trump administration and Gov. Greg Abbott, The Houston Chronicle asked, “Why can’t our mayor be courageous?”

Mr. Whitmire even drew praise recently from Mr. Abbott for working with the state police. “He’s a mayor who cares a lot about public safety,” the governor said in Houston this month.

The city has big challenges. Its infrastructure is buckling under the weight of what officials said were around 700,000 daily suburban commuters. Street flooding is a constant, even in an ordinary thundershower. Residents still fear crime, including in its main mall, even as official statistics show a decline. Homelessness has worsened. The city’s budget deficit is on track to exceed $200 million by 2027.

“Costs are going up, and revenues are not going up to offset them,” said Christopher Hollins, the city controller. “No plan has been put in place to address that.”

He also knows what he without-a-doubt does not like: sidewalk scooters, crime, bike lanes, and, perhaps most of all, noisy partying near residential neighborhoods.

“Too loud, too loud, too loud!” he called out from the passenger window of a police S.U.V. while passing by booming bars on a recent Saturday night ride, with the city’s police chief, J. Noe Diaz, at the wheel. “People live right here, can you imagine that?”

On another outing, Mr. Whitmire lamented the many homeless people. “You smell that urine?” he said walking through a park near City Hall. “Right in the middle of the damned theater district.”

His ire even extended to a stand of oak trees nearby. “Let me show you something else that drives me nuts,” he said, pointing to their exposed roots. “They need some top soil!”

The office of mayor in Texas is nonpartisan, which allowed Mr. Whitmire to win in 2023 by running a middle-of-the-road campaign that attracted Republican and independent voters as well as centrist Democrats. He courted major Republican donors — like the billionaire Houston restaurateur Tilman Fertitta, now Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Italy — and won the race in a majority-Democrat city without winning a majority of Democratic votes.

He prides himself on standing apart. In his City Hall office is a picture of Mr. Whitmire walking up a flight of stairs in the Texas Capitol in 2003 — when, as a state senator, he broke with fellow Democrats and returned to Austin to end the party’s first major walkout over redistricting.

“I saved the Democrats from losing all their influence,” he said, seated at his desk.

Mr. Whitmire has been a Democrat in Texas politics long enough to remember when the party controlled the state. When he was young, his father worked at a local welfare office, and Mr. Whitmire spent time working in the mailroom and conducting home visits as part of the food stamp program, he recalled.

He was elected to the State House when he was 23, and became a State Senator a decade later, in 1983. From his senate seat, he watched the chamber become the center of hard line conservative power in the state over four decades. He was the last Democrat to chair a committee in the State Senate even with Republicans holding power, evidence of Mr. Whitmire’s ability to forge alliances across party lines or, as his critics say, that he no longer stands with most Democrats, in Austin or Houston.

Randy Macchi, the city’s head of public works, said city officials under Mr. Turner tried to bring “an East Coast philosophy” with transit and bicycling. The Whitmire administration has “a Texas philosophy,” said Mr. Macchi, who drives in from a suburb southeast of the city early each morning to beat the traffic.

Still, the mayor insists, the phrase “progressive Democrat” applies to him, citing his support for labor unions, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, and civil rights. On a recent Sunday, he delivered a voice-cracking, applause-getting speech at Galilee Missionary Baptist Church, a Black congregation in his old State Senate district.

Mr. Whitmire said his focus was on improving city services, such as garbage pickup. His administration conducted an audit of spending and reduced the city work force, largely with voluntary retirement incentives. The goal, he said, was to show Republican leaders eager to starve Texas cities of revenue that Houston is deserving of more money.

“I’ve told Austin, we’re all in this together,” he said. “How Houston goes is how the state of Texas goes, and that’s just a fact.”

Recently, Mr. Whitmire explained his stance on the rainbow crosswalk, faulting Mr. Abbott for politicizing the issue but saying the city would not risk state or federal funding by fighting over it. He suggested similar symbols could be placed on private property. He said his position represented “leadership in action.”

Mr. Whitmire has succeeded in bridging some divides in the city, merging two parallel Pride parades into one, working to join two events on Martin Luther King’s Birthday that had been separate, settling a contract dispute with firefighters, and helping to resolve a strike by hotel workers, including by postponing his State of the City speech.

Houston was held up as a national model for reducing homelessness. But recently, the number of homeless people on the streets has flattened and even ticked up. Housing service providers pointed to the drying up of federal pandemic funds that had been redirected to housing, along with insufficient local money and rising housing costs.

“A year ago, we were screaming about this,” said Ana Rausch, the chief executive of The Beacon, a homeless services nonprofit, and the former head of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston. “The money that we needed didn’t come in time.”

Mr. Whitmire has proposed creating a homeless services hub with shelter beds out of a facility near downtown that, until recently, had been used to house migrants.

“It’s the best way to get people off the streets quickly,” said Ms. Rausch, but spending money on shelter beds might mean less funding for permanent housing.

The city is also preparing to co-host the FIFA World Cup next year, and is embarking on a major convention center expansion.

But for Mr. Whitmire, safety was also on his mind while observing groups of scooter riders from the window of the police SUV. His police chief said some of the riders had been found to be carrying guns. The mayor wants them banned from sidewalks.

“We’re trying to help the public feel safe walking downtown,” he said. “It’s harming the hotel business.”