LOS ANGELES — Having served three terms as the mayor of Texas’s largest city, Houston’s Annise Parker has proven she is not going away any time soon. Parker began her career as a very visible lesbian activist during the 1980s. Then, as an openly gay politician, she took the mayor’s office in America’s fourth largest city – in Texas, no less. For its June/July 2014 cover story, Mayor Parker sat with Advocate contributor Tom Dart to talk about how, due to her experience and expertise, a lesbian Democrat was the sensible choice for Houston.
Combining liberal social policy with fiscal conservatism, Parker rose through elected ranks, having served on Houston’s city council and as city controller. Houston’s affordable housing, abundant jobs, and status as the world capital of the energy industry have molded it into a prosperous and underrated international hub. A recent Rice University study also found that the city’s metropolitan area is the most diverse in the nation.
Parker realized that interest in her sexual orientation gave her the opportunity to counter the city’s reputation as a closed-minded place. “As my public profile went up, Houston’s public profile went up,” Parker says. “When I was elected more than four years ago, it got worldwide media attention.… The entertainment-focused media on the West Coast and the news-focused media on the East Coast – neither side paid much attention to what happened down in Houston except to make fun of us. I was able to give people a glimpse of a different kind of Houston and suddenly we started popping up on ‘best of’ lists.”
While interest in her sexual orientation increased when she ran for mayor, Parker had always been open and honest about her identity throughout her political career, and she encourages others to follow her example. Her deliberate frankness about her lesbian identity turned it into an asset, or at least neutralized homophobic attacks. “You have to know who you are and be comfortable with who you are before you enter a political race,” Parker notes. “I talk to potential GLBT candidates and they’ll say things like, ‘My sexual orientation is nobody’s business. My sexual orientation is not going to be a subject of the campaigns, and I’m just not going to talk about it.’ I’m sorry, that’s not a good enough answer. The worst thing is for anybody to feel that you’re hiding something or there’s something that you’re ashamed of addressing in your past.”
Now married to Kathy Hubbard, Parker looks forward to a time when the LGBT community can stop checking off “first time” milestones for LGBT Americans, and she treats continued interest in her sexual orientation as an inevitable step on the way to a point when sexuality ceases to be a factor. She also continues to mull her future and statewide ambitions.
“I hope [Democratic nominee] Wendy Davis becomes the next governor of Texas, and then four years from now I’ll be on a ticket with her, perhaps,” Parker says. “I would like to stand for office again. I have run for everything I can here, really, at the local level.
Joe Householder, a public affairs adviser who splits time between Washington, D.C., and Houston, sees Parker as a formidable statewide candidate. “Nobody works harder than Annise Parker. It’s a political cliché and I hate saying it, but it’s true,” Householder says. “If she decides that she’s going to run statewide, she’s going to coldly calculate whether or not she can do it, how she’s going to do it, and then she’s going to apply herself and get it done. I wouldn’t bet against her.”
Read The Advocate’s full June/July 2014 cover story now at:
http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2014/05/12/annise-parker-not-going-away
