On his second Saturday as the 63rd mayor of Houston, former state Senator John Whitmire drove to Yale Street Grill, a no-frills diner in the Heights neighborhood, to rendezvous with Bill King, a former Houston Chronicle columnist and current fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, who, in 2015, had very nearly become mayor himself.
Whitmire’s schedule was packed. In the first two weeks of January 2024, he’d already convened with many a city and county official; sworn in the new members of the Houston Police Officers’ Union (HPOU) board; ordered an end to the city’s eight-year labor dispute with the firefighters’ union; twice hosted discussions with the conservative nonprofit Crime Stoppers of Houston; and received measurements for a bulletproof vest. Amid the clamor, Whitmire was asking a friend for advice: Which of the city’s problems should he try to tackle first?
