San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
FROM THE COVER
described liberal who had been nominated to the San Antonio Water System board.
Brockhouse felt aggrieved that Hardberger had reached out to Nirenberg and Councilwoman Ana Sandoval, but not him, prior to her appointment. His questioning was not belligerent, but it was noticeably more aggressive than his treatment of the male SAWS nominees.
Nirenberg noticed the difference and made a pointed reference to it.
And then Gonzales tore into Brockhouse, saying she would “not sit silent” and fail to call out sexism when she saw it.
“Not everything is sexism and racism,” Brockhouse shot back, saying he would expect any city board appointee to go through a similar examination, regardless of gender.
“A lot of people saw that moment as a sexist thing, but I don’t know him well enough to know if that’s a consistent practice,” Hardberger said when asked about it recently. “It seems like it was more like grandstanding that didn’t have anything to do with me, and was more about opposing Ron (Nirenberg) politically.”
More than one council member interviewed for this story said grandstanding was a consistent, and time-wasting, Brockhouse trait. Yet despite the Hardberger incident, Gonzales is quick to point out that Brockhouse has some qualities she appreciates.
She recalled the 2017 debate over the council’s first “equity budget,” which redirected funds from affluent areas, such as his District 6 on the Northwest Side, to the poorest, such as her District 5 on the West Side. Some of Brockhouse’s fans considered it pure socialism.
“It took some persuading, many conversations,” Gonzales said. “But ultimately Greg supported the idea. More important, once he told me his decision, he stuck with it. I’m not saying this because I have great respect for him. He’s a very flawed man. … But in the end, he stayed with me. He was consistent.”
Told of the backhanded compliment, Brockhouse grinned and said, “I’m probably one of the most misunderstood politicians in the city. What’s sad for me is that it takes time to understand me, and most people won’t take that step with me.”
District 1 Councilman Roberto Treviño recalls that early in Brockhouse’s term, he “disparaged” Treviño on a right-wing radio show.
“But he later came by to apologize and say, ‘I really broke some protocols, and it won’t happen again.’ From then on, we had an agreement that he would never blindside me. A lot of people were very surprised that we had a good working relationship.”
Treviño, who has had very public personal issues with Nirenberg, said he could not vote for Brockhouse.
“I’m always willing to move and change something about myself,” Brockhouse offered. “I enjoy being told off. That’s an opportunity. That’s a chance to make a relationship.”
Peláez said Brockhouse has a talent for charming both allies and adversaries and that although “an angry Greg is an unpredictable Greg,” he can channel his anger to serve his own ends.
“He’s able to figure out his opponents’ weaknesses and triggers very quickly, and strategically push opponents to make silly mistakes,” Peláez said. “Many of us were playing chess, and Greg was playing rugby. He’d sometimes cause chaos, and I found myself having to play rugby even though that’s not how I wanted to spend my day.”
Brockhouse doesn’t recoil from the suggestion that he thrives on political friction.
“These 11-0 votes on council are bad for business,” he said. “I think we need conflict sometimes. You need to poke at it. Find our blind spot. I abhor the unity of the council. I think you need unity in belief in our city, but not unity in our path.”
Among his regrets from the last mayor’s race, however, is rhetorical overkill.
“My bombastic, go-for-broke mentality was not as inclusive as it needed to be,” particularly in April 2019, when he unnecessarily alienated the LGBTQ community by jumping on “a hyperpolitical position like Chick
Fil-A,” he said.
The fast-food outlet’s corporate owner supports causes perceived as anti-LGBTQ, and Brockhouse saw a chance to go after
Nirenberg on a culture war issue. He fought the council’s efforts to cut the restaurant from a possible airport concession contract.
Told that one council member said a “remarkable amount of work got done when Greg wasn’t in the room,” Brockhouse confessed that perhaps there were times “when you’ve pontificated enough and should just shut up.”
Faith up front
Though raised a Lutheran in the Valley Hi neighborhood on the Southwest Side, Brockhouse says he became a devout Catholic in 2007, while going through a contentious divorce.
“It was an epiphany. I fell in love with the Catholic Church,” he said. “I love the structure, the principles of family. I met my wife (Annalisa). She’s a lifelong Catholic. She joined me in nine months of Catholic training.”
A witness to some of Brockhouse’s spiritual development has been former Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood, a political figure whose career and personality bear a striking resemblance to Brockhouse’s.
Both are dashing, outwardly confident, 48-year-old men who found God after a lot of personal turmoil. LaHood, who pleabargained to resolve a June 1994 arrest for attempting to sell 200 “ecstasy” pills to an undercover police officer at a strip club, was a Democrat. As a lame duck DA, he became a Trump-leaning Republican in September 2018, months after his 18-point Democratic primary loss to challenger Joe Gonzales.
That bruising defeat followed LaHood’s widely publicized support for the debunked conspiracy theory that childhood vaccinations are linked to autism and his outburst of angry threats against defense lawyers — including Gonzales — in front of a respected Republican judge.
Vilified by opponents, exposed in the media, both men say they are now anchored in Scripture.
On several occasions, Brockhouse has attended a men’s Bible study group that LaHood says he founded about 12 years ago. LaHood says he has appeared twice on the “BrockCast.”
“Greg was presented to me as someone who was like-minded and wasn’t afraid to rock the boat for the right reasons,” LaHood said. “We met. I thought he was pleasant and complimentary. I didn’t know much about him. I don’t pay much attention to City Hall.
“The title of Christian doesn’t mean much to me. … I ask, ‘Are you a fake-ass Christian, or are you real?’ Greg seemed sincere. I don’t like people to use the Christian faith as a tool if it’s insincere.”
During his term, Brockhouse had been privately criticized by some council members who thought his gesture on the dais during the council’s opening prayers — he would stand with his hands opened upward or folded across his chest — was just self-promotional piety.
LaHood said he was fine with it, and he wondered “if Muslims are given the same scrutiny.”
Brockhouse was not raised a preacher’s kid, though his father, David Brockhouse, is now pastor of the Mount Olive Lutheran Church, on the far West Side off Loop 1604.
After years of working for H-E-B, from stocker to store director, the elder Brockhouse — talkative and full of stories, like his son — said that at age 57 he was called by God to be a preacher.
Now 74, he says he is “continually amazed” by his son. “When he gets up to speak, whether on a podcast or on the campaign, he just commands attention. He’s articulate and clear.”
Pastor Brockhouse said that if there was a defining moment in
his son’s life, it was likely when he served in Air Force honor guards in the late 1990s for funerals of veterans.
Picking up the narrative, Greg Brockhouse recalled walking down an aisle at an H-E-B some years ago when a woman stopped him and said, “You don’t know me, but I remember you.”
A decade earlier, as Brockhouse tells it, he had handed her a folded American flag at her husband’s funeral at Fort Sam Houston.
“There we were, crying in the aisles of H-E-B,” Brockhouse said. “I wish I had not ever gotten out of the service. It’s one of my biggest regrets.”
His mother served in the Army in the Gulf War, delivering tanks in the war zone on flatbed trailers. His son David, 18, recently joined the Navy.
Brockhouse has had five children with four women, three of them his wives at the time, including a stepson, now 23. His oldest is a daughter, Emma, 28. He and Annalisa are raising their son, Luke, 12, his youngest.
Friends and enemies
In 1999, after serving as a maintenance technician for the Minuteman missile system, Brockhouse was a divorced noncommissioned officer in the Air Force contemplating finishing his college degree and perhaps becoming a chief master sergeant.
But “God’s plan intervened,” he said, and he returned to San Antonio and Lackland AFB before leaving the service that December to pursue a business career.
Some 22 years later, Gregory Vern Brockhouse may indeed be the most misunderstood politician in the city. But one could just as easily choose perplexing, volatile or charismatic.
He has friends and enemies all across the political spectrum, and most agree that if you can see through the bravado, what you might find is certainly more than just a populist megaphone. Perhaps it’s complexity.
Mohammad Rasool is a digital political strategist and has worked on many liberal campaigns in San Antonio, most recently for FixSAPD, the police reform group behind Proposition B. He and his wife have seen Brockhouse and his wife socially, and he and Brockhouse have had many spirited political discussions.
“We have major disagreements,” Rasool said. “I’ve told him directly that, ‘I cannot vote for you for mayor.’” (Nor will he vote for Nirenberg, he said.)
“I cannot vote for someone who supported Donald Trump in 2020,” Rasool continued. “But sometimes after those conversations where we both get red in the face, he will later send me a text and say he has read something I sent him and now he’s taken a step back from his stance. He is willing to listen.”
Rasool said he’s a frequent follower of the BrockCast so that he can “understand that half of the country that doesn’t agree with me” and by doing so get a better grasp of the brand of populism Brockhouse is trying to sell to San Antonio.
He admires Brockhouse as a father — “his kids are polite and say, ‘Yes, sir,’” — and appreciates his command of facts and awareness of the history of the city.
But he has a lingering concern about how Brockhouse spins those facts for his most rabid base of supporters and how persuasive he can be to those unburdened by the need for evidence.
“There is,” said Rasool, “some danger in having that much charm.”