Lovell fights for viability in race
Sue Lovell says Mayor Sylvester Turner got her fired by her largest consulting client, but that is not why she is running against him.
“I always wanted to run for mayor,” the former three-term at-large councilwoman said.
Lovell said she nearly ran in 2015, after then-mayor Annise Parker left office, but ultimately decided to pass.
This time around, she made the jump, saying she brings more credible experience at City Hall than any other candidate in the race.
During her six years on council, Lovell, 69, burnished a reputation as a candid and well-versed presence at City Hall, with a knack for gritty details and the bare knuckles to hold her own in a political fight. She forged those skills as an early and formative organizer with the Houston GLBT Political Caucus.
Those City Hall and progressive bona fides, perhaps, could have made Lovell a formidable challenge to Turner’s reelection chances. After a late entry into the race, however, Lovell is fighting for relevance in a contest that also features the 2015 runner-up, a selffunded lawyer spending millions on the campaign and an incumbent council member.
The only independent poll of likely voters last month found Lovell languishing with less than 1 percent of the vote. Her fundraising numbers similarly were dwarfed by the top four hopefuls, which has convinced debate hosts recently to leave her off the stage. She also has failed to garner the support of influential organizations with whom she has ties, including the Houston GLBT Political Caucus she once headed.
The Caucus endorsed Turner in August. The Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association, for whom Lovell consulted, is backing Councilman Dwight Boykins.
“It’s been late to start and slow to build momentum,” University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said of Lovell’s campaign. “Where it stands now, it’s hard to generate enough pro
gressive discontent with the mayor to get a significant share of that vote to push her into contention, either for a runoff or a win.”
Lovell said she’s been outgunned before and found a way to win.
“I know how to organize,” she said.
Her long odds, coupled with the fact that her progressive base of support is seen as overlapping with Turner’s, has inspired speculation in some quarters that Lovell joined the race simply to spoil the mayor’s re-election chances after she alleges he had her fired.
In her telling, not long after Lovell started consulting for the firefighters union, helping to devise a strategy to get pay raises from Turner and the city, another client received a message: Keep working with Sue, and “it won’t make the mayor happy.”
“That’s code for: ‘She’s got to go,’” Lovell said.
The client — an airport vendor and her largest source of income — let her go shortly after, Lovell said. She alleges Turner, miffed about the ongoing pay dispute with the firefighters union, got her blacklisted from other work.
Turner’s office denied the charge in a statement: “The mayor does not tell businesses who to hire,” a spokesman said.
Mike Webb, the current president of the GLBT Caucus, reveres
Lovell as a “legend” in the Houston LGBT community, but thinks she got into the race to chip away at Turner.
“I never personally saw her campaign as a serious campaign to become mayor… but a campaign to make sure Mayor Turner does not get re-elected,” Webb said.
Lovell flatly rejected the idea. “Not my style. Did I get into this race to win? Of course,” Lovell said. “I can step back and moan and groan, or step up and run. Tell people what you think. They’ll either vote for you or they won’t. … Either way, life goes on.”
‘Well-known, well-regarded’
Lovell was raised in the farmland around Fresno, Calif. Her father left when she was 14, which meant she — the oldest of four kids — worked various jobs to help the family make ends meet. In the summers, she played semipro softball for the Fresno Rockets.
Softball was her ticket to see much of what California and the country had to offer, and it eventually brought her 1,760 miles east to Houston.
At 19, she flew here with three suitcases and $35 to her name.
Lovell made a quick foray into politics in Montrose in the late 1970s. At the time, she ran Long Point Printing & Rubber Stamp and offered to print the Caucus newsletter for free.
Within a few years of joining, she would become the first female president of the GLBT Caucus in 1984, then known as Houston Gay Political Caucus.
Lovell led the caucus during a contentious fight over the city’s first non-discrimination ordinance, which voters then repealed by a 4-to-1 margin in a referendum. The AIDS crisis hit soon after, and Lovell said city leaders offered little help.
Lovell printed the first-ever educational pamphlet about AIDS, she said, which was written by doctors at MD Anderson. It also printed safe sex campaigns.
“It was a whole campaign on how we save ourselves, what we do,” Lovell said. “We started it here… It became the basis for what they use.”
Those were the beginnings of the AIDS Foundation, the first such group in Texas, which Lovell helped create.
“Sue is a well-known, well-regarded, longtime Democratic activist,” said Jay Aiyer, a policy consultant and former opponent of Lovell’s for the at-large council seat she won in 2005. “The sort of modern, progressive Harris County infrastructure of today really comes from the decadeslong work of folks like Sue.”
Longshot bid
In her first term on council, Lovell said she said asked thenMayor Bill White if she could spearhead an ordinance to tackle graffiti.
That ordinance imposed fines on property owners who ignored graffiti and prohibited selling certain items that could be used in tagging, such as broad-tipped markers and spray paint to children under 17. The city also offered prominent artists a place to legally show off their work, such as warehouses.
She also was instrumental in revamping Houston’s historic preservation ordinance under Mayor Annise Parker, which empowered the city’s Archaeological and Historical Commission to block alterations to historic structures in certain neighborhoods, such as the Heights and Glenbrook Valley.
Former councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck, whose tenure at City Hall matched Lovell’s, said the historic preservation policy “wouldn’t have happened without Sue, hands down.”
“Sue was a doer. That stands out because not everybody is, even at city council,” Clutterbuck said. “She set her mind on large, citywide initiatives to try to tackle, and she did.”
Lovell could be persuasive. “We didn’t always agree on everything,” said Parker. “But for many of the big issues we aligned, and it was great to have her in my corner.”
Lovell has said that at-large experience would equip her well to take over the mayor’s office. If she wins, she has said she would focus on righting the city’s finances, investing in information technology and tackling drainage issues with the best possible technology.
She has also said she wants to iron out an agreement with the firefighters union, which has been locked in a bitter pay dispute with Turner for two years.
Lovell is short on resources, but she hopes to leverage her record on council and the relationships she has developed over nearly a half-century in advocacy to build a strong grass-roots campaign.
“You’re not going to see her on broadcast TV, but you might see her at your neighborhood civic club,” said Nancy Sims, a local political analyst.
Lovell says there is a strong undertow to her campaign that is not registering in finance reports or polling data. And while many have already written her campaign eulogies, there are others — like Sims and Clutterbuck — who think she will over-perform.
Lovell said she has faced long odds before — from securing adoption of her three sons to her first council election. And she is comfortable being the underdog.
“I’m used to people telling me I can’t,” she said.
“Tell people what you think. They’ll either vote for you or they won’t. … Either way, life goes on.”
Sue Lovell, mayoral candidate