Incumbent Brown leads early voting tallies
City Controller Chris Brown, Houston’s financial watchdog, was leading in his reelection bid over challenger Orlando Sanchez with partial voting tallies posted Tuesday night.
Sanchez, a former city and county elected official, had filed to challenge Brown with an hour to spare before the Aug. 19 deadline. Brown, who had worked in the office under his predecessor, Ron Green, was elected to the post four years ago. He is a seeking a second and final four-year term.
The city controller monitors the spending of Houston’s roughly $5 billion annual budget, oversees city investments, manages city bond sales, and also audits city departments’ spending.
“I feel very good about the results,” Brown said. “We worked very hard on this campaign for over a year and I think voters have initially reaffirmed that we’ve done great work over the last four years in the controller’s office.”
If given a second term, Brown said he would continue to focus on the city’s structural budget deficit, its unfunded retiree health care liability, and would assess how well the city is prepared for a potential recession.
“I’m encouraged,” Sanchez said. “I don’t know what election day is going to do. I know it was a pretty good turnout, so we’ll have to see.”
During the campaign, Sanchez pledged to conduct more audits and make the controller’s office more transparent. Sanchez also alleged Brown is too closely aligned with Mayor Sylvester Turner to serve as a check on his power.
Brown scoffed at Sanchez’s critiques, pointing to instances he differed with Turner, such as when the mayor sought an exception to the voter-imposed revenue cap after Hurricane Harvey, or in calculating the cost of Proposition B, a voter-approved measure on firefighter pay. Brown also has become increasingly vocal about the city’s structural budget deficit, warning last summer that continuing shortfalls could put services “in serious jeopardy.”
The position traditionally has served as a springboard for higher office and at times even a bully pulpit for the controller to criticize the mayor’s policies. Brown has established a less antagonistic relationship with Turner than some prior controllers, due in part to the city’s landmark pension reforms passed in 2017, which Brown said required collaboration between his office and the administration.
The office is nonpartisan but the race breaks cleanly along ideological lines; Sanchez is a Republican and Brown is a Democrat.