San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Perry may face candidate he once supported
In the fall of 2019, Clayton Perry contacted Marc Whyte.
Perry, then in his second term as a Northeast Side City Council member, wanted to give Whyte, a business attorney with an avid interest in Republican politics, a headsup.
Perry told Whyte he planned to resign from City Council to run for county commissioner. Perry encouraged Whyte to apply for the soon-to-be vacant District 10 council seat and started lobbying his fellow council members to appoint Whyte to fill that seat.
Whyte held meetings with individual council members, where, as he would later recall, he shared his ideas “for how we can ensure San Antonio reaches its true potential.”
Ultimately, Perry changed his mind and the door closed on Whyte, who handled the situation with considerable grace and said that he was “truly honored” by Perry’s overture to him.
At this moment, Perry and Whyte are again central players in the District 10 saga, but their roles have shifted.
Whyte, with the support of a consensus of former District 10 council members, has decided to run for Perry’s seat, a move that could persuade Perry, who for months has been obstinate on the matter, to step aside and not seek another term.
In November, Perry was arrested after being accused of crashing his Jeep Wrangler head-on into a Honda Civic on Redland.
Perry, who allegedly consumed 14 alcoholic drinks in the four hours leading up to the incident, faces charges of driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident.
Shortly after the crash, some of Perry’s friends — including prominent political and business figures in his district — privately spoke with him. They were struck by his sense of denial; his refusal to acknowledge that he had a serious problem.
While Perry eventually expressed contrition in public and took a two-month sabbatical to get an undisclosed form of treatment, he continues to flirt with the possibility of seeking a fourth term. That’s what prompted a group of former District 10 council reps to send him a letter this week, asking him not to run again.
This isn’t the hostile expression of people trying to bring down an adversary. It’s a bit of tough love from friends who didn’t know how else to get through to Perry that his personal and legal issues are a distraction that will undermine his efforts to serve District 10 over the next two years.
They want Perry to make room for Whyte, just as he was prepared to do in the fall of 2019.
That episode offered a hint of just how much the District 10 council seat means to Perry.
“My work in District 10 is not finished,” Perry said from the council dais Oct. 31, 2019. “There’s still a lot to do.”
Last year, when the Precinct 3 Commissioners Court seat again opened up — this time because then-Commissioner Trish DeBerry made a late decision to relinquish the seat to run for county judge — Perry again had a wandering eye.
At a June 1 Republican Party forum, Perry was one of seven candidates making a pitch to the precinct chairs burdened with selecting a county commissioner nominee.
Perry bragged about his successful 2019 battle to secure a $5,000 municipal homestead exemption and his efforts to get more money for street and drainage projects.
Perry described himself as “the only conservative on City Council” and “the only one that stands up to the mayor (Ron Nirenberg).”
Perry wanted to run for county commissioner without giving up his council seat, but the City Charter stipulates that a council member must immediately vacate their seat if they file to run for another office.
Ultimately, with his political instincts telling him he didn’t have the numbers to win the nomination, Perry declined to fill out the Bexar County Republican Party’s candidate application form and didn’t appear at the meeting where precinct chairs selected the Commissioners Court nominee.
Whyte ran in 2018 for the District 121 Texas House seat that former House Speaker Joe Straus vacated. Whyte finished fifth in a tightly bunched sixcandidate GOP field, but he distinguished himself as a thoughtful, pragmatic conservative committed to property tax reform and the adequate funding of public education.
Whyte has worked to prepare himself for this opportunity by serving as a zoning commissioner and a board member with the Northeast Neighborhood Alliance.
When Perry decided to stay on the council in 2019, he emphasized the need to recognize the wants and desires of his constituents above his own personal ambitions.
If Perry is taking notice of those wants and desires right now, he will do the right thing and make way for a new District 10 council member.