Good luck, you’re gonna need it.
After more than a year of posting to social media and reaching out to news media, Ethan Hale stood alone — aside from a Houston Public Media journalist — at the Houston City College campus on Monday, seeking more than 63,000 signatures for an effort to recall Mayor John Whitmire from office.
“I don’t think he’s taking the city on a good path. I think we’re funding the wrong things. We’re not funding the right things,” said Hale, who took the semester off to focus on the recall effort. “I feel like he’s kind of anti-democratic. I think a lot of us in this effort would say that much, but I think it’s gonna be worth it.”
Over the course of the first hour of canvassing, Hale collected about ten signatures. The number might have been higher if more of his fellow students were willing to share their addresses, a required component for the petition.
He held clipboards with misspelled signature forms reading “petiton.” The Houston City Secretary did not immediately respond to a question about whether those forms would be valid despite the misspelling.
According to Hale, there are “probably 100-plus” people involved in the recall effort, including four in leadership positions and “people scattered throughout a whole bunch of groups … maybe 200 to 300ish.” The group is primarily motivated by opposition to Whitmire’s mobility policies — including the removal of traffic safety features and cyclist infrastructure — as well as increased funding for the Houston Police Department, among many points of disagreement.
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While the first hour of canvassing took place on the community college campus, Hale said the signature collection will focus on commuters on METRO’s Red Line light-rail route. The recall organizers highlighted the canvassing event in Midtown on their social media pages, but Hale said there were also “at least a few” canvassers in other parts of the city, though he was unable to name the neighborhoods they were working in.
Over the past year, the effort to recall Whitmire from office was the subject of multiple news stories from local media outlets, including Houston Public Media. In March, the group began reaching out to reporters with the stated goal of raising public awareness and fundraising. Hale subsequently added his name to the ballot for an upcoming special election to fill a seat on the Houston City Council.
The group has stated different fundraising goals over time. In April, one organizer told Community Impact the group had raised $3,600 of a $250,000 goal. In June, the same organizer told Houston Public Media they had raised more than $1,500 of a $100,000 goal. Hale said the group had raised $4,500 as of June, and the effort would rely heavily on volunteers.
To put the recall question on the ballot in May, the organizers need to collect more than 63,000 signatures in a 30-day window. By contrast, amendments to the city charter require 20,000 signatures in an 180-day window.
Successful efforts to place charter amendments on the ballot — like Propositions A and B, giving the city council more power over policymaking and pushing the city government to obtain more representation in a regional planning group — barely met that threshold in 2023 with 23,665 verified signatures and 20,482 verified signatures respectively.
See here for the previous update. In re: the claims about fundraising, I will just note again that Recall Houston did not file a campaign finance report for July. Maybe they will file one in January, and we can clear up just how much money they have raised/did raise, but as of today none of those figures can be verified. And even if one of them is accurate, none of them are anywhere close enough to finance this effort.
Asked about the difficulty of the task, Hale acknowledged the possibility of failure.
“I think this is a Hail Mary play,” Hale said. “The odds, they’ve been stacked against us from day one. But I think, to me, it doesn’t matter. It’s about doing what’s right, even if we might fail. But we’re gonna put them on blast. We’re gonna get the eyes on everything going on in the city.”
Whatever you think about this effort, a viable attempt to do a recall on Mayor Whitmire would be fascinating, and historic. It might be the most exciting thing to happen in Houston politics since Orlando Sanchez almost unseated then-Mayor Lee Brown in 2001. I’m firmly in the non-Whitmire camp, and I can envision the energy this would bring, if it were real. We have grievances to air, that’s for sure. I don’t mean to dump on Ethan Hale and this effort, because they are trying to do a very hard thing with little to no help. Maybe they can build some support for whoever will run against the Mayor in 2027, which would certainly have value. It remains to be seen whether all this will have been worth the effort. I’ll get back to you on that when I see how many petitions they gathered to turn in.