A Tale of Two Classmates

I've thought about running for public office from time to time. That was true when I lived back home and I entertain thoughts of running for office here from time to time as well.

One of my dreams that I put on hold to transition was possibly serving on Houston's City Council. That's on indefinite hold unless I move back home and reestablish my residency in the next few years or I run for an open seat up here in Da Ville.

In the meantime, life moves on and I got a reminder as I perused Chronicle.com and checked the election results that happened December 8. My mom also triggered this post as we talked about the latest happenings in H-town during a recent phone conversation and discussed her soror who now sits on the HISD school board.

The runoff elections saw two of my former classmates in races for Houston city council seats. It's not the first time I've seen my classmates run for office. My high school class president Tom Zakes ran in the mid 80's for a an at-large city council seat but lost.

In the 2007 election cycle (Houston council terms are for two year terms and you are limited to six years total per the city charter) my UH classmate and attorney Jolanda Jones was in an at large runoff seat race with Joe Trevino. I didn't have the pleasure of knowing her personally but we happened to be on campus at the same time. She was a star track athlete while I was there.

My fellow Falcon classmate Lawrence Allen Jr. was in a runoff battle with Wanda Adams for the District D seat. It's my home city council district and the one I wanted to sit in someday. It's also the one I'd been contemplating running for along with the District F one in southwest Houston I resided in. His mother is TX state Rep. Alma Allen, who represents my old Texas House district since she took out 16 year incumbent Ron Wilson in 2005. (another seat I had contemplated running for as well)


While Jolanda won her Position 5 seat by a two to one margin, 15,564 votes to 7,941 Lawrence wasn't so lucky. Wanda Adams got 58 percent of the vote to win District D, which covers not only my old south side Crestmont Plaza neighborhood, but Third Ward and the Montrose areas as well. So we're still waiting for a Falcon to end up on city council.

It was one of the things I was thinking about when I was a little down last week. My relocation rearranged a lot of long-range plans I had for my life and I'm struggling to deal with it. I'm also angry that it was triggered by GOP peeps who hated me as an out and proud transperson so much they jacked with my job.

The bottom line is that the deed's been done, it's over and there's not much I can do about it now. I have to move on, make lemonade out of this lemon situation, and get over the bitterness I have about it.

Even if it's taking me a little longer to readjust and make real the dreams I had for myself back home, I get my satisfaction on those who perpetrated the injustice on me by motivating myself to be as successful as I can with the remainder of the time I'm being granted by God to live my life. If that calls for the Phenomenal Transwoman to serve as a elected official, pass legislation by lobbying them, organize the transgender community, mentor young transwomen to make those moves in their lives to be successful regardless of the odds or speak truth to power, then that's all good too.

Whatever plans God has in store for me, I just have to be ready and prepared to do my part to successfully execute them.

Oh yeah, back to your regularly scheduled post. Better luck next time, Lawrence and congratulations Jolanda. Hope you have a sucessful run as a councilmember. Maybe we'll have the pleasure of seeing you as the first sistah mayor of Houston.