Anyone attempting to compile a list of the all-time top politicians in Houston's history faces a problem of definition. For a good part of the city's history, the men who created our freewheeling laissez-faire dynamo of the western hemisphere, the poster child for urban sprawl and pollution, didn't answer to voters.

Instead, the on-the-ballot politicians mostly served as handmaidens to a series of business giants who set the municipal agenda behind closed doors and then gave the pols their public marching orders. Minorities didn't have a place in those back rooms except as servants, and the input of women into the political process, with some notable exceptions, came via pillow talk.

Jesse Jones, who served as a cabinet member under President Franklin Roosevelt, was the greatest of these movers and shakers, carving out a role by which all future Bayou City-turned-Space City kingmakers would be measured. Jones lured the 1928 Democratic National Convention to Houston and planted the government-funded starter seeds of the Ship Channel petrochemical complex. According to some irresponsible purveyors of urban myth, Jones, who married late and fathered no children, legit or illegit, may have also been way ahead of the times as the town's leading closet gay power broker. Perhaps Annise Parker, the first openly gay elected city official, could be considered his goddaughter.

For a good chunk of the 20th century Jones and his surrogates pretty much ran the place, for better or worse. If you were the people that Jones's mouthpiece, the Houston Chronicle, wrote about, it was better. If you were black or brown, on the other hand, you were expected to keep your mouth shut and show up for work on time. By Deep South standards, that was a racially enlightened attitude on the part of the establishment.

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The political barriers finally began to fall in the 1950s, with the first stirrings of the civil rights movement and of black voting power and, eventually, a massive influx of Hispanic immigrants. The process led to the diverse Technicolor political scene that is Houston today and culminated in the election of the city's first black mayor, Lee Patrick Brown, in 1997.

Along the way there have been any number of elective officials who have left their marks, and scars, on the face of the city. Here's a quick take on some of our faves, with a touch of whimsy in the choice of categories.

Best Town Father

General Sam Houston: Who else but the man the Indians affectionately labeled "The Big Drunk"? He led the Texas forces to victory (or massacre, depending on your point of view and ethnic background) over Santa Anna's siesta-groggy Mexican army in the Battle of San Jacinto. He generously lent his name in 1836 to what started out as a developer land scam on gullible Yankees by the Allen brothers. (We're still looking for those cool, healthful highlands advertised in the New York papers.)

During the first of two terms as Republic of Texas president, Houston officed in his namesake city, making him and George Bush the only two heads of state to reside here while in office.

Most Tenacious

Oscar Holcombe: He fought the KKK's influence in the '20s and held office a record 11 terms, although not consecutively. In a political career spanning 1921 to 1957, Holcombe laid the groundwork for the city freeway system and backed the acquisition of East Texas water rights that guaranteed Houston the liquid resources to support a megalopolis into the next millennium.

Best Father-and-Son Act

Roy Hofheinz, the mastermind of the Astrodome as a private citizen, was at age 24 the youngest Harris County judge in history -- and a two-term mayor of the city to boot. His son Fred, nicknamed The Boy Mayor, rode to power in the first decisive exercise of African-American votes in a municipal election in 1973. With that election, police chief Herman Short resigned, and the halting reform of the notoriously racist Houston Police Department began.

After failing in a comeback bid against Kathy Whitmire in 1989, attorney Hofheinz stepped in something sticky in Louisiana and is now fighting a federal bribery indictment.

Best Voice-of-God Imitation

Barbara Jordan: This stentorian-voiced orator and debate whiz at Texas Southern University became the first black state senator and then congresswoman from the city. She sealed her place in history with a stirring speech on the House Watergate Committee calling for President Richard Nixon's impeachment. The current holder of Jordan's seat, Sheila Jackson Lee, is blessed with similar vocal cords, but not, alas, similar brains to operate them.

Biggest Joker

Councilman Jim Westmoreland's penchant for wisecracks cost him his office when he made the mistake of trying out a racially tinged joke on a Houston Post reporter. When the Post wouldn't print the story, the Chronicle did, and joking Jim wound up getting beat by political unknown Beverley Clark.

Out of office with his sense of humor intact, Westmoreland got a good laugh when the downtown powers that be decided Clark was too wacky and engineered her replacement in the next election.

Best Martyr to the Cause

Mickey Leland: Jordan's flamboyant successor, a protégé of Jean and Dominique de Menil's, was the brightest of a crop of young minority state representatives who emerged in the mid-'70s, including Ben Reyes, Anthony Hall and Craig Washington. As a congressman he developed an agenda as an internationalist and humanitarian, an image immortalized by his death in a plane crash during an inspection of Ethiopian famine relief operations in 1989.

Best Antidote to the Good Ol' Boys

Kathy Whitmire: The co-holder with Louie Welch for most consecutive terms as mayor (five), she routed the good ol' boy developer clique with the backing of a progressive coalition of moderate whites and minorities in 1981. The only woman to serve as mayor worked wonders for the city's image by appointing the first black police chief, Lee Brown, and by guiding the city through its worst economic downturn since the Depression.

Best U.S. President from Houston

George Bush: Well, he was the only one, so there wasn't much competition. He brought the 1992 Republican Convention to the Astrodome in Houston, but it nominated a loser.

Best Congressman

Albert Thomas: Working with Senator Lyndon Johnson, this legislative meat cutter excelled at slicing the pork on the House Appropriations Committee and sending it all back home. He helped corral the Johnson Space Center for the Clear Lake area, a development that polished the city's futuristic image and produced the best publicity any town has ever received from beyond the atmosphere: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed."

Strongest of the Strong

Bob Lanier: This developer went from playing power broker behind the throne of mayor Louie Welch to municipal king after Kathy Whitmire pissed him off. He ended Whitmire's reign, killed her monorail plan and spurred redevelopment in the inner city, even though the primary beneficiaries were the gentry. Lanier dominated City Council as few have before him, never losing a vote of consequence and reducing the 14 members to rubber stamps. Wife Elyse virtually created the role of mayoral first lady, launching a Houston image campaign with the immortal slogan "Houston, Expect the Unexpected." Under Lanier's iron fist, it hardly ever happened at City Hall.

Biggest Feet in Mouth

Former mayor Louie Welch's comment to what he thought was a dead mike during his unsuccessful comeback campaign against Kathy Whitmire in 1987: "Shoot the queers." Gay activists responded with campaign T-shirts featuring bull's-eyes.

Doddering councilman Frank Mann characterized challenger Eleanor Tinsley's supporters as "queers and odd wads." Apparently there were a lot of them, since Tinsley won and went on to a distinguished career on Council.

Biggest Prude

Councilman Rob Todd: He could pass for an entry in an Elvis impersonator contest with all that doo-wopped hair, but deep inside the District E representative burns the soul of a Church Lady. Rob, once described by colleague Jew Don Boney as a funny, funny guy, has fulminated against the evils of sex boutiques selling edible underwear, opposed allowing shock rocker Marilyn Manson to perform at a city-owned facility, and dismissed Bill Clinton's oral fixations and fibbing as typical of Democrats. If Rob weren't so righteous, you might think he was just severely repressed.

Runner-up: Anti-porn activist Geneva Kirk Brooks, who exposed a bunch of Houston Lighting & Power workers who had hired the infamous Salad Sisters for a stag party performance at a company warehouse. She reveled in playing the videotape over and over to anyone who would watch. Unfortunately Rob wasn't around back then.

Best and Worst Councilman at the Same Time

Ben Reyes: Can anyone serving federal time for bribery and conspiracy make a best politician list? In the aftermath of the feds' Hotel Six sting that led to Reyes's and former port commissioner Betti Maldonado's convictions, it's easy to forget how Reyes virtually created Hispanic politics in Houston and held his own on City Council as perhaps the best wheeler-dealer for nearly two decades. Never mind that he was fooling us with that phony Purple Heart in Vietnam stuff all those years and had the worst midlife crisis in Houston political history. When Ben was good, he was very good, but when he was bad, he stank out the house.

E-mail Tim Fleck at tim.fleck@houstonpress.com.

In a pre-Christmas Eve press conference, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo urged county residents to stay home for the holidays and limit any Christmas or New Year’s Eve celebrations to within their immediate households given the troubling upticks in local coronavirus metrics over the last few months.

“Right now, in the holiday season, as the virus rages on around the nation and our state, we face the greatest challenge yet,” Hidalgo said. “In our hospitals, the numbers in the ICU have not stopped creeping up. All across Texas, communities are entering danger territory. The current situation where our medical center — the largest in the world — is routinely crossing its base capacity, means that procedures are postponed, that healthcare workers are at risk of burnout, that we can’t sustain a surge in infections beyond where we are right now, and that we’re living at the very, very edge.”

“The way to show your loved ones that you love them this holiday season is to stay home, to put your plans on hold this year,” she continued.

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To drive the point home, Hidalgo was joined by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Dr. David Persse of the Houston Health Department and Harris County Public Health’s interim director Dr. Sherri Onyiego, all of whom echoed Hidalgo’s request that county residents stay vigilant through the holiday season and limit their contact with others accordingly.

The Houston Health Department reported an additional 634 cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and two new deaths within the city of Houston. As of 4 p.m., Harris County had recorded a total of 224,245 coronavirus cases and 2,605 deaths from the disease.

Hidalgo and Turner said that they’ve both discussed the possibility of issuing a local curfew order if the coronavirus begins to spread even more rapidly and we get closer to a point of no return, but the two local officials said they agree that this type of sweeping restriction isn’t necessary — yet.

“The curfew is a very blunt tool that we have — pretty much the last tool that we have — and so we want to make sure to deploy that in a very worst case scenario… Right now, we’re at a point where if people do their part, we can still turn things around,” Hidalgo said. “It’s not a foregone conclusion that we’re headed into a completely unsustainable place, but we’re very close.”

“The way I look at things,” Hidalgo explained, “the numbers continue to creep up, the ICU population numbers continue to accelerate, [but] that acceleration is not increasing. So we have a little bit of runway, but we’ll see what happens.”

Turner also had harsh words for the Houstonian who attacked an employee at Grand Prize Bar earlier this week after being asked to wear a face mask as required. The disgruntled maskless patron attacked the employee in the head with a glass, sending the bloodied bar worker to Ben Taub hospital where he needed ten stitches.

“We are aggressively looking for this individual. We want to find this individual, we want to find him and arrest him and bring charges against him,” Turner said. “Quite frankly, I view it as almost like attempted murder, myself. But this type of foolishness is not going to be accepted.”

Wednesday’s press conference came on the heels of new forecasts from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab which projected that Houston could soon become a nationwide COVID-19 hotspot if an expected surge in coronavirus spread comes after the holiday season.

It also followed Monday’s news that the state has ordered nine southeast Texas counties — Galveston, Jefferson, Chambers, Brazoria, Jasper, Hardin, Liberty, Orange and Newton — to halt ratchet-back their reopenings due to dangerous COVID-19 hospitalization stats.

By Monday in that region, the number of hospital patients with the coronavirus had been over 15 percent for seven straight days. As required by Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide reopening guidelines, areas of Texas that sustain those high levels of hospitalizations for a week straight have to roll back business occupancy levels to 50 percent, shut down any bars that haven't been reclassified as restaurants through a TABC loophole and halt elective surgeries.

“By the time you get there, you’re really in a tough position, and so to see our neighbors reach that is concerning,” Hidalgo said, before warning that if Harris County residents let their guards down, our area could easily hit that scary milestone.

“It is a very real possibility that we could end up facing the fate we’ve avoided thus far. But look, we have avoided it because of our ability to do our part, to take that personal responsibility, to be realistic about how this virus spreads, and that’s why we’re not mincing words today,” she said.

“Please,” Hidalgo continued, “no gathering for the holidays, no gathering for New Year, and continue to remember: the moment you are with somebody you don’t live with and you’re taking off your mask, you are at risk of spreading the virus.”

Since November, mysterious metallic monoliths have been appearing all over the world. Houston has one of its own.

Located on 11th Street just east of Beverly, the monolith is identical to the one that was first discovered in San Juan County, Utah on November 18 and many of the dozens that have been found across the globe. It is made of shiny grey metal and is presumably hollow. The shape is triangular, and it stands nine feet tall. Ours also seems to be a tad bit shoddier than some of the others that have been discovered. Employees at the nearby Field & Tides restaurant say that it appeared roughly three weeks ago, and that they had no idea who or what was behind it.

The purposes of the monoliths have been avidly debated, with some attributing them to extraterrestrial forces while more practical-minded folks chalk it up to a viral marketing campaign, art project, or internet craze. A running joke is that it's a failed part of a campaign for the video game Cyberpunk 2077 and that both the game and the monoliths fail to actually do anything correctly. At least one businessman, Chris Beers of Pennsylvania, openly admitted to capitalizing on the monolith phenomenon to promote his candy store. The welding department at Austin Community College admitted that they built one as a joke.

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Ganesha portrait at the base of the monolith.

Photo by Jef Rouner

Monoliths have also been the subject of conspiracies and weirdness. Moroccan company Top Negoce has claimed (possibly in jest) that the monoliths are part of their roll-out for a female robot called Aya, who is trapped inside. In California, angry Christians toppled a monolith Atascadero declaring they didn’t “want illegal aliens from Mexico, or outer space.” It was replaced with a wood cross that declared “Christ is King.”

This is a very Houston set of offerings.

Photo by Jef Rouner

It does appear as if the Heights monolith has already attracted some manner of worship, albeit in a very Houston fashion. The base of the structure has been surrounded by offerings, including a Whataburger key chain, a picture of Ganesha, fruit, a miniature version of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, and bottle caps from Top Chico. It has also been decorated with a colorful sash as well as a vinyl sticker simply reading “weird.”

In all likelihood, the monoliths are the 2020 version of planking and flash mobs. On the other hand, if you happen to be in The Heights then you might as well leave a token at its base. At this point, help from any mysterious powers is welcome.

You said it, sticker.

Photo by Jef Rouner

Greg Travis, the Council Member from District G, Spends a lot of his time online being a complete right-wing prat and spreading conspiracy theories about wealthy Jews (or at least George Soros) stealing the election. His latest bout of verbal diarrhea is a comment about how major female political figures from the left have either slept their way to the top or only got there through affirmative action.

On December 21, he shared a popular meme on his personal Facebook page comparing First Lady Melania Trump and former First Lady Michelle Obama. The picture shows Obama sitting in a chair with her legs apart and Trump sitting with her legs crossed. The caption reads “No Comparison.” Travis tagged the meme with “yep, just saying.”

When some people began to push back against the image, Travis began spiraling into full on misogynist and racist nuttery about Obama and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

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“It’s called Affirmative Action,” he said. “Doesn’t take much—[Obama] was born with her qualifications. She isn’t the brightest bulb in the lot. You really should look up the reason why she lost her law license. She gave it up because they were going to yank it for real estate fraud—she was ripping off one of her clients. That’s how she rolls. And let’s not talk about Kamala—her qualification is that she sleeps with powerful men—some role model of a strong woman. Without Willy [sic] Brown she’d be working in an office cubicle… Feminism is dead on the Left.”

The page Travis shared from is even kookier than he is.

Screengrab from Facebook

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, the idea that Michelle Obama had to surrender her law license for criminal reasons is a very old bit of conservative bullshit that’s been fact checked by everyone from Snopes to Reuters. The original viral claim said that Obama was involved in insurance fraud, not real estate, because apparently Travis cannot even double-check his conspiracy theories. Obama voluntarily moved her status as a member of the Illinois Bar to inactive when she became First Lady, and there are no records of any disciplinary actions taken against her. The claim is simply not true and never was.

Did Obama get into Princeton? It’s possible, and Obama herself wondered that in her autobiography Becoming .

“It was impossible to be a black kid at a mostly white school and not feel the shadow of affirmative action,” says Obama in the book. “You could almost read the scrutiny in the gaze of certain students and even some professors, as if they wanted to say, 'I know why you’re here.' These moments could be demoralizing, even if I’m sure I was just imagining some of it," she wrote. "It planted a seed of doubt. Was I here merely as part of a social experiment?”

Regardless, Obama graduated in the top ten percent of Whitney Young Magnet High School before she went to Princeton and also served as school treasurer. She later graduated from Harvard Law School with a J.D. — the same degree Travis has from University of Texas School of Law. While affirmative action might have played a role in her getting to Princeton, it’s ridiculous to believe that it had anything to do with Obama actually earning her degree through hard work and good grades.

Travis’ remarks about Harris are gross, which is unsurprising as being a vile mouthpiece for fetid brain scat seems to be his only job skill. Yes, Harris did indeed date San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in the mid-90s while her own career as a district attorney was taking office. It’s also true that Brown did appoint Harris to a couple of positions, including the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

However, despite calls of cronyism there is no evidence that Harris somehow slept her way into the elected position of San Francisco County District Attorney. Brown supported her bid, yes, but then again, he supported other California politicians such as Gavin Newsom, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi at more or less the same level. As David Siders wrote for Politico Magazine , “It is difficult to find any successful politician in San Francisco who does not have history with Brown.” The idea that she hadn’t previously proven her capabilities for the role while in the Alameda County district attorney’s office in Oakland is just sexist blue skying from a far less accomplished man.

It’s also baffling considering that the basis of Travis’ entire rant is the idea that Trump is somehow a class above the women he is throwing shade at with all the grace and skill of a freshman trying to snap a girl’s bra. After all, Trump’s entire body of work involves some mediocre modeling, making Christmas ball-retractingly terrifying, and being married to the president. Without her husband, literally no one in America would have ever heard her name. I’m sure that it appeals to the conservative mindset that the acme of womanhood is someone who occasionally crosses her legs for pictures, otherwise keeps quiet, and bears male heirs, but that says far more about the fragility of people like Travis than it does accomplished women like Obama and Harris. He wouldn’t know feminism if it free bled on his clown shoes.

Twenty years ago, there would have been little debate. Maybe a few people would have complained, but the Texas Department of Transportation would have simply paved them over, if you'll excuse the metaphor. Expanding freeways is the business of TxDOT in Houston and, for as long as anyone can remember, business was good.

Old Texas, meet new Houston.

Just as droves of people turned out to comment on the bizarre and archaic plans from the Army Corps of Engineers to deepen and widen Buffalo Bayou, those affected by the plans to expand Interstate 45, and advocates of alternative forms of transportation and urban planning, aren't willing to be roadkill.

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When the plans for the expansion of Interstate 45 from downtown north to the Beltway and beyond began to emerge a couple years ago, the initial focus was on the radical changes proposed to much of the area around downtown. After all, little work on the freeways around the city's urban hub had been done in decades and the plans were audacious with massive aesthetic changes to the cityscape including wiping out Pierce Elevated and green spaces on top of underground freeways.

It was as shocking as it was ambitious.

We even did a cover story on the planned changes to the east end and businesses were not thrilled.

But, as the dust settled on those plans, a new outcry came from the city's east and near north sides. For decades, both areas had mostly been neglected and, not surprisingly, predominantly populated by people of color. Their complaints generally fell on deaf ears for all the same reasons those sorts of things have always occurred.

This time around, however, there is a new alignment of interests that not only long time residents and business owners, but new investors in the area and a coalition of Houstonians tired of a city that favors widening freeways over alternatives. After all, METRORail's Red Line runs right through the heart of the near north side all the way to Airline.

It is precisely why TxDOT extended the comment deadline at the urging of Mayor Sylvester Turner and other area political leaders. The plan, which would destroy a number of homes and businesses, is still under consideration, but the final design phase is nearly complete. Of particular concern is the number of affordable housing units the city will lose in the construction. Given the limited number of affordable options for Houston residents, it's difficult to imagine losing any.

None of that is good for Houston, but one thing we imagine TxDOT was not ready for was the groundswell of support for taking a different approach to life on the road in the Bayou City.

Most Houstonians know that pouring more concrete will never solve the problem of traffic and growth in Houston even if it is fast and cheap. It's why the Army Corps was so quick to suggest widening Buffalo Bayou. The price was right. But, this is not our parents Houston. Those who live here now value quality of life over the ease of freeways.

The clamor for more rail — fought tooth and nail by anti-rail forces and business interests — the desire for more park space and bike trails, the urging of better and wider sidewalks for pedestrians, and even the call for closing of some streets to vehicles entirely are all part of the city's changing nature on a topic we most like to complain about: traffic.

It has come time for civic leaders, city, state and federal, to realize that the changing demographic of Houston must be considered when it comes to large scale projects that will impact the way we get around for decades to come. This is not the blue collar, refinery town it was when many of these freeways were created. This is particularly true inside the Loop where so much of the construction is heavily scrutinized.

It's also critically important that we address the needs of the less fortunate in Houston. We have a affordable housing crisis only worsened by a recession created by the pandemic. The last thing we need to be doing is demolishing those resources for a bigger freeway.

And we haven't even bothered to broach the subject of flooding, which more concrete will certainly exacerbate.

There are no easy solutions to the problems Houston faces and traffic is most certainly at the top of the list. It is why we must look at every possible option and not just stick with the same old plans we have relied on for decades. They may have worked years ago, but they cannot be the only option for a city poised to become the third largest in the country.

This is a young, vibrant city that wants better for itself and its future. Out with the old and in with the new.