Queer Voices
Queer Voices
January 28th - Jim Kovach and Annise Parker about running for Judge Positions
This QUEER VOICES will focus on the political as we get personal with two candidates running for judicial office. First up, Bryan Hlavinks talks with Jim Kovach, who is campaigning for re-election to Harris County Civil Court at Law #2. Then, a political candidate himself, Davis Medoza Darusman (running for JP Precinct 5, Place 2), talks with "lesbian activist" and former mayor Annise Parker. She is running for Harris County Judge.
Links to campaigns:
https://www.davisforjustice.com/
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Brett:You are listening to Queer Voices, a radio show and a podcast that has been on the air in Houston for over five decades. We are a legacy show representing the LGBTQIA Plus community. I am Brett Cullum, and in this episode, we get political and personal with two of our favorite guests. First up, Brian Plavinka talks to Judge Jim Kovac, who is running in the Democratic primaries for his re-election in Harris County's Civil Court at Law No. Then, current Justice of the Peace candidate for Precinct 5, place 2, Davis Mendoza DeRuzman, talks to lesbian activist and former mayor, Anise Parker. Anise is now running for Harris County Judge. Davis talks to her about her early career and what politics means to us all now. Queer Voices starts now.
SPEAKER_04:This is Brian Levinka, and I'm talking to my good friend Jim Kovach today on Queer Voices. Jim is running for County Civil Court number two, re-electing himself. Jim, welcome to the show. Thank you, Brian. I'm glad to be here. So let's start from the beginning. How did you get involved with running for office? Because I remember you back in the day when you were just a lawyer.
SPEAKER_02:I've been a lawyer now for 34 years. It's hard to believe. I got licensed after I graduated from the University of Houston Law Center in 1991. So I've been practicing law for 34 years. I've been your judge in Harris County Civil Court at Law No. And that's not true for me. I I didn't think I wanted to be a judge or be a political elected official. I had a pretty good legal career and I was enjoying my law practice for 27 years when in 2017 I got disillusioned by how I saw people being treated in the court. And things were pretty good for me in my collection work and the litigation that I handled. And I was in front of all Republican judges at the time. And I was tired of seeing people that didn't look like me get treated unfairly by the judges. And I had an instance where there was a young black man who was trying to tell the judge his situation about he would had lost his job and was being evicted. And he wasn't really fighting the fact that he hadn't paid rent, but he just wanted the judge to know that he wasn't a bad person. And the judge didn't even let him finish. And the judge nodded over to the bailiff, who of course is in full sheriff uniform with, you know, the gun and handcuffs and everything, and had the bailiff come stand behind the young man to silence his voice. And that's why I thought that was so inappropriate and unfair to this young man. And when I got home, I told my husband that I was sick of the courts treating people poorly and that I was gonna change my law office and make it a real estate office. And I was gonna go into real estate over in the Memorial Park area. And he told me, no, you're not. You're gonna go and fix the court and treat people fairly like they're supposed to be treated in a courtroom. So it was my husband who actually convinced me that it was time for me to run for office and run for judge.
SPEAKER_04:Is he your biggest supporter? Because it seems like it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, everybody jokes. His name's Ben, and uh he wears one of my campaign t-shirts he goes, so I call him Ben the Billboard. So what does the county civil court do exactly? So the county civil court is just like state district court, except we have a dollar limit, and it just went from$250,000 up to$325,000. So anybody can file a suit in our our our court if they're suing for money damages that are less than$325,000. So as you can imagine, in Harris County, we do a lot of driving. So we have a lot of automobile accidents that might be soft tissue injury, not if it's a death case, but if it's a a minor injury, then those are cases that get filed in our court. We also handle a lot of the debt collection cases. So we have a lot of lawsuits involving unpaid credit card bills and unpaid bills. And then also we have a lot of homeowner disputes like homeowner association cases and that kind of thing. If somebody's unhappy with a good or service that they bought, those kind of cases. Then there's another big group of cases we handle, and that's all the appeals from Justice of the Peace Court. And Justice of the Peace Court is where every eviction case starts. And so we handle all the appeals from the Justice of the Peace Court. So that means we handle all the appeals on evictions. So I do a large eviction docket, and that's something that it's important to have a good judge sitting on the bench who understands and knows the laws related to evictions.
SPEAKER_04:What is something that you did not expect when you became a judge that actually happened to you?
SPEAKER_02:The first thing I have to say is that I didn't realize, I mean, I guess I should have known doing collection work and eviction work that people would be unhappy with me, but I didn't realize the security that comes with being being a judge. You know, sometimes there's there's people that um have mental health issues that come before the court. And so security's a real issue. And the courtroom is equipped with panic buttons, and uh I have a bailiff in the courtroom with me at all times, and so we just have to be careful. You know, I think it's part of the Trump administration has incited people to to be more violent than they were in the past, and I think that it runs into the courtroom as well.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Um didn't talk about endorsements. What endorsements have you received?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm really happy to announce that I just found out today that I just got the LGBTQ plus um caucus endorsement that just happened at the nine o'clock meeting this morning. I also found out today that I was endorsed by Greater Heights Democrats. And a day ago, I was endorsed by AFL CIO COPE. So I've got the labor union's endorsement. I've got some really great individual endorsements. I'm endorsed by former mayor Anise Parker. I'm endorsed actually by her opponent, City Councilwoman Letitia Plummer. So I have both the people running for county judge have endorsed my campaign. And then I've got a lot of endorsements from the black community that I'm really proud about. That I'm endorsed by Dr. Alma Allen, Dr. Ben Hall. Alma Allen is our state rep. Ben Hall's a prominent attorney. Former judge Dwight Jefferson was the first black uh judge in Harris County, Texas. State rep Ron Reynolds, former Houston City Councilman Carole Robinson. I'm endorsed by Constable Smokey Phillips, out and proud gay city councilman Mario Castillo, Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, and also former Congresswoman Erica Lee Carter, Sheila Jackson Lee's daughter, and also Commissioner, County Commissioners, Adrian Garcia and Leslie Brionis have endorsed my campaign. So I've got a lot of good endorsements. Also, State Representative Jean Wu. That is an impressive list. Thank you. It's nice to know that my colleagues and fellow elected officials see the good work that we're doing in the County Civil Court at Law No. So it it's it's a real honor to have their support.
SPEAKER_04:So I understand you drew an opponent. Talk about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I'm disappointed about that. It's uh unfortunate in the Democratic primary that we have good incumbents that get primaried at times, and I'm one of them this time. My opponent has never practiced in my court, has never filed a case in the Harris County Civil Courts at law. She admitted that in a cr in the chronicle interview, and when I run her bar number, you can see that she's never filed a case in our court. And it's real disappointing because we do really serious work in this court, and it's not a place for somebody to learn in the first time to have an experience in these courts, is to be the actual judge. As you can imagine, eviction cases are very serious and complicated matters, and they need to be taken seriously, and you need to have a judge that understands the law and knows how to apply it. I'm the top-rated county civil court at law judge. The Houston Bar Association, which are the lawyers that actually practice in this court, give me 83% rated me either excellent or very good. And the categories are how well I know the law, do I follow the law? Am I professional and courteous? And do I use the attorney's time efficiently and wisely? And so I was really honored to be the top um judge in the county civil courts at law. So it's a little disappointing that I'm the one who got an opponent. And there's also open seat. And so we have a brand new judge, and she ended up not getting an opponent. So it's kind of ironic that here I am doing what I think is very good work for the GLBT community and for all Houstonian and Harris County residents and litigants that come in my court. You're treated fairly. I like to say life isn't fair, but your judge should be. And I live by that every day on the bench. And so I am disappointed to get a primary opponent, but it means I just have to work all the harder to make sure that every voter out there knows who's the right candidate to vote. It's it I tell people, my name's Judge Jim F. Kovach. I tell people it's easier to remember. I know there's a lot of judges, but my initials are JFK. So I tell people, please don't get me confused with RFK, but I am JFK on the ballot. JFK, I never realized that. Yeah, I was born right after his assassination. And so I just turned 60. I was born in 65, and so my parents purposely put my initials at JFK. What does the F stand for? Fred. Frederick James Frederick Kovec.
SPEAKER_04:Oh wow. I never knew that.
SPEAKER_02:When I was a kid and my hair was a lot redder, they used to call me Red Fred, was my nickname. Red Fred.
SPEAKER_04:So how long have you lived in Houston? And I know you've been involved with the community. Tell us about your community activities that you've done.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So I got to Houston in 1982 and graduated from Umbull ISD up in the Kingwood area in the Umble area. And um, I went to University of Texas undergrad and then in Austin. And then I came back to University of Houston Law School and graduated in 91. So my whole adult life I've been in Houston. Um one of the things that I was very active in was uh, as you know, and we did this a lot of this work together, was uh for health care for the community. I started off as the board member and then I became board chair of the Montrose Clinic, which helped serve um men that had STDs and became very large and very busy during the AIDS epidemic. And then I went and when I was board chair, we merged with a group called the Assistance Fund, and we decided to take our non-judgmental health care business, and it's a nonprofit, and take it to other underserved communities. And we reached out to the city of Houston and they asked us to open a clinic in the fifth ward on Lyons Avenue, and that's a clinic that's still there today, and it was so successful that it led to led to the creation of Legacy Community Health Services. And Legacy Community Health Services now has 64 locations. They're opening a 65th location up in the Acres home area, and they have a 66th clinic on the way, and they have clinics all the way to Beaumont now. So I was the board chair when we made that decision, and there was a lot of hard work done by Katie Caldwell, the former, I guess she was called the CEO of Legacy. And I can't take credit for all the work she did, but I was instrumental in making the decision to go out to those other communities.
SPEAKER_04:That was the point at which it became a federally qualified health center, is that correct?
SPEAKER_02:Right. It's it's what's called an FQHC. It's a federally qualified health care center, and that means that they serve underserved communities. They get a uh um they they get grants from the the government and enhanced Medicaid reimbursement rate. And the good thing about them is they provide health care to everybody regardless of their ability to pay. And so that's one of their mission statements. And so it does a lot of good work in the community.
SPEAKER_04:When is the early voting start? Let's talk about the voting.
SPEAKER_02:Oh no, you caught me on that. I don't have my bat in front of me. The election is March 3rd.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, let's go.
SPEAKER_02:I believe early voting starts. I I think it's February 17th.
SPEAKER_04:You know, let's let's do a little research right quick to find that out. Because that's very important. Okay. Early voting is January 21st through the 27th.
SPEAKER_02:That I think is I think that's for the Christian Manaphy race. Uh yes. Okay. Voting. It's the it's the um Democratic primary March 3rd, 2026.
SPEAKER_04:And so talk about the importance of the the primary. Does that decide this election, or when you have to go to the general?
SPEAKER_02:There'll be a general election in November, which will be the Democrat versus the Republican. I'm obviously the um the Democrat, a Democratic candidate, but I've got to get through my primary. I do have an opponent in the Democratic primary, and I have to win that in order to run against the Republican in November. And I was right, it is February 17th. I had to get my brochure material here. It starts February 17th to February 27th, and then election day is is um uh Tuesday, March 3rd. So if people are on the fence about voting, what would you tell them? Every vote counts. I can't stress that enough. In Harris County, we've had races, especially the down ballot races. That's the other thing is I have to tell everybody to vote for every race because the down ballot voting last election cycle, we had about 40,000 people who started voting at the top of the ballot did not vote all the way down to the bottom of the ballot. The Democratic Party lost on three or four judicial races by less than 300 or 400 votes. So your vote absolutely counts, especially down ballot. We can lose good Democratic judges simply because people that started at the top of the ballot didn't continue voting on down the ballot.
SPEAKER_04:Why do you think that is? It's just because the ballot is so long in Harris County?
SPEAKER_02:It is. It's one of the largest, longest ballots in the country. So it's an incredibly long ballot. It's now a lot easier with the machines, the electronic machines, but it takes a little bit of time to go through it. But people also don't necessarily know the candidates down the ballot, and so they're confused as to who to vote for. And that's why I think it's really important that people look at their information centers and organizations in which they align philosophically. It's really important that people look at endorsement groups such as the GLBT political caucus. They take a lot of time and effort screening everybody. And so they try to do their very best in screening and picking the best candidates. Look for groups that endorse that align with your values. Another one is the AFL CIO, COPA Houston, the union endorsement. I have both those endorsements that I just mentioned, which I'm very proud to have. So far, I've gotten every endorsement group that I know of that has endorsed.
SPEAKER_04:So you mentioned the endorsement process for the caucus. Can you talk about that and what the process is and how extensive it is?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So what you do is you fill out a very long questionnaire and it's a very detailed questionnaire, and they ask you all kind of questions about your background and your philosophy and what kind of judge you would make. And then they have a screening process. You meet with from four to ten people who are members of the caucus, and they screen you and ask you questions, and they do the same for your opponent. And then they make a recommendation. They make a recommendation that's then put to the whole body of all the caucus members. There's over a thousand members of the GLPD caucus. I think at this this endorsement meeting, we had almost 400 people actually appear to vote. And so they get the recommendation from the screening committee. If your race is pulled, they can ask questions of the screening committee as to why they recommended endorsing a specific candidate, and then the body votes on whether or not to endorse you. It comes with a lot of hard work on part of my campaign, but it's the best screening process I know of in the Harris County area.
SPEAKER_04:It's a very extensive process, and the candidates are very well chosen or isolated and picked out to be the candidates to present to the community.
SPEAKER_02:It's really important that people know that in supporting me, my campaign for Judge Jim F. Kovach, I think I'm the candidate that can beat the Republican opponent come November. And my opponent in the primary has never filed a case in these very courts. She would have a very hard time winning the election in November, where I think I can beat the beat the Republican opponent.
SPEAKER_04:So how often are you having to rerun for office? Is it every couple of years, every two years?
SPEAKER_02:Every four years. Four years. It's a four-year term. So I was first elected in 2018. I was elected again in 2022. I had no primary opponent in 2022. And then now I'm up for re-election in 2026. So this will be my third term. And are you term limited at any point? No. Judges are not term limited, but my court has no age limit. Now, state district court judges are limited age limit of 75, but my court does not have an age limit, but I'm far underneath. I'm much younger than that. So I'm not worried at all about the age limit. So where can people find out more information about you and your campaign? They can go to my website at www.covachforjudge.com. That's K-O-V-A-C-H-F-O-R-J-U-D-G-E dot com. And it has uh more information about me, all my endorsements. Uh I've raised almost$100,000 and it'll spend over$100,000, which is kind of ironic to spend that kind of money to run to be a public servant and um a job that that doesn't pay as well as being a private lawyer, but I love my job. I'm doing this for public service. I had a lucrative career and I'm able to um give back to the community. I think that I bring uh 34 years of experience in helping people to the bench, and I'd like to stay and continue to do that for four more years. I'm truly a servant for the public in trying to help them resolve their legal issues and their disputes in the courtroom in a fair and appropriate professional manner.
SPEAKER_04:Now, is there any way that you need volunteers or people that can help the campaign, or does Ben do it all?
SPEAKER_02:Ben does a lot of it, but he helps organize people. So yes, I need people to help block walk and to work the polls when voting starts. It comes with uh A free Kovach for Judge t-shirt. My V and my name, I take the KO V ACH. The V, I have really cool t-shirts that have the V and the rainbow colors that a lot of people in the community like. And so we give our volunteers a shirt and help to get them to get out to the pools. The info link to volunteer is on my website also at covechforjudge.com.
SPEAKER_04:Is there anything else you want our listeners to know before we go?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, as a person that deals with evictions in a daily basis in my court, I think that's really important that people know there's resources out there to contact. In my court, I allow the law the law schools to have their pro bono legal services, as well as other services such as Lone Star Legal Aid and Houston Eviction Association diversion programs can come to my court and can screen people. There's a Justice of the Peace, Steve Dubal, who's in Precinct One, which encompasses the Montrose area. And he's got a lot of resources on his website. Because evictions start at the Justice of the Peace um level, a lot of people need the services up front. And he has eviction diversion programs. And so it's a great resource for people to find. On my work email, we also have those services listed. If you Google a Judge Kovac, you'd find those.
SPEAKER_04:Well, Jalen, thank you for coming on to the show today. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for having me, Brian. It's really a pleasure. And I I appreciate you helping me get out the message about keeping a good judge like me on the bench. Remind all your voters to get out the vote starting February 17th through 27th with early voting, or in person on March 3rd. The earlier you vote, the better, because you never know what might happen with Houston weather. So don't get caught.
SPEAKER_07:Part of our Queer Voices community listens on KPFT, which is a nonprofit community radio station. And as such, KPFT does not endorse or hold any standing on matters of politics. If you would like equal airtime to represent an alternative point of view, please contact us through KPFT.org or our own website at queervoices.org. This is Queer Voices.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you for listening to Queer Voices on KPFT 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, 91.9 FM in Huntsville, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Davis Mendoza DeRuzman. Today I'm speaking with a favorite guest here on Queer Voices with her third appearance in as many years, Nice Parker, as the former mayor of Houston, the first openly LGBTQ plus mayor of a major city at that, a national leader in LGBTQ political representation, and a longtime advocate for local government that actually works for the people. Since we last spoke, she stepped away from national advocacy as president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund and is now running for Harris County Judge, a role that may sound judicial, but in practice is one of the most powerful executive positions in the county and in Texas. Anise Parker, welcome back to Clear Voices.
SPEAKER_01:Always glad to be with you. And I always like to do a little commercial for KPFT, and then I am a listener supporter as well. So you you uh get a monthly contribution from me, and I have been for a very, very long time.
SPEAKER_03:Well, thank you so much for your support. I also want to start by congratulating you on the recent Houston Chronicle endorsement, Houston LGBTQ plus political caucus endorsement, and several others.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. The the endorsements have been coming in in the range that that I expected. Uh, the chronicle is very important to me, not so much because of the reach of the Houston Chronicle, as much as because of the way they do their endorsements. It's a two-hour in-depth interview with my my primary opponent sitting next to me. And you know, we it really puts us through our paces. So it felt good.
SPEAKER_03:And you're on camera. I imagine there's a lot of cameras to spread on you. Yeah. Yeah. It's a stage. Yeah. Um, and before we talk about your race for for County Judge, which we did extensively in your last appearance, or your work at the Victory Fund, which we did extensively in your 2024 appearance, I want to take it back to the beginning with your origin story. When you think back to your childhood or teenage years, what was the first moment you remember being engaged, speaking up, organizing, or just generally paying attention to what was going on around you?
SPEAKER_01:Never. Uh uh not when I was young. The first time I paid attention to politics is very clear, though. I was uh in the second grade when John F. Kennedy was shot. My parents and grandparents were very politically active. My parents, my grandparents, they voted. They took us to vote when they voted, but they were all hardcore Republicans and very much they were they were Goldwater Republicans. They were not voting for for John Kennedy. But when he was shot, the whole world stopped. And they were horrified. And they were in mourning just like everyone else because of what it meant to the country. I watched around me the the people that were close to me, but the but you know on a black and white TV, you know, watching the the news, how it changed America. I was intrigued by politics for the first time. And but it never occurred to me that I might want to be involved or or get engaged, not until I entered college. I was privileged to fall in with a group of older lesbian feminists here who are active here in the in the Houston area, and they adopted me as a mascot. I was my sophomore year in college, 1975. I attended my first LGBT organizing event, the Texas Gay Conference. That was way back, and it was exciting and scary. And it was a tougher time, much tougher time to be openly LGBT. But again, I wasn't in charge of anything. I wasn't I wasn't organizing. I was just there in the room with older mentors who allowed me to tag along and watch them and and learn from them. They were veterans of the women's rights movement, some of them were veterans of the civil rights movement, and I just was just soaking it up. I was privileged to be at the seminal LGBT moments in in Houston history. Again, I didn't organize the Anita Bryant protest, but I was there. I was in the crowd and I marched. I didn't organize Town Meeting One, our first gathering of all of the lesbian and gay organizations. And I say that deliberately because we weren't LGBT then, you know, you had the gay groups and the lesbian groups, but in town meeting one, but I was there and I got to see it and experience the changes and the power of organizing. So it wasn't until the 80s that um became very, very active in the the LGBT political caucus and then became a board member, became the president, and uh the rest is sort of history.
SPEAKER_03:I definitely want to dive into that history, but speaking of your mentors and sort of them taking you under their wing, what do you think it was that they saw in you that they really wanted to to help shade and mentor and uplift you as a mascot? And what are some things that you learned just from working closely with them?
SPEAKER_01:I honestly don't don't know. Maybe they thought I was cute. I don't know. But uh I was painfully shy and quiet and and they were like being protected. But what I learned is that it is quiet persistence, that you don't you don't give up with setbacks and you don't react to insults or disparagement. You you know, you keep your eye on the prize and you just keep moving forward. It's it's actually very good preparation for politics because everyone's a critic in politics. When I was mayor, I I I know people would say, Oh, doesn't that bother you when people say this or that about you or threaten you? And I'm like, I was a lesbian activist in the 70s. So everything I did as mayor out in public, I had um armed police officers with guns standing beside me. I wasn't worried. When I was in the, you know, in the 70s and 80s, I was going into very dangerous places. I had my tires slashed, I had death threats as a out-lesbian activist, nothing that that happened in politics was ever as as frightening. But what you learn over time is that the things that scare you the most are mostly in your head. And that quiet persistence pays off.
SPEAKER_03:I I really appreciate you sharing that. And your time at Rice coincided with coming out and helping build early LGBTQ community there. So, how did figuring out who you were personally intersect with figuring out what kind of role you wanted to play in the world?
SPEAKER_01:Rice was a great experience for me in in terms of finding myself. I was I was exploring community. I was getting down who I was. A small group of us got together as a lesbian support group in 1976. That helped buoy me because I was I was out on campus. I had decided, I had come out when I was in high school to myself. I decided I was gonna be out to the world when I uh came to rice. And so my freshman orientation week, I came out to my in my residential college. It wasn't the best move I ever made, but it meant that I was out on campus. It was a fairly small campus at the time. I was out on campus the whole time. I needed that group of lesbians who would come together and we could support each other. But something happened in my senior year that was transformative, but also just hugely, hugely stressful. And that is the mother of my girlfriend at the time tried to have me expelled. In the 70s, colleges in Texas would expel out students just on a pretext or whatever. But we were still presumptive criminals in the state of Texas because of sodomy statute. And I had there were men and women I know who were expelled from college. So my girlfriend's mother had gone to the dean of students and demanded that I was a junior, her daughter was a a freshman, and so her sophomore year, my senior year, uh her mother went to the university and said that I had seduced her daughter and led her down a path of destruction and yada yada, whatever. And the the dean of students scheduled an appointment with me, and you know, I was required to attend, go to her office. Fortunately for me, I had one of our friends worked actually in the dean's office and had been present when my girlfriend's mother went on her screaming tirade about me. And so I actually knew what was coming. And I was terrified. I was in my senior year, I was on a full academic scholarship to rice. I was afraid that I was gonna be expelled. I was afraid I was gonna lose my scholarship. The dean had it and I had a very awkward conversation uh about where she did not want to ask me if I was a lesbian. She didn't want to talk about it. She talked about did I have um, you know, did I feel like I had mental health issues? Was I was I coping well with school? Long story made shorter, I was required to have three counseling sessions with a therapist on council in order to maintain my presence at at Rice. Fortunately, the therapist gave me clean bill of health and I was able to move forward. But it was humiliating and frightening. And I graduated that year, and the following year I helped found the Rice LGBT Student Association. Nobody should have to go through that. It was by by that point, I mean I wasn't, I was no longer a student, but it was important for me to stay engaged and involved in that. What was the the gay and lesbian support group of Rice University is now Rice Pride. It uh 50 years later, it's still going strong.
SPEAKER_03:That's incredible. From an incredibly dark and humiliating moment turned into something that has uh preserved through history in over 50 years and been a beacon of love and support for LGBTQ students on campus.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:It has. From that point since graduating, what got you involved with the caucus?
SPEAKER_01:Well, actually, I'm gonna go back to Rice for just a second because you know, because I said I was out on campus. I learned how to do public speaking at Rice when we formed the student association. We weren't a we weren't an official organization yet. I think there were two in the state of Texas. University of Houston had an LGBT student group and and UT did. And so little old Rice had one. But we formed a speakers group to to speak on campus, to explain our lives and and what we were going through to our fellow students. Uh I learned that I could do public speaking, and I'm I was terrified of doing it. But I was talking about my own experience and it right. And by that point, you know, I had a little separations. I wasn't, you know, again, in front of my professors, but we got invitations to speak to things like the sociology of criminology and deviant sexual behavior, or those are the classes, you know. But but whatever. We were presenting in front of our peers, and I learned that if I if I knew the subject, I mean, obviously I knew the subject, it was possible for me to stand up in front of a group and talk about it. The caucus was formed in 1975, also. I didn't get involved until really after town meeting one, which was in 1978, the year I graduated, and I began to show up in caucus meetings again, kind of like I did when I was like the little the little mascot in the in one of my college days. I was just sitting in the back of the room listening and watching and and gradually getting involved. Ran for the board and was was elected to the board, became board chairman three terms, and then the president for two terms. And that introduced me to the wider politics of of Houston.
SPEAKER_03:What what what a story. And and that's also s something that I don't think has come up in interviews and something I don't see online is at what point did you meet your your wife?
SPEAKER_01:During my time as president of the caucus, she met me. I do not remember her. I do not remember the meeting. She will tell you that uh she had a crush on me and uh uh came up after a meeting and asked me to share a copy of the bylaws and like apparently flirted with me and I was oblivious. She knew who I was and we we crossed paths apparently over time. Um in 1989, my business partner and I opened a lesbian feminist bookstore in Houston, Inklings Bookshop. And uh my wife Kathy had just gone out on her own to start her own um uh tax business. So she came in soliciting business and I said, you know, we already have an accountant, but I just I just sold my house. You can do my taxes. I need somebody to do my taxes. And she did my taxes, and then she asked me out, and I like, I am you know I don't want to take you. We can be we can be friends. I put her in the friend zone because I was I was breaking up with somebody, I didn't want to deal with any, you know, but she became my best friend and uh over time she kind of grew on me. So uh we we we just celebrated our 35th anniversary of moving in together and committing to each other. So it's been almost 36 years that she first asked me, asked me out and I said no.
SPEAKER_03:So well, that's that's a lovely story, and it's what what got you what what do you think took it from a friend zone to something more romantic? What what did you when did you start to see that in her?
SPEAKER_01:She helped me uh she helped me move out of the house of the girlfriend I was living with at the time. And we we would hang out together. And I was dating people by this point, but I just wasn't seeing her in that way. And at some point I realized that she was more interesting to hang out with and more interesting to talk to than anybody I had gone on a date with, and maybe I ought to reconsider what I was looking for in a partner. And I'm glad I did.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you for sharing that. Because I personally I love love and I think queer love is something that needs to be celebrated more often. So congratulations again on 36 years.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. And so well, only 35 years. Thirty-six well, 36 years of being knowing each other, but 35 years.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Well, congrats on 35 years. Thanks. I also want to get into your first political campaigns and what got you into like what what was the the decision process into, you know what, I'm going, I'm actually gonna run for something the first time.
SPEAKER_01:So the first time I got tucked into it, and there's a lot of data out there that that women candidates need to be asked multiple times before they run, and and LGBT candidates too. They want to be we want to be asked, we want to be invited in. We don't want to push our way in. Uh, but I'm a big believer in in self-selecting to run. And partly because the first time I ran, uh, I wasn't ready, I wasn't a good candidate. There was a redistricting battle going on in the city, and uh we needed people who were running for office. So there was a uh a Hispanic candidate, and there was a black candidate, and you know, a gay candidate, and and so that we would all have standing in this litigation around redistricting. Uh caucus had a had a powwow, and like we want you to be, we want you to be our our candidate. And so I filed for office in what was district C uh then and uh against an incumbent, ally, moderate Democratic ally, incumbent, but for political purposes, we lost the redistricting lawsuit, but by that point I was out there as a candidate. I guess I felt that dropping out would be a betrayal of the community because I had you know put raised my hand and said, yes, I want to represent the community. So I so I you know stayed in the campaign and I just got creamed. Running against an incumbent is never a good idea. Uh, you know, again, as I said, I wasn't uh, even though I had gotten used to public speaking and I could do it at the caucus, I was not a good candidate. And um, that was 1991, lost badly, crawled into a fetal position for a while. Why did I do this? It's not something I ever thought about doing or wanted to do. In 1995, special election came up. Sheila Jackson Lee had been elected to, she'd been a council member and she was elected to Congress for the first time in 1995. And uh her seat was open as a special election, kind of like we have one going on right now uh for a vacancy. And it was a six-week campaign with a January election, and I go, you know, I think I'm ready for this now. So I entered the campaign. There were 19 candidates, and the campaign was December, it was a six-week campaign, December into mid-January. No one cared, no one was paying attention. There was never a candidate forum we went to where there were more people in the audience than there were candidates on stage. You know, but there also wasn't a lot of, because there wasn't a lot of attention, I could relax into the role a little bit. I finished third out of the 19 candidates. And the first two finishers, one had been elected countywide as a Republican and the other had been elected countywide as a Democrat, very experienced candidates with high name ID. And I realized that I was the I knew more about city government because by that time I'd been a I was a civic club president. I was very engaged in building my community in a different way. And they didn't know anything about the city. I did, so I kind of rose through the pack, but I realized that it's not enough to know your subject. You have to be a good candidate. And there are things you need to do to be a good candidate. So I lost. I didn't stay in the fetal position quite as long that time. And in 97, I decided I was gonna redo my campaign, push up on the skills I needed, and and do it one more time. And that's when I connected with with Grant Martin. So we're now in our tenth campaign. We've won nine, and I expect to win 10 with him. But what I had to do, among other things, the first two times I ran for office, because I was arguably, along with Sue Lovell, we were the two most visible lesbian activists in Houston in the mid 80s. Both of us presidents of the caucus, very, very visible. Every time I saw my name in print in those two campaigns, it was a Nice Parker gay activist. A Nice Parker gay, a niece Parker gay, a niece Parker gay. And uh voters pigeonholed me as a single issue. Candidate. One of the things I did when I decided to run was I made a portfolio of the coverage. I had my little video cassette, because that's what you had back then, and the newspaper coverage. And I made appointments with we had two newspapers at the time, the Chronicle and the Post, and the three TV stations. And I went with met the editorial staff and I said, I've been treated unfairly when I campaign. Here's all the coverage. Every time you refer to one of my opponents, you talk about what they do for a living. I actually work for Republican oil man Robert Mossbacker, and I have for years. Uh I I work in the oil industry, uh an engineering technician, uh, but you refer to me as a lesbian activist. You don't refer to anybody else in any of these races by what they do as a volunteer. And and why do you choose lesbian activists? Because I'm also the president of the largest civic association in Houston. I that's a volunteer role. I mean, so we just I just laid it out. The coverage changed in the third race. Now they'd figure out a way to work it in to the like a news article after the jump, but it wasn't my last name. And it really, it wasn't that I went back in the closet, it's just that I took control over the messaging. And then the other thing I had to do was learn how to raise money because it is necessary in politics to have the resources to get your messaging out. And so I was successful in that race and just kept rolling.
SPEAKER_03:In terms of the the first two um elections, the first the first two races versus the following nine, um, you mentioned a bit of fundraising, you mentioned a bit of like messaging. Um what are some things that you look back on now in those first two elections, first two races that really make you cringe? And you're like, oh, I can't believe I did or didn't do that, or I wish I did more of this.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I wasn't even in the race I won, um was not a smooth or um comfortable public speaker. And to this day, when I uh when I start doing uh for dollars, when I, you know, get on there, calling people, saying I'm running for office, asking for their support, I have to write myself a little script out so that if I if my brain if my brain hasn't frozen in a long time, but it used to all the time in the beginning, so I had to look down. I mean, starting my name, what I'm running for, what my phone number is, just you know, just as a crutch. But one of the things that helped me a lot, in fact, even in the first race that I lost, was I had a group of friends together and we set up a video camera, and I pretended I was in a candidate forum and I had them fire questions at me and then answer the questions, and then we would stop the camera and play it back, and they would just critique the hell out of it. How I was standing, the expression on my face. Why did you use that word? So it it made me much more conscious and aware of how to make how to do my presentation skills and and to I tend to speak with my hands, for example, and and you know, I if you stand awkwardly, things like that. The people that people notice and they can be distracting. We didn't want anything to distract from the message. When I ran for mayor, I actually went through a similar process to that. Again, I worked with a speech coach and who was a friend of mine who who directed plays, and we sat in an empty auditorium with me sitting on my hands. So I couldn't speak with my hands, and uh, you know, convey to the back of the room without raising my voice too much and modulating it and try to express with my face and my voice and not so much my body language, what I wanted to convey. So I mean, everything that they're good actually life skills to have if you make presentations in your job. Or but to me, I spent most of my career in the oil industry in an office with the door shut because I was I was coding on a computer. So I had to learn how to, you know, do the do that public presentation. Go go going all the way back to r you know rice, talking about what it was like to be out at Rice as a as a student to my fellow students. Just build, build, build, build, build on the skills and practice.
SPEAKER_03:No, I I love that. And I'm I'm really glad we've been able to take this kind of holistic approach and view of your life and your career. For folks who want to learn more about your county judge campaign, I I recommend last year's podcast episode. And for those who want to learn more about your Victory Fund work, I recommend the 2024 episode. But I think we're really diving into things that we haven't really talked about and getting to know another side of you. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Um, the last few moments of our interview, I'd love to do uh a retrospective of your career, whether it's city council, controller, mayor, and just what stands out to you when you think back about your life and career? What are some of like the highlights, some of those moments that you hold dear and close to your heart that like keeps you in this race that keeps you running?
SPEAKER_01:I had the privilege of being able to make decisions that shape the future of Houston. This is my this is where I was born, this is this is my home. I am Houston, I am a Houstonian, and I had the the opportunity to to shape the future. The things that I was worked on as mayor that I was passionate about, infrastructure, parks and green space, housing and homelessness, those are still my passions. Every one of them I can look back and say, Houston's better because I made the effort. The thing that the one big failure in my mind is that we lost the Hero Ordinance, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance. It is not just the only one big fail failure in my mind. It is the one big failure I had as a public official, right? Really staked a lot on trying to protect not just the LGBTQ community, because the Hero Ordinance provided protections for the entire community of Houston. And looking back, I don't know that there was anything we could have done to change the outcome. We were the first public vote on anything having to do with the LGBTQ community after marriage was granted by the Supreme Court. And right-wing dollars just flooded in and it was and and since then you've you've seen the tide across the country turn. We were the moment where you could first see it, and I don't, you know, I've analyzed and analyzed and looked back. Could we have won? Could we have done something different? I don't think we could, not at that point, but I still it still hurts.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I imagine that point in time that pendulum swinging the other way and did not work in our favor. But looking into 2026 and we're seeing that pendulum from the twenty twenty four election swing back this direction. And so I'd like to close by what message you'd have for um voters who are afraid of the Trump administration, of everything going on in the world. And, you know, they think that there will be a blue wave, yeah. But they might not actually get up and vote for it and they are either confused about the primary process or just so tuned out all together. Um, what's your message to those folks?
SPEAKER_01:I've seen the world change. I've helped change the world. I know that my activism, but not just my activism, but every one of us who's LGBT who gets up and and tries to be our authentic self is in as many places as possible. We change hearts and minds and and we change the world. And I I know that that how we are viewed in the world is is different. But progress is not ever a straight line. We can take big steps back. And we have to stay vigilant, we have to stay engaged. But to the people who like, I I I talk to people all the time and I do not understand, well, I don't know if I'm gonna vote because it doesn't, my vote doesn't make a difference. I can absolutely guarantee you that if you don't do anything, nothing will change. And isn't the slight chance that we can move forward, make our lives better, you know, be make the world safer for particularly for trans folks right now who are the the the tip of the spear. Why would we not? Because we see people all the time who put their lives at risk to move the needle, and all we have to do is show up at a polling place and vote. How could we not? And maybe it doesn't work every time, but it works over time. All we have to do is look back. So do whatever you need to do to educate yourself, but get up and get out. Voting is a is a is not just a right, it's a responsibility, and it does work. I am living proof of that.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you. Uh Anise Parker is the former mayor of Houston, the first openly LGBTQ plus mayor of a major city at that. Um, national leader in LGBTQ political representation as president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, and is now running for Harris County Judge. Early voting is February 17th to 27th. Election day is March 3rd. Anise Parker, thank you so much for being on the show.
SPEAKER_01:Glad to be.
SPEAKER_03:My name is Davis Mendoza Drewsman. This is Queer Voices.
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Brett:Thank you for listening to Queer Voices. We are so glad that you're here. Our executive producer is Brian Tlovinka, and Deborah Moncrief Bell and Brett Cullum are also producers. R. Lee Ingalls, Davis Mendoza de Rusman, Jacob Newsome, and Joel Tatum are frequent contributors. All panelists are volunteers, and KPFT is listener-funded. So please consider supporting us by going to KPFT.org and hitting the donate button. Queer Voices would like to extend a special thank you to our guests this week, Jim Kovac and Anise Parker. Don't forget there is an event coming up at the Montrose Center next month. It is the 2026 Greater Houston LGBTQ Plus Community Summit. It's a free two-day convening uniting more than two dozen LGBTQ Plus organizations and hundreds of community members to develop a unified queer agenda that will address key social determinants of health, including wellness, safety, equity, and belonging. This is going to take place Saturday and Sunday, February 7th through the 8th, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Montrose Center, which is located at 401 Brainerd Street in Houston. You can find out more information by going to www.greaterhouston LGBTQ Summit.org. Also, if you'd be interested in attending the Alley's Act Out Night for their current production, Real Women Have Curves, it will be held for the Thursday, February 5th performance at 6.30 p.m. All you have to do is purchase a ticket to that performance, and the reception is complimentary and on the fourth floor. We will see you again next week.
SPEAKER_07:This has been Queer Voices, heard on KPFT Houston and as a podcast available from several podcasting sources. Check our webpage queervoices.org for more information. Queer Voices executive producer is Brian Lovinka. Deborah Moncrief Bell is co-producer. Brett Cullum and David Mendoza Druisman are contributors. The newsraps segment is part of another podcast called This Way Out, which is produced in Los Angeles.
Ghost of Glenn:Some of the material in this program has been edited to improve clarity and runtime. This program does not endorse any political views or animal species. Views, opinions, and endorsements are those of the participants and the organizations they represent. In case of death, please discontinue use and discard remaining products.
SPEAKER_07:For Queer Voices, I'm Glenn Holt.
