Word: lanier
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...Houston the municipal charter gives Robert Lanier more power than almost any other big-city mayor. Unlike Rendell, he has wide appointment powers and a vote on the city council. Still, the wealthy former banker and real estate developer shares the same manage-your-way-to-profits attitude. "When I ran an apartment project," he says, "I asked people how they liked it. If they moved out, I asked them why. It's no different here." Judging from the 90% majority that voted him into his second term last fall and his consistent 80% approval ratings, the tenants are happy...
More important, Lanier -- whose desk is lined with the surveys, status reports and statistical tables that are his guides -- has been able through a combination of financial shrewdness and better management to squeeze $130 million more out of the city budget. His opponents say his financial manipulations will end up ballooning the city's debt. In defense, Lanier points to the overwhelming endorsement of his financial program by the city's business community. At his urging, Texas Commerce Bank opened a now thriving branch in the city's crime-ridden fifth ward. Last year the Amerada Hess oil company consolidated...
...that shifts of a very few votes would have reelected both Dinkins and Florio and no doubt led pundits to interpret the results very differently (although most American elections are decided by relatively small margins). Moreover, it is still possible for incumbents to win big. In Houston Mayor Bob Lanier promised to put more cops on the streets and did; the crime rate dropped significantly. In the election last week no one of any stature dared challenge him, and he won a second term with 91% of the vote...
Houston's mayoral race started with a debate over crime and a proposed monorail but ended in the gutter. After voters ousted incumbent Kathy Whitmire in last month's primary, the runoff between developer Bob Lanier, 66, and state legislator Sylvester Turner, 37, turned squalid. Lanier ads portrayed Turner, trying to become the city's first black mayor, as soft on crime and entangled in insurance fraud...
Turner denied the charges, accusing Lanier of "trying to tell Houston that a black man just isn't good enough!" But his delinquent loans and unpaid debts repelled voters. Lanier won the Dec. 7 election with 54% of the vote. Now he must get back to the crime and transportation issues he addressed before he hit the low road...