Controversy
Welch was mayor in 1967 when two days of battles erupted between police and students at predominantly black Texas Southern University. A police officer was killed by sniper fire from the top of a student building, and a number of Texas Southern students were arrested. The events created a rift between the administration and many of Houston's African Americans. Years later, Welch acknowledged that accusations of racism still bothered him but that the death of the officer and the thought of his family bothered him the most.
In early 1985, Welch was a leader in the opposition to the extension of job protection rights to homosexuals employed by the city government. Welch came back that year to run against Whitmire in the Houston Mayoral Elections. Some of his comments (namely his candid quote caught by a microphone on live television, suggesting that one way to curb the spread of HIV would be to "shoot the queers") upset the city's gay community. The Houston GLBT Political Caucus supported his opponent in the race, Kathy Whitmire. She went on to defeat him in that race, remaining the city's mayor until the early 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Louie Welch
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)