Queer Voices
Queer Voices
February 25th - Davis Mendoza Darusman interviews Grant Martin on how he turned Houston BLUE!
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This is an interview you will ONLY find on our podcast. This interview did not air on KPFT. It includes some coarse language and features Davis Mendoza Darusman talking with Grant Martin about Houston politics and the campaigns he masterminded.
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Exclusive Setup And Guest Intro
BrettHi there, this is Brett Cullum, and today we have a podcast exclusive that you will not hear on KPFT. Davis Mendoza DeRuzman is running for the Justice of the Peace in West Harris County, and he interviewed political advisor Grant Martin. This interview has some rough language in it, and because Davis is currently running for office, we wanted to keep this one off the radio airwaves, but you're gonna love listening to it, and this is an exclusive interview for our podcast listeners, so please enjoy.
SPEAKER_00Grant Martin of Grant Martin Campaigns is a veteran Democratic political consultant, currently based in San Francisco, known for his longstanding work in both Texas and California politics. His leadership has helped elect and re-elect Anise Parker, the first openly LGBTQ plus mayor of a major American city, the late Sylvester Turner, Houston's second African American mayor, state Senator Molly Cook, Texas's first openly LGBTQ plus state senator, and has former and current clients, including Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, Harris County Commissioners Rodney Ellis and Adrian Garcia, Houston controller Chris Hollins, Houston City Councilmember Mario Castillo, Texas State Representative Lauren Ashley Simmons, and more. A long list of winners. Grant Martin, another winner. Welcome to the show.
From Law To Politics
SPEAKER_02Thank you. I appreciate it. Nice to be here.
SPEAKER_00I want to start by asking you what got you into politics in the first place? Long before you were ever brought onto a political campaign, what sparked that initial interest in politics?
SPEAKER_02It's a long story. I'll try to keep it somewhat short. Graduating from law school and started practicing law. I loved law school. I hated the practice of law. And I drifted around. I did a number of things. I eventually ended up working at a coffee house in San Francisco and decided I wanted to do something to kind of give back. You know, it sounds a little trite, but I just, you know, I the last law thing I did, I was sitting in a conference room for like a month, you know, and I had friends who were artists that were creating things in a month that would last forever. And if I won my case, it meant some mid-level manager in a corporation would get a good bonus at the end of the year, right? Like it just wasn't. So I had a friend who used to be um a San Francisco, excuse me, a San Mateo County supervisor, which is kind of like what a county commissioner is. But he was then running um a nonprofit called Project Open Hand, which is like meals on wheels for people with AIDS. And I should date myself. This was kind of in the bad days of HIV. There's no such thing as a good HIV, but this is when you would get a diagnosis and you might have a few months to live. So I said, What should I do? Should I go nonprofit or should I go political? And he convinced me to volunteer for a political campaign. And it was Roberta Aktenberg, who was the first openly lesbian supervisor in San Francisco, which again is like county commissioners in Houston. And uh, and she's running to be mayor. And I just I fell in love with the whole thing. I quit my job. I was a full-time volunteer. She did not win, but uh, I met her political consultant through that, and he hired me and taught me everything I know. So that's awesome.
HIV Era And Activism
SPEAKER_00What what aspect of working on that political campaign drew you so so immensely to that profession? And was that meant that you knew you wanted to do that?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mentioned AIDS. When I moved out, so backing up really quickly, I moved to California to figure out how to be gay. I, you know, I'm from Houston, spent half my life there, but I came out and it wasn't a pleasant experience with my family and stuff. It was way back, it was a long time ago. We're all great now. But uh and so I wanted to meet people, and I volunteered, I was a lawyer, so I volunteered for the AIDS legal referral, AIDS services legal referral panel. And um, and through that work, that's how I got political. I was just so upset. I was suing insurance companies who would drop people off of care um the minute they got a diagnosis because it was cheaper for them to pay damages to their estate than it was to pay to keep them alive with medicine and and hospital care. So that's kind of what got me political. And so then um I actually did that political campaign. And I don't know, it was just Roberta still is a very inspirational leader, and it you just kind of lit something up inside of me that you could make the world leave the world a better place than than how you found it. And it seems kind of trite, but that's like why I'm doing this today. If I wanted to uh be rich, I would have kept my law job and been a big partner at some big law firm right now, right? But and I do well, but but I feel like I'm making a difference.
Choosing Candidates And Values
SPEAKER_00Again, very trite, but it's very real. Very real. And also the candidate that you mentioned and all the clients that I listed in my lengthy introduction were all either LGBTQ or people of color. So why is serving candidates with those particular backgrounds so important to you?
SPEAKER_02I mean, I grew up pretending to be straight and for the for the world in a relatively upper middle class, affluent white family in southwest Houston and ultimately in Tanglewood, where my parents moved to. And so I just, you know, I didn't have to fight for anything. Everything was given to me. I was smart enough at school where I could make good grades and didn't have to work very hard. And uh really until I got to law school, that's the first time I actually had to work hard in school. And I don't know, it's kind of like there was just, I don't know how to say it, an emptiness. I think I will say this, which might be appropriate for queer voices, but I've always said that being gay was like the biggest gift I could have gotten because it made me an outsider. And uh, and so I did have to fight for things, and I did have to work for things once I came out, and it just made me appreciate life so much more. And it was more meaningful to accomplish something and fight for it to make the world better than it was just to have everything handed to me. And if I had kept on that initial path, I'd be probably an alcoholic member at the country club every afternoon getting drunk at the bar. It's like I that's why. I mean, you know, I just I like being on the other side, the have-nots, a little bit more than the haves.
SPEAKER_00I love that. And I am is that something that you look for in your candidates? Because I imagine you you heavily vet your candidates. So what's something that you look for? What's something they all have in common, or that X factor?
Forecasting Another Blue Wave
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Well, it's interesting. But a very uh the the threshold level is I only work for Democrats. And I used to work for a very large political consulting firm. And so sometimes I would have to work for candidates I didn't like because they were the firm's clients. But I went out on my own about six years ago, and and now I only I get to work for people I like. And I did end up liking a lot of those clients, but but now I get to work for people I like. I like substantive clients, like I don't like to run a campaign like on a cult of personality. I want people that really do their homework, that really work hard, and and again want to go out and make things better for people. Um and so I to me, I think that's the common thread. You know, whether it's racial justice or economic justice or you know, LGBTQ plus justice, all those things, they're they're all fights and they're all interconnected. And we're seeing that, of course, more now in the age of Trump than we ever did, or than I ever did before.
SPEAKER_00So Yeah, and and speaking of Trump, you know, back in 2018, a democratic blue wave swept the nation and our county. And along with the democratic shifts and anti-Trump sentiments, you're also a strategist who's credited with helping three Democratic county commissioners flip Harris County, the third largest county in the US, from red to blue. So with everything going on this year, do you foresee another blue wave coming in 2026? What are some similarities that you're seeing in 2018 and now?
SPEAKER_02I do, and I wish I could take credit for 2018. But honestly, a lot of that credit is to goes to Donald Trump for being, I don't know if I can say this on your show, but for being such an asshole. Um, you know, he um he doesn't make any secret about being uh evil. So I people saw that, like it when he got elected, I think he people thought he was a joke, but then when they watched him govern, they realized he was truly evil. And so there was when the chance came to fight back, which would be the the first two years after um he was elected, people were really energized and motivated. I do think the same situation is here now for a couple of reasons. I think the the evil genius of Trump is that he's so outrageous he does so many things all the time that people get used to it and you become kind of numb to it. But now that he's back and 10 times worse than he was in his first term, I think we are in a similar situation. I mean, people cannot stay numb to all the you know cruelty and injustices, and not to mention just not being legal, but that are happening right now. And I think that's gonna motivate people to come out, elect more Democrats. We can't get rid of him yet, but we can start to begin to check, put a check on his power, and then hopefully lead to getting rid of him and all the the MAGA machine people that have joined his cult that just have turned over their lives to his odd brand of cruelty. I think we can really start to get rid of all of them. He's gonna do a lot of damage before that happens, and that's just something we're gonna have to live with. But but yeah, I think I do foresee a good year in November this year.
Meeting Anise Parker
SPEAKER_00And electing good good Democrats to counter that. And and speaking of, you mentioned earlier candidates that you like. I want to talk about some of the candidates that I'm sure you like, including Anise Parker. I wonder, and I'm curious, how y'all met? What's y'all's origin story? How did that come to be?
SPEAKER_02You know, uh, so I grew up in Houston and worked there until I was in my late 20s. Um and so uh I'm gonna give a big shout out to a woman named uh Terry Richardson. She and I became close friends, and she used to be a past president, or she was a past president of the at that time, I think it was just called the Gay Political Caucus, but the Houston LGBTQ plus caucus. And she introduced me to a niece when I I moved back to Houston. I was l living in San Francisco for about 10 years. I moved back to Houston, mainly because my mom was getting sick and I want to be closer to home. But by that point, I was in politics. So I was trying to start my political business in Houston. And she introduced me to Anice at a uh LGBTQ plus political caucus meeting. And the reason that I call her out is she also introduced me to my husband, who I met in Houston at the same time. So um it was kind of a nice couple of years there. And then Anice um had run twice and lost. I had just gotten into politics and I had run one campaign and lost it. So we took a chance on each other and we did uh nine consecutive victories after that. So we I kind of feel like she's my good luck charm and I'm her good luck charm.
Shifts In LGBTQ Politics
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and are you involved with this campaign this year as well for Oh, very much so.
SPEAKER_02Very much so. It's it's it's really it's it's so much different. I mean, the idea of being gay is not even a thing anymore, at least in our campaign, right? I mean, before it was when we were running for for city council, when I was helping her run for city council, you know, we would agonize how to talk about being gay or lesbian, how to how to ta address those issues. And now it's just part of the fabric of who we are, right? And so we're fighting about our opponents and and with the Republicans on so many other things, and not about that. So it's a lot of fun.
Working With Sylvester Turner
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I imagine it's incredible just seeing how far we've come as a as a city and as a nation in terms of acceptance. And speaking of mayors that have done great, the the late Sylvester Turner uh would also love how y'all how you got introduced to him or vice versa.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he uh Anise was a great mayor, Sylvester was a great mayor. I had run into him in different circles throughout my time in politics, but never really gotten to know him. Um his uh one of his uh press people, commission people, a woman named Sue Davis, introduced us and he wanted to talk to me about running his campaign. I I said yes, except for one thing I had to talk to Garnett Coleman, who's a um former state representative that is also a very special person. Um and I had worked for Garnet forever, and I just want to make sure that Garnett thought it was a good idea. He said, go for it, it's a great idea. Umester Turner, by the time I started working for him, he had been fighting these fights for decades. And he was more of like an elder statesman in a way than the young, you know, warrior, but he was a warrior till the very end. He was he was a great mayor. It's it was a big loss when he died. It really was.
SF Vs Houston Strategy
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Also, you operate between two of the most politically distinct cities in America, I believe. And also, what's a strategy that works in San Francisco that would absolutely fail in Houston and vice versa?
SPEAKER_02Gosh, there's a lot of differences. I used to joke that on conference calls, this is white before Zoom, um, I had to figure out trying to remember what city I was in. And it was like, I'm trying to remember does my candidate support the government paying for transgender or for transition surgery, or do they not? Now they all do, fortunately. But um anyway, uh it just goes a really small geographic town. So one of the things that we do to turn off the vote um on election day morning, um, and it's a little bit less of that these days because there's so much mail ballot voting here. But when I started, it was all there was no early voting in person. Everything happened on election day. And we would get a massive volunteer operation, and we'd all get up at four in the morning and we go door hanging so that, you know, literally like half the city you could cover with your with your targeted voters with door hangers. So when they got up and went outside at 7 a.m. to go vote, they would see your your materials there. Houston, way too big, right? You may be in a district council race, you could try to replicate that, but but but way too big. So you can do a lot more on the ground here uh because it's smaller and it's very walkable. So that's one big difference. I guess most of its size, it's funny, the world has become so much more partisanized that what used to work in Houston, you know, you used to have to be very moderate and uh be careful not to light a fire by being too progressive. Not so much anymore, right? It's like there's not a big middle that you're worried about shifting. It's there are some people still in the middle, but it's very tough to be in the middle these days. Are are you really undecided on Donald Trump, right? I mean, it's just it's tough. So um um I think, you know, honestly, in both places, is a very important thing, as well as persuasion. But in San Francisco, there's less persuasion when it comes to right-left battles. Uh, but even in Houston less, because there's just there's not that there's not that middle. In when I started working in California, having been in Houston, in California Houston, we always knew who the good guys and the bad guys were because there were the Democrats and the Republicans. I mean, in my view, I'm sure there's Republicans that would not like that characterization. When I got to San Francisco, I was doing politics in a big way, everybody was a Democrat. So the good guys and the bad guys were people, it's harder to tell, but people who were, you know, ethical and transparent. And they were all Democrats, but they weren't all ethical, they weren't all transparent. Some were conservative Democrats, some were progressive Democrats. Now Houston is getting a little bit closer to that, where you have more Democrats in charge. And so now the Democrats are starting to kind of fight each other because they can afford to. And I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing, but it certainly has kind of changed the way that we did politics. Democrats were more united in the late 90s in Houston because they had to be, right? It was just by by necessity. So that's kind of been an interesting thing to watch, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's a really good point. And that reminds me of the mayor Whitmeyer admonishment resolution from the Harris County Democratic Party. Was that something that surprised you or were you not surprised because you saw the way that things were shifting in our political landscape?
Polarization And Party Dynamics
SPEAKER_02I mean, I would say a little bit of both. You know, I know there's been a lot of dissatisfaction from uh a number of people on the Democratic side with the current mayor. I don't I I guess I was a little surprised. I don't know that it helps Democrats as a whole to be so stridently criticizing each other. I understand why, but in San Francisco, where the Republican Party has under 20% of the vote, you have the luxury of doing that. Houston's not quite there yet. You know, I mean Republicans won a third of the judgeships in the last election. Um uh, you know, uh, and I just I still would like to see Democrats um a little bit more united, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00And in terms of campaign strategy, um, we also want to talk about social media because that's changed everything. That's very true. Since since 1995. So what's one um I'd say old school campaign tactic that you think still beats a viral TikTok every single time?
Internal Democratic Tensions
SPEAKER_02I mean, that one's easy for me. It's a conversation at the door. There's never gonna be any kind of media that will replace the quality of a human-to-human interaction. So I do a lot of direct mail and uh uh and I make money off direct mail, and I still tell my clients, you know, one conversation at the door is probably worth 10 mail pieces. When Sylvester Turner ran for mayor the first time that I worked for him in 2015, the successful campaign, we spent more on our field campaign than we did on television and direct mail, which is unheard of in Houston. And uh, those were all, they were we hired the cost isn't hiring staff to train and manage the volunteers, but the the door knocks were all volunteers and they were excited about the candidate and they would, you know, have a real conversation with somebody. I don't see I'm I'm a fan of social media advertising. We do it a lot. I don't see that ever replacing human beings. Um the city of Houston is so big, you cannot talk to every voter personally. So you definitely there's a huge role for all the media channels, whether it's television or mail or social media or texting, all of it. But I think the individual conversations win all the time if you can do enough of them.
SPEAKER_00Gotcha. And in terms of like ranking, and this is something I might have to like you might want to charge me for in terms of consulting, but ranking uh techniques, what would you say is the most effective, least effective, and just going down in terms of the so we we we mentioned face-to-face conversation, walk walking. How would you rank it all the way down to the bottom?
Old School Tactics That Still Win
SPEAKER_02I mean, generally, I would just say the more personal the interaction, the better. So a face-to-face conversation is the best. A phone conversation between two people is probably second best. You can start at that point to layer things, right? A phone conversation on top of an email is great or a text. Texting individually between people is strong. All the text blasts we get now, I think, are kind of getting, you know, a little overused. But the real trick, and this is why campaigns are so expensive, we know that people are clicking on text, they're clicking on social media ads, they're reading their mail, they're answering their doors, less of them are answering their phones. We don't know, technology is not advanced enough for us to know who. Like, I can't look you up and say, no, Davis reads mail but doesn't click on TikTok ads, right? I mean, it's like so the campaigns that have resources try to do all of it so that you're surrounded by media when you start to pay attention, because you're living your life, you're working two jobs, you're taking care of your elderly parents, you're raising young kids, you're doing all the things that people have to do to survive. And then every once in a while you have a moment and you either read the newspaper or look at TV or look at your phone or something. You kind of come above ground and see what's happening in politics. And so a good campaign, if they have the money, will be there no matter where you are. If you start answering your door, they're going to be there with a volunteer. If you flip on the TV, they'll be there with an ad. If you scroll through your phone, they'll be there with ads. I mean, but that's very expensive. So, you know, you have to make choices for sure.
SPEAKER_00That that's that's really great insight. And I have two more questions. Second and last being what your message would be to uh voters who have disengaged and um kind of shut off politics altogether because it's just so overwhelming and intimidating. There's just a lot going on. What can I do? Um what's your message to like the disengaged and potentially apathetic voter?
Ranking Voter Contact Methods
SPEAKER_02I think right now, at this point in time, the only way we can this sounds dramatic, but I will say the only way we can really save our democracy and stop the suffering of millions of people is to vote. They can make it harder for these MAGA Republicans, they can make it harder for us to vote, they can put up all kinds of obstacles, but they can't stop us from voting. You know, it's um it's real and and if you have a little bit more time than that, then go volunteer for a political campaign. But I still think in our system, the best way to make change is to do it at the ballot box. And it's longer and it's messy, and there's a million other things that are very helpful that need to happen. But I don't know how you get rid of somebody like Donald Trump or whoever the next Trump is if you don't vote. It seems weird. How can my vote count? out in a country with what are we at 250 million people now or something? But um it's crazy. It really does. So that would be my advice. I know it seems like it doesn't matter, but it just it really does.
SPEAKER_00And I also learned recently that Harris County has the longest ballot in the nation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So if you're in Harris County, vote every election on the ballot. And that means you have to do a little bit of homework, right? You should look at people you trust, whether it's the the LGBTQ plus caucus, whether it's the Democratic Party, whoever has or Houston Black American Democrats, whatever club that you feel like would represent your interests, a lot of them make endorsements and will put out cards or put out statements on their website so that you don't have to look up every single judge and what you know who what they stand for and who they're about. Other people have done that work for you. I would definitely do that. I would definitely do that.
SPEAKER_00And I want to close with a question and potential advice for the next generation of leaders. For a young person of color or a queer person or anyone in Houston who's young looking at the current political landscape and feeling discouraged. What's the first piece of advice you'd give to someone thinking about running for office?
Message To Disengaged Voters
SPEAKER_02I would say, well first of all don't be discouraged. That's one thing. But I think I if I have one word I would say organized. Start small. It can seem overwhelming, particularly if you're in a community that's been shut out you know over time. But start small, right? I mean there there's so many stories of people who start by organizing to get a stop sign put on a dangerous intersection in their neighborhood. And you learn the skills and if you can master that you can ultimately organize millions of people like AOC has, for instance, right? But you have to you have to hone those skills and start like that. And so I I think I would say go do something positive and organize people to get that done and then grow from there and you'll be good.
SPEAKER_00I'm Davis Mendoza de Rusen with Queer Voices speaking with Grant Martin of Grant Martin Campaigns, a veteran Democratic political consultant currently based in California, known for his longstanding work in Houston as a kingmaker, queen maker, royalty maker thank you so much for your time.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here
