San Antonio City Council voted 10-0 Sunday to censure Councilman Marc Whyte, who was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated on Dec. 29. Whyte recused himself from the vote.
“What I’ve learned from this is that priorities are important, and for me it’s serving the constituents of District 10. It’s my family and my faith. And moving forward, I’m going to focus refocus on those priorities,” Whyte said at the meeting. “I can promise you all that the mistake that I made on December 29 will not happen again.”
The unusual weekend meeting comes as the results of a blood alcohol test administered after his arrest are still unknown. Whyte is due in court for a hearing at the end of the month.
The resolution the council approved Sunday says council members “hold themselves to a high standard of ethical and professional conduct,” and Whyte’s “behavior of drinking and driving is not acceptable and should not be tolerated.” The censure reprimands Whyte but does not list any penalty.
“This is not the legal process that Councilmember Whyte will be entitled to,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said ahead of the vote. “… Nobody on this dais is eager to reprimand a colleague, but we are elected as members of the City Council, and it is our duty to protect that reputation.”
Body camera footage of the arrest was released to the public Thursday, showing Whyte insisting that he was sober and asking to walk home, which he said was two exits away.
Nirenberg told reporters after the vote that he couldn’t say whether Whyte appeared drunk in the body camera footage. He declined to speculate about what action the council might take if the blood alcohol test indicated Whyte was under the legal limit.
Whyte has temporarily been removed from his committee assignments in the meantime.
“I’m not a law enforcement officer. I can just tell you that in the video and in Councilmember Whyte’s statements, he admitted to having a few drinks,” Nirenberg told reporters. “How many he had, we’re not sure. But he had drinks and got behind the wheel and that was enough to have him get pulled over for speeding past an officer and having a field sobriety test conducted.”
A police report from the night of his arrest said the officer’s radar detected Whyte driving 80 mph in a 65-mph zone, drifting back and forth in his lane, then using a turn signal after he’d already switched lanes. He was released on bail after spending the night in jail.
Nirenberg said he scheduled the censure vote as soon as council was able to discuss the matter in executive session after returning from the holidays. The mayor is traveling to Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ annual meeting this week and the full council won’t be meeting.
“Council wanted to act swiftly, and I did too,” Nirenberg said.
‘Embarrassing for all of us’
The City Council has now censured three of its members in the past year and a half, including Whyte’s predecessor Clayton Perry, who received 12 months of deferred adjudication after his DWI arrest in November 2022. Perry chose not to seek reelection to a fourth term after that vote, while Mario Bravo, who was censured for yelling at a council colleague, went on to lose his reelection race in District 1.
“It is honestly embarrassing for all of us,” Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said of the trio of censures. “… Our constituents cannot afford the kind of mistakes they’re seeing from this body.”
After voting to admonish Bravo in November 2022, members of the council vowed to work on a code of conduct for themselves that would help inform how to handle future incidents. Council is currently working on creating standards of behavior for how its members treat one another and city staff but doesn’t have any formal rules governing how they behave outside of their council duties.
A majority council vote can remove a member from office if they’re convicted of crime involving “moral turpitude,” the City Charter states. But how lesser offenses are handled is typically determined by the mayor.
“Nirenberg loves to hold censure votes and strip council members of committee assignments. It’s his political equivalent of sitting in the front row at church to show everyone how pious he is,” Bravo said Friday. “It’s not the City Council’s business to shame each other.”
Whyte is the council’s lone conservative, elected in May with the support of business groups, neighborhood leaders and all of the district’s former officeholders.
He told colleagues Sunday that they shouldn’t worry about hurting his feelings with their vote.
“So many people that have reached out [to me] have wanted me to fight this resolution that is on the table today,” Whyte said at the meeting.
“What I want to say to them, and all of you, is that we don’t we don’t need to have any argument about today’s resolution,” he said. “If we can put this forward and pass this today and even just one or two people out there take note and maybe decide not to get behind the car after they’ve had a drink, and then I think you’ve accomplished something.”
