Ethan Hale is a student at Houston City College and an organizer with the effort to recall Houston Mayor John Whitmire from office.

"Why am I running? Well, I mean, the mayor is essentially a MAGA Republican. I feel like our council is complicit," Hale said. "I feel like everyone else in the race at this point, they just kind of — they're not really willing to say what needs to be said here."

Houston Public Media
By Dominic Anthony Walsh
September 19, 2025

Whitmire is a Democrat who served five decades as a state lawmaker before being elected mayor in 2023.

Hale's policy positions include ending "collaboration" between the Houston Police Department (HPD) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — in which HPD has called ICE on motorists during traffic stops and on people seeking emergency services who have active ICE warrants — as well as transferring power distribution from CenterPoint Energy to municipal government. He also wants to abolish the strong-mayor form of government in which the mayoral administration sets the city council agenda and oversees day-to-day operations, along with preventing the planned closure of Polk Street as part of the George R. Brown Convention Center expansion.

When it comes to road projects, Hale argued the city's current approach under Whitmire is "completely ignoring the data on what is safe." He pointed specifically to the redesign of Telephone Road, in which the local management district dropped a plan for a three-lane road with a center-turn lane as well as protected bike paths in favor of a four-lane road.

He said he supports a garbage fee as well as a property tax hike — though not under Whitmire's administration.

"I would not be against a tax hike — if the money was going to like actual services," Hale said. "At this point, I feel like right now, most of the money — it’s going to cops and fire. That’s where they want to put the money at this point, and leaving nothing for services."

As of late August, Hale said, the recall campaign had raised about $4,500 of its previously stated $100,000 goal for canvassers and notaries for the petition drive. He said the recall effort, which will rely heavily on volunteers, plans to start its 30-day sprint to collect more than 63,000 signatures in October.

He did not file a campaign finance report in July. He said that the filing period preceded his entry into the race, and he's not expecting a "high-budget campaign."