Doug Greco brings organizing energy to Austin’s mayoral race

Clad in a “Vote for Greco” T-shirt – a style that evokes “Vote for Pedro” from Napoleon Dynamite – Doug Greco may be an underdog candidate, but his campaign is infused with the grassroots energy that has defined his career as an organizer.

Greco comes to politics after 18 years of organizing with the Industrial Areas Foundation, the country’s largest and oldest faith and community-based organizing network, and five years of teaching at Johnston High School (now Eastside Early College High). 

“Organizing became my political outlet,” Greco said. “To me, organizing was the same fundamentals as politics, but you were working with communities. You weren’t working in an electoral campaign that shutters down after the election. You are helping develop leaders within a community.” 

Greco has called Austin his home base since 1997, after growing up in eastern Pennsylvania and attending Brown University.

“I came down to Austin because it was a place I could explore coming out, be a teacher and maybe buy a house,” Greco said. “It was a progressive city that was still somewhat affordable back then. A lot has changed.” 

Greco was first introduced to organizing as a teacher at Johnston High School. There, he became involved with the teachers’ union and Central Texas Interfaith (then called Austin Interfaith), one of the organizations within the IAF.  

“The IAF taught me how to organize,” he said. “How to build power with parents and teachers. … In three years of organizing, we quadrupled the level of parent involvement. We brought about $100,000 of new resources into the school. The school came off the list of low-performing schools for the first time in several years.”

This organizing experience not only rooted Greco in Austin but fueled his passion for harnessing community power. 

As a lead organizer at Central Texas Interfaith, Greco contributed to the organization’s efforts to establish funding for long-term job training programs in Austin and Travis County, provide $40 million for rental assistance programs in Travis County at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and kill Chapter 313, Texas’s giveaway program for the oil and gas industry that had offered corporations billions of dollars in tax cuts. 

Despite not having held public office before – he joked that he has actually “run and won six elections all before I graduated high school” – Greco said his organizing background has prepared him to take on a new role as mayor. 

“I think the skills of listening, of understanding different parts of Austin and building majorities around a shared vision while having the leadership to move those visions forward are transferable skills,” he said. “People think you always have to come up through elected office, but sometimes when you occupy one office you just see an individual district. As an organizer, I’ve seen the whole city and the whole region.” 

Affordability and access

Affordability has been a much-discussed topic throughout this election season as the city’s cost-of-living crisis remains at the forefront of many voters’ minds. 

Greco was quick to call out Mayor Kirk Watson’s role in the city’s current economic landscape. 

“Since 1997 when Mayor Watson was first elected, the cost of living has gone through the roof. We have become the fastest-growing city of millionaires, our income equality continues to increase and our percentage of Black and Latino residents continues to decrease,” Greco said. “While Mayor Watson talks about affordability first, I think it’s coming last in his career.”

Greco called for investing in workforce and education to give residents and young people the opportunity to compete for local jobs. He voiced his support for affordable housing; mortgage, rental and down payment assistance; permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness; strong anti-displacement measures; and measures against institutional investors. 

“If we help strengthen the hand of people who live here already and want to live here, then we can create a fighting chance for local homeowners.” 

Addressing the ongoing issues of unhoused communities, Greco criticized Watson’s track record of investing in homeless services. 

“As a city, I think we need to do better with overnight shelters and transitional shelters,” he said. “I think we need to look at the success of permanent housing and take some of those lessons for strengthening transitional housing. It’s not just about money, it’s about approach, too.”  

An eye toward civil rights 

After one of Greco’s former students, Norma Hurtado, was murdered in a hate crime in 2011, Greco realized he wanted to be more deeply involved in LGBTQ organizing and apply his own experiences to civil rights issues. 

“It made me realize while I was working on all these economic justice issues in my professional life, I’m an openly gay man, I go to fundraisers for LGBTQ causes, but I am not involved in the movement itself,” he said. “In mid-career, I went back to graduate school and all I wrote about was intersectionality and LGTBQ organizing. How would I approach LGBTQ organizing from my organizing background with broad-based civic and religious institutions?”

Greco went on to apply this civil rights advocacy as state Rep. Gina Hinojosa’s chief of staff, fighting against the so-called “bathroom bill” and the anti-immigrant Senate Bill 4. 

“I know, as an LGBTQ person, it is life-giving to see elected leaders standing alongside the community and fighting for civil rights,” he said. “If leaders can’t call out attempts to erode our civil rights and to marginalize folks by their race, gender or sexual orientation, then they shouldn’t be in office. And that is the difference between me and the mayor.” 

The future of transit 

Greco declared that he would be the mayor to deliver Project Connect “on time and on budget.”

“I think we also need to expand our bus service and pay our bus drivers well,” he said. “Seventy-five percent live outside the city because of affordability.” 

As a community member, Greco signed on to a civil rights complaint regarding the I-35 expansion “because there is a history of dividing the city with the highway. … I felt like the complaint would create a pause so we could look at what is a better vision for this development.” 

Now that the I-35 expansion project is confirmed, Greco said “given that the project is going forward, I support the caps and stitches. But I think the mayor failed to negotiate the deal. He should have negotiated for the money for the caps and stitches. Instead, he stuck us with a $800 million bill.”

Greco is also taking on campaign finance rules during this election cycle. His campaign filed a lawsuit in mid-September challenging the provision of the Austin City Charter that prohibits City Council candidates from accepting more than $47,000 in contributions from people living outside the city limits.

“We think the rule is illegal and unconstitutional,” Greco said. “It unfairly favors incumbents and candidates who are independently wealthy who can self-fund campaigns.” 

“As a former teacher and organizer, I have to run a grassroots fundraising campaign of supporters, friends and colleagues inside the city and outside the city,” Greco said. “Why should I be denied the right to run a grassroots campaign when there’s no check on some candidates who can loan themselves an unlimited amount of money?” 

Greco also noted the role of former Austin residents in potential fundraising.

“We talk about displacement and gentrification a lot. Why should someone who is displaced from Austin due to gentrification not be able to donate? They may still work here, may have a child here, may like my vision and want to return here. Why should they be denied the right to donate, but the person who displaced them has the right to donate? How is that fair and consistent with Austin values?”

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