Carmen Llanes Pulido vows to bring inclusive leadership to City Hall

Carmen Llanes Pulido may be the youngest candidate in the five-way race for mayor, but the lifelong Austinite with activism in her DNA arguably has the most boots-on-the-ground experience in the city’s grassroots arena.

As the executive director of the nonprofit Go Austin/Vamos Austin, Llanes Pulido hopes to extend her future-focused leadership to City Hall.

Like the other mayoral candidates – Kathie Tovo, Doug Greco and Jeffery Bowen – she recognizes the daunting challenge of trying to unseat a well-funded and well-known incumbent, Kirk Watson, who won the seat in a tight runoff in 2022. Watson is a former state senator and also served as Austin’s mayor from 1997 to 2001.

While Watson is popular among voters in segments of the community, including business interests and once-skeptical density proponents, Llanes Pulido said she hears general dissatisfaction from voters impacted by rising costs and a lack of adequate city services in some areas.

“And for those who pay attention to city policies, they are really upset about the lack of transparency and how community and technical experts, and even city staff, seem to be shut out,” she said. Within that group of voters, “there is a desire for new leadership.”

“To be fair,” she adds, “there are a lot of people who don’t even know there’s a mayor’s race – people who are just starting to hear the word.”

Voters who follow local issues are concerned about the number of times Travis County courts have found the City Council to be in violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act, a problem the Council has since taken steps to remedy.

Additionally, there is apprehension about the tentative contract agreement reached between the city and the Austin Police Association. Council is scheduled to deliberate the proposed deal Oct. 10, although persistent questions from some Council members and the public could delay approval of a contract if conflicts aren’t resolved before then.

“I think we need a lot more transparency about how the police budget even works, and how it’s been changed over the last several years,” Llanes Pulido said. “Anything we add to our police budget cannot be taken away, so I’m curious to see what kind of metrics and outcomes are being negotiated around hiring and training and retention. And then there’s the question over the G file.”

Indeed, the once-confidential G file, which contains allegations of officer misconduct and disciplinary information, is a major point of contention in the tentative agreement, which could stall Council’s approval.

 A judge recently ruled the city was in violation of the Austin Police Oversight Act, or Proposition A, which voters approved in May 2023. The oversight act was intended to eliminate the G file and make information in the file available to the public. There is disagreement over whether the G file would be grandfathered into the proposed contract or subject to public information requests.

As for APD’s new leadership, Llanes Pulido said she is pleased that Lisa Davis, Austin’s newly hired police chief, is committed to transparency.

“It was reassuring to hear someone approaching our city’s problems from a practical level and putting a high premium on accountability and trust and good policing. And I think she understands some of the key issues that are required to boost morale and improve police-community relations,” she said.

With the many issues Austin is facing, Llanes Pulido is centering her campaign on three top priorities. The first is infrastructure: “Keeping the power on and the water running and addressing our outdated infrastructure – fixing leaky pipes, distributing our grid and planning our development and growth more responsibly in that respect.”

Next, she aims to address “the cost of living and real affordability, which is rhetorically championed but not reflected in any policy in the last two years,” she said. “And we desperately need to preserve the affordable housing we have and produce deeply affordable housing instead of just focusing on redeveloping as much as possible without thinking about affordability or infrastructure. We can’t talk about affordability and cost of living without being more responsible in our spending.”

And finally, the candidate aims to change the city’s approach to homelessness by putting more resources toward prevention.

“We spend more per capita on homelessness than Los Angeles. We could immediately reallocate some of our resources for better outcomes by listening to front-line organizations and advocates who are telling us where money could be better spent,” she said.

“We’re spending millions of dollars on sweeps, which are a temporary fix and extremely wasteful and cruel. We could be spending more money on transitional housing and direct services support instead of just adding (money) to the problem. There is massive spending with no accountability.”

As a former member of the city Planning Commission appointed by then-Council Member Tovo, Llanes Pulido is versed in land use policies. She doesn’t subscribe to the ideas behind the HOME ordinances, which allow for more housing units and different types of housing on single-family lots.

While the City Council voted nearly unanimously for the HOME ordinances with the intention of making housing more affordable, Llanes Pulido is dubious of Council’s stated goals.

“There is nothing that prescribes or guarantees affordability … and there’s no plan for adequate infrastructure. It’s being championed as a progressive reform for affordability, but there’s really nothing progressive about it – it’s completely based in Reaganomics-style supply-side theory,” she said.

Seeing Austin from all sides

Born and raised in Austin, Llanes Pulido, now 39, grew up in Central and East Austin, leaving the city to obtain a degree from the University of Chicago. Her parents, University of Texas lecturer Charlotte Herzele and community organizer Daniel Llanes, lived in Old West Austin. They divorced when Llanes Pulido was an early adolescent. Her mother now lives in Hyde Park while Daniel Llanes lives in East Austin, where he has long been active in neighborhood issues and PODER, an environmental and social justice organization.

Her uncle is developer and landowner Perry Lorenz, a pioneer in building some of Downtown’s first residential high-rises. Llanes Pulido credits Lorenz for much of what she knows about the development business. “He’s a key source of insight and wisdom,” she said.

Through the lens of her activist parents and business-savvy uncle, she was able to observe the disparities in Austin’s public and private investments, but also appreciated the richness of the city’s diverse neighborhoods and their cultures.

“I went to magnet schools so I got to see neighborhoods all over Austin and how different they were, but also the commonalities among them and common values and the things that make us uniquely special as a city.”

“What I learned is that every area of Austin has wonderful qualities that have been brought about by champions in the community and the city, and every community has knowledge that’s really critical to making good decisions and improving the quality of life in those areas. You can’t do it without the technical expertise, but you definitely can’t do it without the lived experience, and that’s especially true for community planning and growth.”

Growing up here also taught her why Austin is so often referred to as special. The city’s creative culture, green space, music scene and local businesses all combine to make Austin stand out among other U.S. cities.

“Those are all things that if we take care of them, they ensure prosperity and economic investment in Austin. But if we only focus on economic investment, we actually lose the things that make this place so desirable to everyone.”

As a cancer survivor, Llanes Pulido has learned a few things about life. Diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia at age 29, she learned to bring humanity into every challenge, whether political or personal.

“Plenty of people face cancer every day and you never want to put a judgment on beating it or not. Part of me wants to say I know how to beat the odds, but the reality is, I got lucky. I was lucky to have the treatment available to me when I was diagnosed. If anything, it taught me that we can’t be passersby in our lives,” she said.

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