In his first major gathering with constituents since being censured by fellow council members after a DWI arrest, Marc Whyte apologized for the incident as his closest allies reaffirmed enthusiastic support for the first-term District 10 councilman.
Whyte was elected in May with the backing of the Northeast Neighborhood Alliance, which encouraged the previous District 10 Councilman Clayton Perry not to seek reelection after his own DWI arrest in Nov. 2022.
Just seven months into his first term, Whyte was arrested on Dec. 29 when an officer with the San Antonio Police Department’s DWI unit stopped him on the North Side after observing him speeding and changing lanes without signaling. Whyte spent the night in jail where a blood alcohol test was administered, the results of which are still unknown.
On Monday night, however, Northeast Neighborhood Alliance President Michael Gallagher told an audience of roughly 40 residents at a District 10 meeting at the Tool Yard that body camera footage from the night of Whyte’s arrest showed the councilman had done nothing wrong.
“I want to thank everybody who turned out tonight because we made a statement. We are backing Marc Whyte,” Gallagher said to applause.
Referring to the body camera footage, he added, “Everybody saw what a gentleman we elected to office. … He sounded more sober than my friends that don’t drink.”
Body camera footage released to the public showed Whyte performing several field sobriety tests and telling the SAPD officer, “Sir, I am sober.” But he gave varying answers when the officer asked how many drinks he had consumed, and the officer went on to arrest Whyte, saying he could smell alcohol on his breath.
Whyte’s first court hearing is scheduled for the end of the month. Mayor Ron Nirenberg has removed him from his council committee assignments while Whyte awaits the results of his blood alcohol test.
“I hope those people that sit on the dais of the City Council realize that I want Marc put back on those committees right away,” said Gallagher, a former councilman who temporarily returned to the dais last year while Perry took a leave of absence.
The resolution council passed earlier this month pointed to Whyte’s admission that he had consumed alcohol before getting behind the wheel and cited San Antonio’s unfortunate status as the highest per-capita rate of drunken driving crashes among
large Texas cities.
Among Whyte’s supporters, some said Monday they were satisfied with his apology and planned to continue supporting him.
“We’re all human, we make mistakes,” said John Welch. “He’s a good man. I’m going to stick by him. I voted for him. Obviously, I will vote for him again.”
Others insisted Whyte had done nothing wrong, and were angry that he’d been punished for something they said could have happened to anyone.
“We need to censure Nirenberg,” said Deb Kast, another Whyte supporter who chalked the censure up to political maneuvering by the mayor.
Whyte, who has previously run for office as a Republican, is the council’s lone conservative. He was joined Monday by Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3) and Perry, as well as Precinct 3 and District 10 staff members.
Addressing the audience at the meeting, Whyte called the Dec. 29 incident a “mistake,” and vowed to make changes to prevent it from happening again.
“I wanted to start tonight by just telling you face to face how sorry I am,” he said. “I am 100% committed to being the councilman that you all elected me to be.”
Whyte said he had overcommitted himself since joining the council, and planned to take a step back from the number of gatherings and events he had sought to attend.
“When you get in this council you see … you want to be everywhere, and you want to do everything,” he told the audience. “It feels like you can’t miss a meeting, and you can’t miss a social outing, because there may be somebody there that can help you with this or that, or help you with the next campaign, so you try to do so many things.”
Asked about the constituents who believe he has done nothing wrong, Whyte said in an interview after the event that the comments “can’t change the facts of what happened that night.”
“It means so much that all these folks would turn out tonight and be so supportive,” he added.
