Gay bar odessa tx

It was a political mailer, one of many deployed this fall in Odessa, the West Texas city in the heart of the oil-rich Permian Basin. His opponent, incumbent City Council member Denise Swanner, compared her stance to his. The two were total opposites except for the fact that both were in relationships with men. The people behind the advertisement wanted voters to elect candidates who advanced conservative values, only this election was supposed to be nonpartisan.

While Stoker and his allies had hoped the local election would be about infrastructure and city services, his opponent attempted to shift the battlefield to national political issues. Across the country, Republicans were running countless attack ads on Democrats for their support of transgender people.

The strategy backfired — at least in Odessa. Stoker spent years figuring out his place in the world. Ray Stoker was a respected attorney who, inwas appointed chairman of the Texas State Highway and Public Transportation Commission. He later became chair of the newly created Texas Department of Transportation, among other state appointments.

Like his father, Stoker attended Baylor University. He explored architecture, communications and marketing degrees, but none stuck. Stoker never graduated.

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Seven years later, bar moved from Waco to Austin. His upbringing, he said, had prepared him to network his way through the political realm. He spent about a year at the Capitol as a Senate messenger, fetching lunches and coffees and making copies for legislative aides. He returned to Odessa inselling cell phones and insurance.

Inhe volunteered at a at Food 2 Kids, a program that supplied odessa for students. That led to a job as executive director. Today, Stoker is the executive director for Meals on Gay in Odessa. The job with Food 2 Kids, Stoker said, had been the start of the civic engagement he had sought for years in Austin and Waco but had not found.

The job was also revealing. He said he began to notice the often fraught relationship between business owners, developers and the City Council. The proposal to open a luxury hotel downtown faced opposition. Food truck owners had to jump through confusing legal hoops because of an ordinance that required them to establish a kitchen separate from the trucks.

Frustrated with the stagnating growth in Odessa, Stoker in ran for an open seat on City Council. He lost the race but was tapped by the winner to serve on a board to revitalize the downtown area. In the following years, Stoker remained civically active, acting as the voice that favored business-friendly initiatives and promoting arts programs.

Those positions earned him praise among other civic leaders and the ire of conservative local officials.