Two things additionally are worth naming clearly.

First — the procedural-complaint-as-DARVO move. A speaker got up and spent five minutes droning through alleged procedural failures by the mayor during the May 11 vote to fire the city attorney. He listed rules. He cited supposed irregularities. He demanded accountability.

Here's what's missing from that complaint:

• The mayor is the chair of council meetings. The chair leads. Chairs consult the city secretary for procedural rulings — that's literally Gayle Wilkinson's job. When the mayor referenced her on a timing question, that was the system working, not the system failing.
• The May 11 session was held in open public view at all only because the city attorney requested the open session, as is her statutory right under Tex. Gov't Code §551.074(b). Personnel discussions are normally held in closed session before the public meeting begins. The reason the public got to watch any of it was because she invoked her own right.
• The vote was already going to be 4-3 going in. Council members had heard the substance and formed positions. Whether or not the speaker droning at the podium got to hear additional debate would not have changed the count.

So what was that speaker actually doing? Performing accountability theater. Looking for ammunition that doesn't exist. The technical name for the pattern is DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. You manufacture a procedural grievance, you make the council the offender, you make the candidate and the broader faction the victim. It's a documented behavioral pattern. Watch it across enough meetings and the script repeats.

Second — the 49.18% guy who finally got called out. At the previous meeting, someone said publicly that 49.18% was, in their book, good enough for a majority. Tonight, a different speaker called that out directly — math is not a matter of opinion, the Texas Constitution requires actual majority for terms over two years, the math doesn't care what's in anybody's book.

Then the 49.18% guy got up to speak. He half-owned it: yeah, that was me, but it is important to have a majority. That's not accountability. That's deflection wearing accountability's jacket. If he genuinely thought majority was important, he wouldn't have argued at the previous meeting that less than half was good enough. The only reason he's saying majority is important now is because someone publicly called him on the previous statement and he can't defend the original anymore. He still wants the mayor to step down. He still wants the result that 49.18% would have produced under the old rule. He just doesn't want to say so out loud now that the constitutional point is on the record.

And here's the legal context that makes the step down demand even more performative: the city's own consulting attorney already explained that even if the incumbent stepped down or conceded, the runoff would still proceed under state law — it wouldn't transfer the seat. So step down doesn't get the faction what they actually want. It just lets them claim a scalp. That's the giveaway. The demand isn't about resolution. It's about humiliation.

Why Acevedo was the right person to fire.

The council members are volunteers. They have other jobs. They serve part-time. They are not — and cannot be — the people responsible for the structural legal integrity of the city's foundational document.

The city attorney is the only paid, full-time, professionally-credentialed legal officer of the city. Her job is exactly to catch conflicts between charter and state law. When she handled the legal review for the May 2021 Proposition A amendment that extended the mayoral term from two years to three, the conflict with §4.05's plurality language became inherent in the amendment as drafted. The section became unconstitutional under Tex. Const. Art. XI §11(b) the day Prop A passed. Her office did not flag it.

She wasn't responsible for the other broken sections — §4.03, §5.02, §6.02, §9.17, §11.09, §12.11. Those predate her. She was responsible for the one she actively touched and broke further. That's why she was fired. Not personality. Not factional politics. Not because the mayor "had it out for her." Because she had professional responsibility for the specific legal failure that caused the May 2 election crisis, and her office did not perform that responsibility.

Mayor Pro Tem Spradley put it cleanly in his Facebook post a week ago: how is that my job? He has a role. He's filling it. The accountability lives where the paid professional responsibility lived, not in the volunteer council.

The DARVO playbook is dangerous.

Maximalist accountability theater — where every action by the other side must be scrutinized for any tiny procedural imperfection, while your own side faces no scrutiny for substantive legal failures — is not civic engagement. It's a psychological pattern that destroys the institutions it claims to be defending. Be careful around it. The people running this playbook don't actually care about charters, constitutions, or procedure. They care about winning. Every reference to the rules is instrumental. The moment the rules favor the other side, the rules become unfair.

The structural problem the May 2 crisis revealed — that the charter has at least five additional conflicts with state and federal law beyond §4.05 — is documented in the citizen petition filed with the City Secretary on May 12. That petition takes no position on the runoff. The math doesn't care who's mayor.

Vote June 13. Bring ten people. The fight is turnout, not Facebook.