Meet Joe Jaworski
Elected after 2008’s Hurricane Ike, Joe served as the 55th mayor of Galveston, Texas. Mayor Joe, widely regarded as the city’s most responsive and accessible mayor in its nearly two-century history, led Galveston’s transformative recovery from epic natural disaster.
Mayor Joe personally resolved a decades-long Galveston dispute, leading the call for a popular election that forever changed the way improvements to Galveston’s famous Seawall Boulevard would be financed, a solution that today benefits millions of Texans yearly.
Joe risked his mayorship to support the rebuilding of Galveston’s storm-damaged public housing by championing a community-based solution to build mixed-income housing for thousands, a game-changing first for the Island community. Joe “stood behind bringing families home to Galveston.”
Galveston lost two centuries worth of tree canopy to Hurricane Ike’s floodwaters, and during Joe’s term and with his leadership, the Galveston Island Tree Conservancy planted 40,000 new trees Island-wide, restoring the Island’s historic canopy.
Before his election, Joe capably responded to the University of Texas System’s illegal decision to close the Hurricane Ike-damaged University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in favor of a new campus in Austin. Joe sued the U.T. system and its Gov. Rick Perry-appointed board in Galveston state district court to enjoin its sudden, illegal decision to terminate over 4,000 UTMB workers; he argued and won a winner-take-all, pivotal venue hearing to keep the matter from being transferred to Austin, and he created a program whereby terminated employees would be promptly rehired. Today, thanks to many, UTMB Galveston is thriving.
Galveston Island was rebuilt during Mayor Joe’s term, hardening its infrastructure, re-populating its neighborhoods and strengthening its economy for the next century.
Joe, a third-generation Texas attorney, practicing in the profession that his grandfather Leon and father Joseph famously pursued, graduated from the University of Texas School of Law along with his wife Rebecca in 1991. Joe then clerked for respected maritime and civil rights jurist United States Court of Appeals Judge John R. Brown. Following a successful three-decades strong trial law practice in Gulf Coast state and federal courts, Joe is now a highly sought after national and international mediator.
Joe and Rebecca are proud parents of two: Joseph, who is studying to become a lawyer, and Becca, who is pursuing pre-law studies in college.