At this point, it’s a pattern: District 6 Councilman Greg Brockhouse will disparage a proposal, arguing pointedly about process or particulars, then end up voting for it in the end.

It happened in June, with support for the Paris climate accord; in August, with the removal of a Confederate statue from downtown Travis Park; last month, with the provision of legal aid to the poor; and this week, with an offer of an incentives package to a local credit union.

The cumulative effect is an odd impression of a contrarian who follows the crowd. One City Hall insider quipped about Brockhouse, “He’s a poor man’s version of Ted Cruz, except less effective, less liked and just as opportunistic.”

At the very least, the freshman councilman can appear to be seeking attention, perhaps to run for higher office — yet alienating himself from his colleagues in the process.

On Friday, Brockhouse disputed he’s grandstanding at the expense of collegiality, while not exactly tamping down a persistent rumor that he’s gunning to unseat Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

“Debating is not grandstanding,” Brockhouse said. “For far too long, not enough has been said at City Hall. I think we get better as a result of debating. I think we get better policies.”

Many of his complaints, he added, are triggered by the mayor’s tendency to exclude others on big decisions.

“Am I naturally at this point oppositional to Ron on core issues? Yes, I am,” Brockhouse said. “I don’t think Ron is including people. … He’s got a vision for the city and he’s executing it. He won the race and he’s earned the right to do it. But I don’t think he’s earned the right to be a monarch.”

Nirenberg declined to comment on Friday.

Brockhouse’s attacks against the mayor began soon after both took office in June, beginning when Brockhouse maneuvered wildly on a resolution to support the Paris accord. After attacking the mayor’s placement of the item on the council’s first agenda and supporting a motion to delay its passage, Brockhouse ultimately voted for the resolution.

“The objection that I raised was the mayor coming at the last minute and saying, ‘Here, do this,’” Brockhouse said. “I think it’s a pretty stark reality that Ron Nirenberg is doing what Ron Nirenberg wants to do, and he’s not including the council.”

Two months later, Brockhouse again was complaining that Nirenberg had hijacked a process, this time in order to fast-track the removal of a Confederate monument in Travis Park. The mayor had chosen to “change the rules,” he said, by circumventing the Historic Design and Review Commission.

“Again, he did not adhere to the process,” Brockhouse said. “He should have gone to the HDRC.”

Using complaints about process as ammo against an agenda is a time-honored tradition at City Hall. Less common is taking potshots at that agenda only to embrace it in the end.

Ultimately, Brockhouse voted to remove the monument, he said, “because I listened to the people.”

It can be unclear sometimes to whom Brockhouse is listening. His anxiety last month that the city’s funding of immigration services would help undocumented immigrants might have made sense if he were listening to conservatives. But then he voted for the funding.

Brockhouse’s most flamboyant flip-flop might have come this week, when he joined the rest of council in voting to give Credit Human a package of tax abatements and rebates totaling $5.9 million to construct a new headquarters at The Pearl.

A month earlier, Brockhouse had told San Antonio Express-News reporters Richard Webner and Patrick Danner: “The time has come to end the incentivizing of the Broadway corridor.”

On Thursday, explaining his support on the dais, Brockhouse cited a net benefit to the city of about $7.7 million over the next two decades.

“This is a bottom line deal that makes sense over the long haul, and that’s where we have to as a body make sure that is communicated a little bit better, I think,” he said. “Because I can go out on television or radio and say, hey, end this area and stop it, never give a dime to anybody, right? But if the dime is working for me, and it’s returning something, I think the residents should know that.”

Brockhouse added, “I’ll admit, in my passion for subjects, it may come across as if it’s fact. I’m not trying to ever say that I have the facts or I have all the answers.”

bchasnoff@express-news.net