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The vote came two weeks after the council - following an 11-hour public hearing - agreed that O’Dwyer violated the city charter on at least five different occasions.
Despite Tuesday’s vote, it may not be the end of O’Dwyer’s political career in Copperas Cove.
O’Dwyer said he intends to be on the ballot when the city holds a special election in November to fill the mayor’s seat.
“Somebody is going to start a defense fund for me,” O’Dwyer said. “I do intend to run in November and I do intend to go for defense funds. Maybe this city needs some cleaning out.”
The vote came as no surprise to O’Dwyer, his defense team or residents who made their way into council chambers.
In fact, all anyone had to do was look to the council dais to see that O’Dwyer’s nameplate had been removed.
“Look,” O’Dwyer said before the start of the meeting. “They’ve already kicked me out.”
Diane Steele, one of O’Dwyer’s most vocal supporters, agreed the decision to remove him had already been made.
O’Dwyer’s attorney, Roy Barrett, called the council vote unfair and accused the members of having already made their decision before the vote. “This is a lynching,” he said. “What you need to do today is plan to hang the dead body.”
O’Dwyer may have lost his job, but council members may not be too far behind.
“We are going to clean house,” Ms. Steele told other O’Dwyer supporters of recall proceedings against much of the council.
Ms. Steele started four petitions for recall. She hinted those petitions would be presented for verification after the May 10 election.
Barrett revealed e-mail messages circulated for quite some time calling for O’Dwyer’s removal. “It’s sort of a civil conspiracy, it seems to me, to violate the rights of the mayor and a council member,” Barrett said.
In the e-mail dated Sept. 11, 2007, Councilwoman Charlotte Heinze contacted three other council members and City Attorney James Thompson, and sought advice about removing O’Dwyer and Councilman Larry Sheppard for official oppression.
“Can we not use this to defend yourself and place the mayor and Sheppard out of office?” she wrote to Thompson, council members Fred Harris, Mark Peterson and Ray Don Clayton.
Following the vote, O’Dwyer talked about the Heinze e-mail, but declined to speculate there was a plot to have him removed.
Harris said there never was a conspiracy against O’Dwyer or Sheppard, and that he never saw the e-mail.
Harris defended his decision to vote for O’Dwyer’s removal.
“I just couldn’t take any more of his violations,” Harris said. “We’d asked the man three or four times to stop and he promised he would and he never did.”