He has expressed concern for the city's ability to accommodate the relatively large number, but has asserted that Amarillo is supportive and accepting of refugees.

[24] In November 2011, the city approved a $947,000 payment to Wallace Bajjali and began talks on how to revitalize downtown Amarillo.

[29] In September 2012, a city ordinance that banned texting and driving passed 15 months after Governor Rick Perry vetoed a similar state law.

[31] He faced just one challenger, Terry Baughman, a lifelong Amarillo resident who worked as an assistant manager at Walgreens.

[32] Baughman promised to improve areas of Amarillo outside of downtown, and criticized Harpole for not having a stronger water conservation plan.

[33] According to 2007-2012 State Department data from U.S. Representative Mac Thornberry, Amarillo received the highest number of refugees per capita than any other Texas city.

[33] According to Harpole, the city has struggled with accommodating a high number of foreign language speakers in areas like education and 911 response.

[33] Harpole told the Texas Tribune, "We've raised some red flags and said this isn't good for some entities in the city or for the refugees themselves".

[33] After requests from Harpole, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission agreed with various refugee resettlement organizations in late 2013 that new placements in Amarillo would be limited to family reunification.

[33] In November 2014,[35] the city approved a $14.3 million parking garage, to be built by Wallace Bajjali Development Partners, the group that Harpole met in Sugar Land.

[37] In February 2015, Harpole sat down with NewsChannel 10 to show hundreds of pages of documents that the city reviewed to vet Wallace Bajjali prior to doing business with the group in 2011.

[38] Harpole defended the city's decision at the time, saying, "They looked at everything they could to say are these people reasonable, can they perform and [...] have they been honest in their past dealings.

[39] In his announcement, priorities that he cited included highway beautification, creating an additional Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, and adding to the city's water rights.

[40] He also mentioned red light cameras, hand-held cell phones, animal control, and the drainage tax as additional issues he wished to put to a vote.

[43][42] Despite Harpole's assertion that he was misquoted,[44][45] multiple conservative sites, including Breitbart News, picked up the story.

[44] Later, on April 21, 2016, Harpole testified in front of the Texas Senate on the issue,[46] complaining that Amarillo has not "been involved in the consultation meetings [on refugee placement] at all".

[47] On June 6, 2016, Harpole expressed concern about controversial Facebook posts, which contained ethnic and sexual slurs, by Sandra McCartt.

[48] The next day, Harpole walked out of a City Council executive session, accusing a councilmember of leaking the rankings of candidates to fill the position.

[49] He also alleged that councilmembers chastised him for changing the process for selecting Eades' replacement when he suggested bypassing the scheduled questioning of McCartt by the council, and ending her candidacy.

[50] These remarks followed his resignation after being caught denigrating a citizen speaker on a hot mic that month,[50] and berating 911 dispatchers in February.