Dallas City Plan Commissioner Robert Abtahi is officially a candidate for Dallas City Council, after rumors circulated for weeks that the well-liked commissioner would make the leap.
The former assistant city attorney will go up against Jim Rogers and Philip Kingston for the seat vacated by term-limited Angela Hunt, and other candidates are expected to join the fray.
“It’s my view that leaders who look for common ground and find ways to rally people around a common goal can accomplish great things,” Abtahi said in his campaign literature. “I want to bring that kind of collaborative leadership to city hall.”
You might say the Dallas native started his campaign two years ago, in an editorial to the Morning News:
My uptown friends practically ignore me when I suggest having lunch somewhere south of the Trinity. They shrug me off when I suggest we spend the day at Cedar Crest Golf Course rather than Top Golf. They look at me like a mental patient when I offer up a late-night taqueria as an alternative to Taco Cabana. They are trapped in the bubble.
Too often, I hear negative things said about the various neighborhoods and parts of the city. The Uptown crowd loves to scoff at anything north of NorthPark Center and south of downtown. The North Dallas crowd is quick to bemoan what they consider to be confusing one-way streets and problems associated with parking in downtown.
If we are to become the big diverse city we strive to be, we must first get over our preconceived notions about the various parts of our city. Most of them are unfounded and outdated. Every part of Dallas has something special to offer, regardless of what you may think or hear people say.
