Three people who filed to run for Dallas mayor failed to get the needed signatures and won’t appear on the May ballot.
Stephen Smith, Miguel Patino, and Heriberto Ortiz are off. Smith, who founded and runs Smith Group Asset Management, ran as a Trinity Forest advocate on a one-big-idea platform to put up a 10,000-acre Trinity Nature Park. Patino and Ortiz were relative unknowns, with the latter running this campaign Facebook page.
It takes 216 signatures to appear on the ballot for mayor. City Elections Manager Priscylla Bento says Smith turned in his application, with signatures, on Thursday of last week—one day ahead of the Friday deadline. But it was later determined that he didn’t meet the threshold of 216 registered voters. Sans open records request, she wouldn’t elaborate on how short he fell.
Patino and Ortiz each filed late Friday, as we noted in our breakdown of the candidates.
