Yesterday afternoon, my colleague Alex Macon returned from early voting and declared that the nice volunteers at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library seemed a bit “bored.” Beyond school board seats, the only thing on this ballot is choosing your district’s councilmember (yes, all 14 of them), and Dallas has a particularly horrid appreciation for such things when you look at turnout.
There are no referendums, no explicit bond votes, no risk of a mayoral shakeup. But the votes, for those paying attention, could very well determine the future of the Trinity toll road, of Fair Park, of development in West Dallas, of bar curfews, and any number of other major and not-so-major matters affecting our city for the next two years. Yesterday evening, three City Hall writers—our Eric Celeste, the Observer’s Jim Schutze, and the Dallas Morning News’ Tristan Hallman—climbed up on a makeshift stage under the stairs at D Magazine HQ to chat about these city races. One of the questions that came up again and again was the idea of influence on these races—how the moneyed are attempting to wield it with their dollars and their messaging, how the nimble are waging effective campaigns using social media, and how voter turnout is still so abysmal in this city that a couple dozen fraudulent mail-in ballots could be enough to swing a runoff in at least one of our districts. (Looking at you, D6.)
The stakes feel higher in certain portions of the city, most notably in the East Dallas-Uptown-Downtown swath represented by Philip Kingston. There, a super PAC called For Our Community, funded by the kinds of developers and philanthropists and politicos who have long held a thumb on Dallas’ politics, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars painting the incumbent as a no-good loon, more prone to hissy-fits than to effective leadership. Kingston, in response, likes to post a spreadsheet of his voting record.
Schutze calls these folks the “Forces of Evil” and says they look scared, or at least more committed. The effectiveness of their messaging will be telling. Many of the homes with signs for Kingston’s opponent, the attorney Matt Wood, are younger couples, newcomers to East Dallas who aren’t beholden to the neighborhood’s entrenched political establishment. Schutze told a story of how his block had problems with its gas pipes and couldn’t get the company to respond. So they took it to Kingston, and soon Atmos trucks were cruising up and down the block until the problem got fixed. That’s about the best anyone wants for from their city councilman—a problem that affects you, fixed quickly. He then polled his new, younger neighbors with those Matt Wood signs.
“I said, ‘Wow, look what Kingston did for us. He got our gas pipes fixed.’ They’ve all said, ‘Yes, but he’s a very negative guy, have you seen these things in the mail?’” Schutze said. “So these things work.”
More insight:
“In talking to those people, some of whom are relatively new to East Dallas, I learn that they’re new to East Dallas but they’re young couples and they have kids and are involved in schools and they know Matt Wood from schools and other connections. That just means there are a lot more people around me who are involved in a lot more stuff. They have a lot more activities and connections in the community than used to be the case,” he said. “So the old East Dallas establishment—the cool people in East Dallas—who believe they could snap their fingers and choose their successor, are being challenged. And that’s not such a bad thing.”
Celeste noted Alex Dickey, one of the opponents running for Monica Alonzo’s seat in District 6. Dickey is a 30-year-old history teacher and legislative intern with no prior political experience. And yet he won an endorsement from the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News, partly by waging an effective social media campaign to spread his name.
“There’s been this groundswell of activism from a whole new group of people who want to be involved in the city, 20somethings, 30somethings,” Celeste said. “Because of that, you’ve got folks who are trying to figure out a way to make a difference and get involved. It feels like the path to victory is there for a lot of people.”
Still, the influence of others weighs heavily in many districts. Take District 7, where incumbent Tiffinni Young is staving off five challengers—and still having to overcome ex-Trammell Crow chief Don Williams, whom she told Hallman is “waging a war against me” over her support of the mayor’s Fair Park privatization plan. Then there are the races of incumbents who have nuzzled up to the mayor—Alonzo, in aforementioned D6; Erik Wilson in southern Dallas’ District 8. The Dallas Police Association is pushing hard against District 11’s Lee Kleinman in support of Candy Evans, even though she faces an uphill trudge. A billboard on Central Expressway puts the face of beloved former Dallas Police Chief David Brown next to Matt Wood’s name.
But in Dallas, perhaps more now than ever before, the influence will only go so far in determining who emerges the winner on May 6. As Schutze noted, the younger voters are “talking a good game.” But the question remains: will they actually vote? Or will they leave the choice to those who have always made it?
Here are some parting words from Celeste: “Who you turn out matters in these tiny elections.”
