New Power

A new Dallas establishment. We understand if you suspect you’ve heard it all before. John Schoell-kopfs “new” CCA. David Cooley’s “new” Chamber of Commerce. They looked like the real thing, but they weren’t. They weren’t because they didn’t understand the city’s new political realities. And because they failed to pass muster – the ultimate definition of Dallas power is the ability to get things done. The new CCA was clobbered, and Cooley was forced to resign.

That is what makes this new establishment believable. It does understand the changes and the new realities, and it can get things done. A few examples of the new establishment’s prowess:

●Is it merely a coincidence that during the last two years the Central Business District Association, the North Texas Commission, the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and the Dallas Citizens Council have hired highly paid, high-powered executive directors? Is it a coincidence that these organizations are expanding their memberships and becoming very aggressive on the civic scene?

●Can you imagine a hired gun like the Citizens Council’s Alex Bickley hovering over the Commissioners Court ten years ago, slapping wrists, stroking egos, and making the business community’s wishes known ever so clearly?

●Ten years ago, would a group like the CBDA (and Mayor Folsom) press forward with a plan to move some of the fine arts activities from Fair Park to downtown? (Remember that Fair Park, whose 1936 Centennial Exposition was brought to Dallas by a fledgling group of businessmen, is the city’s most sacred cow.)

And so on. Coincidence, happenstance, quirks of fate. These things happen in politics. But these particular events are no accidents. They are the handiwork of the new Dallas establishment.

The story of the new Dallas establishment does not start in some smoke-filled boardroom of a downtown bank or the City Club. Nor does it begin with tiresome rhetoric about a “broad based” community action group. The story of the new Dallas establishment, in fact, starts in the modest Ross Avenue offices of City Councilman John Leedom. There, and in Acapulco.

Two die-hard Republicans, Leedom and insuranceman L.E. Guillot, decided one January afternoon in 1976 that a conservative, business-backed challenge to liberal Garry Weber had to be mounted in that spring’s special mayoral election. Their unlikely search, as we all know, eventually led them to Robert Folsom, the business community’s first winner in five years. What we did not know, until recent months, was that the Folsom campaign and election would draw together the first legitimate new Dallas establishment since the late R.L. Thornton, Sr. created the Dallas Citizens Council in 1937.

For the Folsom candidacy provided a new generation of businessmen with a symbol, a cause to rally around. His election gave them the confidence and zeal to fill the power vacuum that had surrounded City Hall since 1971. It was, in retrospect, an auspicious moment in civic political history: The five-year interregnum of the independent Wes Wise; the advent of single-member districting in the Legislature, on the school board and finally the city council; the rise of populists such as Weber, Adlene Harrison and Rose Ren-froe; the sheer growth of the city; all had” rendered the fabled Dallas establishment’s oligarchical style of consensus and conservatism obsolete. Worse, attempts by the business community to regain its preeminence in civic power were all abysmal flops. First, John Schoellkopf tried a bit of plastic surgery on the terminally-ill CCA, resulting in the election of several anti-business city council members. Then Schoellkopf tried to knock off the highly popular Wise, taking an embarrassing and expensive pounding from the former sport scaster.

Those failures so rattled the business community that when Wise resigned in early 1976 to run for Congress, few of its members recognized that here, at last, was a real opportunity for the establishment to recoup its losses. And those who did recognize that fact had no earthly idea of how to execute such a coup. Tired and confused, the old guard had even decided to allow banker R.L. Thornton, Jr. to carry the establishment mantle by default – even though most of them secretly admitted the hot-tempered Thornton didn’t stand a chance against Weber.

Enter Leedom and Guillot, who quickly realized that if they didn’t find an electahle business-backed candidate, no one else would. This was, of course, unfamiliar business for the two Republicans: Although well-known as recruiters for the GOP over the years, neither Leedom nor Guillot had ever applied his talents to city politics. Like most Dallas Republicans, they had always regarded City Hall as an impregnable fortress, protected by a Democrat-dominated CCA. But the ball-game had changed, they knew that. The CCA would have about as much to do with this mayoral race as South Dallas had had to do with the election of R.L. Thornton, Sr. in 1953. Electability mattered, that was all. Whoever they found had to have the respect of his peers in the business community, to be sure; but more importantly, he had to have reasonable name identification in the community, a good grasp of the issues and the will to win against a seasoned campaigner like Weber.

First choice was Ed Haggar, a solid Republican with conservative credentials and a name as well known as the family’s slacks. Haggar graciously said thanks, but no thanks. Back to the drawing board. More names, more rejections.

Then a telephone call to Peter O’Don-nell, a well-known Republican power-broker. O’Donnell listened to Leedom and Guillot, thought a minute, then replied. “’Have you thought about Bobby Folsom?” he asked. No, they hadn’t. Leedom and Guillot knew that Folsom turned down the establishment’s overtures in 1975, but then so had plenty of other businessmen with seven-figure net worths and pleasing smiles. In 1975 Folsom, a developer, had been struggling with a real estate recession, but now he wasn’t. The time was right. As a former school board president, his name was somewhat known. Folsom was a conservative and, perhaps most important, he had a cadre of wealthy, loyal friends, the kind who would drop what they were doing for several months and back his campaign with their money and time. Folsom might be the man. They made an appointment to see him.

Although Leedom and Guillot didn’t know it, several weeks earlier three of Folsom’s friends had nudged him ever-so-close to running for mayor. During a brief holiday at Folsom’s Acapulco condominium, Farrell Ray, Jr., Joe Geary and Starke Taylor had been pushing Folsom in that direction, convincing him that City Hall was without leadership and that he was the man who could change it. Ray and Geary knew about electability – Ray had been president of the school board and Geary once ran against Earle Cabell for mayor. As they left Acapulco that week in late January, Geary, Taylor and Ray thought Folsom was just about convinced.

Leedom and Guillot made their plea to Folsom, who listened patiently. They sensed he had heard it before. Folsom said that he had been considering the race, but wouldn’t do it if R.L. Thornton, Jr. had the establishment’s backing. It would be suicide to split the business community in what would be a very tough race against Weber. Besides, Folsom and Thornton served together on the Mercantile Bank board.

Leedom and Guillot decided they needed to show some support, so they returned the next day with a delegation. Included were two former city council-men, Frank Hoke and Tom Unis – a long-time CCA leader. Oak Cliff Councilman Bill Nicol was present, along with Folsom’s cousin Bill Weatherford. Yes, Folsom said, he would run, but, he reiterated, not if Thornton had the establishment’s blessing.

Quickly a telephone call was placed to long-time CCA kingmaker Bob Cullum, who was pleased at the possibility of a Folsom candidacy. Cullum drove over immediately. He, like everyone else, was troubled about the Thornton situation. Already Cullum had called an afternoon meeting to talk about who might run for mayor, including Thornton. With the emergence of a Folsom candidacy, the meeting could be a discussion of the merits of Thornton versus Folsom. At lunch Cullum broke the news to Thornton.

At 4 p.m. about 30 civic leaders met in the City Club to sip drinks and pick a mayoral candidate. Most of the talk centered upon the Thornton-Folsom candidacies. The city’s major institutions were represented – the banks, utilities, newspapers, plus other civic leaders such as John Stemmons and John Schoellkopf.

Cullum sat at the table and explained that something must be done immediately – the filing deadline was only a few days away. Within a few minutes, it was obvious that the consensus was in Folsom’s favor, with only Schoellkopf speaking in favor of Thornton, because of Thornton’s well-known family name. The vote went for Folsom, with several noteworthy abstentions – Joe Dealey of the Dallas News, Jim Chambers of the Times Herald and Mercantile chief executive Gene Bishop.

Within a few hours Thornton confirmed one of the establishment’s fears about his personality as a candidate. In a fit of temper he told reporters that his business friends “stabbed me in the back.”

The next morning Folsom quietly set about the task of assembling a campaign organization, with the help of Starke Taylor and Billy Weatherford. Help also came from Leedom, who encouraged Republican campaign veterans to join in the effort while others raised money from Folsom’s business contacts. A Fort Worth public relations firm was retained, stickers were printed and Folsom began psyching himself up for the grueling weeks ahead.

A few days later Folsom met with some Old Guard CCA people who had promised him financial backing. To his amazement, Folsom found that the group of half-a-dozen CCA leaders spent the better part of an hour discussing all of the reasons why Folsom would lose to Weber. Folsom listened patiently and said he’d appreciate all of the help they could give him, then marched out on the street and told an aide that was the last his campaign would have to do with them.

The rest is history. Folsom and Weber sparred in the first election, eliminating several minor candidates, then met head-on in the run-off. Folsom won by a scant 1122 votes out of 110,572 cast. Simply winning was important to a business community which had been shut out of the mayor’s chair for five years. But more important than Folsom’s winning, was how he had won. Amid the turbulence of the Folsom-Weber race the emergence of the new Dallas establishment was clear. Folsom’s campaign contributors included the old stand-bys. But it also included a host of new young faces, who gave money, and more important, much of their time to the Folsom campaign. Most of them had never met CCA fathers like John Stemmons, and probably didn’t care to. Folsom’s campaign, while based on solid conservatism and a business-oriented posture on the issues, was a far cry from the Old Guard’s style: Instead of sitting back and resting on a business community blessing and a truckload of money, Folsom wisely decided to play hardball. Public appearances were stressed; issues were studied carefully. Precinct-by-precinct analyses were employed. The old boys were there with their checkbooks, to be sure. But this time around, they jumped on the bandwagon, they didn’t drive it. Folsom’s narrow victory over Weber was not theirs; it belonged to an altogether new Dallas establishment.

The new establishment is developing a structure and style vastly different from that of its predecessor. Its membership is larger, more diverse and younger. It tends to be progressive in its thinking and more overtly political in its actions.

The old establishment, formed in the 1930’s, was dominated by a score of men from the city’s leading business institutions. Most of them controlled the major institutions – banks, utilities, downtown retail businesses and the newspapers. By contrast, the new establishment includes a variety of men, ranging from merchants and lawyers to architects and real estate developers. Unlike the Old Guard, they do not believe that their actions must be low profile (that is, not reported in the newspapers) but rather aggressive and out front. They are neither shy nor apologetic about pursuing their mission and they do make headlines.

But make no mistake. The new establishment is just as fiscally conservative as the old, liking balanced budgets, no short-term borrowing and hold-the-line taxes. (Better yet, tax decreases, even if they are merely nominal, such as the city’s recent reduction.)

The new establishment has grown from some powerful changes of the 1960’s and ’70s. The city’s problems are becoming increasingly complex, as the Dallas metropolitan area expands and more groups seek a piece of the action. While once problems could be solved with a few strategically placed telephone calls, today, solving a problem often means dealing with a horde of political jurisdictions and interest groups. No longer is there a simple consensus of what the common good really is.

Along with a growing city came growing institutions, whose focus began to broaden well beyond the city limits, as did the interests of their leaders. Ten years ago the three major banks had only one interest, Dallas. Today their holding companies own affiliates scattered throughout Texas and bankers are out looking for deposits in Europe. Ten years ago Nei-man-Marcus was a Texas store owned by the Marcus family; today it is a small part of a large national chain. Just a few years ago the Cullum Company had only one retail operation to worry about – its Dallas area Tom Thumb stores. Today it operates in 7 states and the company headquarters has moved to Farmers Branch.

There are two other very important factors. First, a generation of entrepreneurs is being replaced by a generation of hired professional managers, men who weren’t raised in Dallas and probably won’t be around long. While the entrepreneurs could serve on the city council because they were the chairmen of their companies, the professional managers can’t. They’re running for chairman.

Second, while only a few years ago the major downtown institutions could use corporate money to raise formidable war chests quickly for city council elections, bond issues, and the like, today they cannot. It is illegal. Now if the chairman of the bank wants to give money, he must donate his personal funds, limited to $500 per candidate per election. And then it must be reported in the candidate’s public filings, an exposure which many well-to-do businessmen don’t like.

These are the subtle changes that were stirring within the city, waiting to push forth the new establishment. But there was one wrenching, driving force which opened the bud. It was the five-year battle over Dallas public school desegregation, surely the most traumatic chapter in the city’s history since the Kennedy assassination. Unlike the Kennedy assassination, which occurred within a fraction of a second, the school trauma dragged out for five years. Its story reveals precisely how the new establishment emerged.

The turning point came on September 16, 1976. It was instigated not by anyone in the business community, but by a federal judge. Mack Taylor. Taylor was a bit nervous as he donned his judicial robe and looked over some notes he had jotted down. Today would be a most unusual court session for Taylor, who normally sat back, refereeing courtroom battles between batteries of lawyers.

This time Taylor, not the lawyers, would be doing the talking. Taylor entered his courtroom, prepared to deliver a stern lecture to all sides in the desegregation dispute, but especially to the members of the business community, many of whom he had known since boyhood. Though he was apprehensive. Mack Taylor had a gut feeling the time was right for this most unusual tactic. Maybe this would break the five-year stalemate between the business and minority communities, which was holding back a new era in the city’s history.

“I’m not inclined to fault the school district entirely for not enthusiastically supporting desegregation plans,” Taylor said. “I say that the business leaders of Dallas have defaulted. I know that, because in the beginning, when this case was starting and was going on, and as it has been pending, I have had occasion to call upon some of those leaders. And they have left the district to meet the problem alone and unaided. And this has to be the height of short-sightedness.” Taylor went on to point out that businessmen had the biggest stake of all in Dallas. If the city were torn by racial strife, they would be hurt the worst, he suggested.

Taylor’s strategy worked. Within a few days a small party of Dallas’ most influential leaders telephoned the judge, requesting a private meeting. They met over breakfast and the group’s leader asked what the judge wanted them to do. Taylor told them that he wanted the business leadership to support attempts to solve the school problem, which was more than a legal problem. It was a community problem, he said.

Taylor’s meeting with the business leaders was a far cry from one he had held in his chambers five years earlier. After spending an hour in 1971 quizzing white business leaders and minority leaders about what each side wanted out of the school desegregation suit (filed in 1970), Taylor could see the two groups were at an impasse. The meeting broke up when one of the city’s most influential businessmen stood up and said “Well, Judge, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any compromise in this, and if you think there is, then you’re dreaming.”

Since then Taylor had received disappointingly few offers of help from the business community. Led by school board president John Plath Green, the school district had fought the desegregation suit tooth and nail. The district’s lawyers convinced the business community that they would win the suit. Trustees such as James Jennings exacerbated tension by labeling the Tri-Ethnic Committee, a monitoring group appointed by the judge, a “super school board.” In 1973 Dallas experienced its first and only modern-day race riot, staged downtown by chi-canos after a young Mexican-American boy was killed by a Dallas police officer. All the while anti-busing forces, led by Jesse Price and Kathy Carter, were stirring’ up emotions among nervous residents. But in the background another organization was growing, one that would emerge to negotiate a settlement to the desegregation suit. In 1971 a group of Dallas business leaders attended a weekend urban affairs seminar at the Hilton Inn, which convinced them that problems with crime, housing, transportation, and so on would ultimately hurt them. A few months later the Dallas Chamber of Commerce established an urban affairs department and within a year the Dallas Citizens Council began taking an interest in so-called “quality of life” issues.

By 1975 the Dallas Alliance had been formed, a community-wide forum established to deal with quality of life issues. At first it set out to tackle housing and crime, but within a few months the Dallas Alliance became the only organization capable of settling the school suit.

Most of the Old Guard had no credibility with minorities. But a few did. Men like Jack Lowe, who had spent years working with blacks and browns in such programs as Block Partnership, and builder Dave Fox, a leader in open housing and community relations. Led by Lowe, an Alliance task force stepped forward in mid-1975 to negotiate a school settlement. The task force had seven whites, including Citizens Council members Lowe, Fox, Charles Cullum and Council president Dewey Presley. But the task force also had seven blacks and seven chicanos, the first time minorities had been granted a majority at the seat of Dallas power. After months of negotiations, the task force reached an agreement which became part of the federal court order. After the order was written by Judge Taylor, it was endorsed by the Dallas Citizens Council board.

The settlement of the school suit was the single most important force in the birth of Dallas’ new establishment. By allowing the Dallas Alliance task force to settle the suit in its three-way negotiations, the Old Guard stepped back and let a younger generation of leaders, with far different talents and interests, take the helm. While the Folsom election proved beyond a doubt that a new establishment really had replaced the old, the school desegregation settlement had forced the younger leaders out of the woodwork, and thrust them into the most important issue of the 1970’s. It brought to the front a whole new set of leaders, men like Dave Fox, Hunt Investments’ Walt Humann, Sanger’s Jack Miller, and others.



The new establishment’s decision to get aggressive came in late 1975 when the Citizens Council executive committee was toying with the idea of hiring a full-time executive to be its eyes and ears in the community. After three straight drubbings at the hands of Wes Wise, including one loss by default, the businessmen were ready to talk about more action and do less apologizing. There could be little doubt about even the oldest guard’s attitude when Republic chairman James Aston told the group, “We’d better get a team on the field or turn in our uniforms.”

Two of the Old Guard’s younger members, Dewey Presley and Bill Seay, took charge of finding a director. After searching through many names, they finally came back to an early choice, city attorney Alex Bickley. Bickley had been having a tough go of it at City Hall with a council that questioned his integrity. At a breakfast meeting in the spring of 1976, Bickley told the businessmen that if they were dead serious, he’d consider the assignment. If they weren’t, they should forget it. They were, and the Dallas Citizens Council, long known for its low profile, hit the civic field scrambling for control of the game.

Bickley’s hardball brand of lobbying bothers a few of the older guard, who still have trouble stomaching a front-page story about the Citizens Council’s activities. Just a few years ago the Citizens Council generally made the newspaper about once a year, with a very short, discreetly placed item listing new officers. Now here is Bickley, employing his you’ve-got-to-look- them- in-the-eye-when-they-vote style of lobbying. Lately Bickley has been particularly active at the courthouse, hammering away at the participants in the commissioners’ circus. Bickley has been seen having breakfast with some of the commissioners, giving them an old-fashioned “cussin’,” trying to get them back on speaking terms with one another.

In effect, Bickley is the Citizens Council’s watchdog. He reports regularly to the Council’s executive committee, keeping them informed about what is happening at the courthouse, city hall, and so forth. Presumably Bickley’s reports will generate some sort of action from the business establishment around election time, particularly in the 1978 courthouse races. Meanwhile Bickley is busy outlining options for the Council’s approval, which casts him in a very influential role, at times leading the Council’s thinking. Council members themselves are no longer wallflowers. Many of them are placing personal telephone calls to elected officials such as the commissioners, making the business community’s views perfectly clear to those in public office.

The Citizens Council also has turned aggressive in another area, in 1976 having established its Financial Affairs Liaison Committee. The committee, composed of one representative from each of the big three downtown banks and a fourth member from an outlying bank, is riding herd on the city, county, community college district, school district and county hospital district. The liaison committee came about in the wake of New York City’s financial woes, brought about largely by short-term borrowing in anticipation of future tax revenues.

The liaison committee quickly looked into the short-term borrowing habits of both the county and the hospital district and found plenty to worry about. This fiscal year, for instance, the county is borrowing $10 million from downtown banks to finance its summertime “shortfall,” which will be covered this fall when tax revenues come in. The hospital district is doing the same, borrowing $3 million to finance its summertime shortfall. The business establishment, led by bankers who control the summertime loans, have pressured the hospital district into eliminating its shortfall in 1978 and the county into doing the same by 1979. That made the Citizens Council happy, although members weren’t particularly elated over the unavoidable solution – higher property taxes from both the county and the hospital district.

But the new order doesn’t end with the Citizens Council. It merely starts there, in the traditional circle of power. During the past several years there has been a movement to diffuse civic power into several other organizations, each fighting for a well-defined vested interest. The pattern is clear. The North Texas Commission, the Central Business District Association and the Chamber of Commerce – each has hired a high-powered executive director, just as the Citizens Council has, and each is out fighting hard for its cause. Although the pattern in these organizations is more spontaneous than orchestrated, one incidental benefit arises from this diffusion of power. For those who would like to run for office by shooting at the business establishment, there is no longer a single whipping boy, but four smaller targets, each with fresh young faces, offering far more difficult targets than the old, monolithic Citizens Council.

The first of these organizations to hire a high-powered president was the North Texas Commission, charged with promoting business recruitment for the Dallas-Fort Worth area and securing international air routes. Last January commission board members Ray Hunt, Stanley Marcus, Bill McCord and Charles Pistor recruited Xerox vice-president Jack O’Callaghan, who has the credentials to deal with any rank of visiting business dignitary. Led by O’Callaghan and board chairman Pistor, the commission recently scored an eleventh-hour victory in the U.S.-British international air route negotiations. Employing the lobbying of House majority leader Jim Wright and Carter Administration trade negotiator Robert Strauss, the commission managed to secure treaty rights to a European route, an act which it considers vital to recruiting more national and international companies to Dallas-Fort Worth.

Next came a change in the Central Business District Association, charged with halting the slide in downtown, as businesses and people move toward the suburbs. In 1976 the Chamber of Commerce had established a downtown revi-talization committee, presumably to do what the CBDA wasn’t doing. In a very ironic appointment, the Chamber named as the committee’s chairman NorthPark developer Ray Nasher, a man whose interests are anywhere but downtown.

Southland Life president Jim Goodson was asked to take over the CBDA, and he agreed to do so, providing the business community was willing to meet several conditions. First, he wanted the Chamber to drop its downtown committee; second, he wanted a greatly increased budget; and third, he too wanted a high-powered director. He got all three, including a first-rate CBDA president, Tulsa urban planner Jim Cloar. Today the CBDA is moving aggressively on a number of fronts, encouraged by a half-billion dollars worth of new downtown development in planning or in progress.

Last to revitalize was the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, which went through something of a false start under former president Dave Cooley. Recently the Chamber hired Dan Petty away from the city manager’s office – a move aimed not only at securing an outstanding young president, but at keeping a man of Petty’s considerable talents in Dallas. Today the chamber is moving full steam ahead under Petty and board chairman Dave Fox, who presided over the Chamber’s recent changes.

The result of all this is a new configuration of Dallas power, replacing the power pyramid of several years ago, which was topped by Jim Aston, Bob Cullum and John Stemmons and supported by layers of influential businessmen. Today’s power is different. No one man has nearly the power that the Old Guard members had, and the power is transient. A key figure today, such as Bob Folsom, may have very little power in a few years.

At the moment Folsom has enormous power at city hall, because his presence as a mayor with influential contacts in the business community has galvanized the city bureaucracy. There is little doubt that the city’s department heads are acting with more confidence and more commitment, knowing that Folsom has the clout to get things done.

Fox, through the Chamber of Commerce and the Dallas Alliance, has great influence with the minority communities. Alex Bickley has tremendous influence over the Dallas Citizens Council. Although Bickley is a hired gun, normally not an influential position in Dallas power, his unique personal background as former Dallas City Attorney enables him often to lead the business community with his thinking.

At times elements of the new establishment operate independently, but at other times they act in concert, displaying tremendous power. Note the recent squabble over the new jail site. The downtown site was adamantly opposed by several groups – the City Council led by Folsom; the Chamber of Commerce, led by Fox; and the Citizens Council, influenced by Bickley. Knowing they were beaten, the commissioners changed the site and the city agreed to help finance the new criminal justice center.

Although the new establishment is running on a two-year string of victories, its greatest hurdle lies ahead. Can the business community find a way to influence single-member district elections? These are particularly important at city hall, where zoning cases are controlled. (Note that under Folsom there has been a shakeup on the plan commission, moving it toward a more pro-developer stance.) Believe it or not, there are still a few Old Guard types considering organizing some sort of city wide full-time political organization, a la CCA. The very idea frightens new establishment members, who are searching for some way to organize district-by-district.

Looming behind this question is a greater one. What will happen if the business community isn’t able to elect its sort of local candidates? Some think that the result will be a disastrous split in power, with the logical Dallas power base, the business community, separated from politics and votes at city hall, the county, and so on. The idea of businessmen and office holders acting independently and often at cross purposes scares many in the new establishment (and even more in the old one). They have visions of an Eastern-city political schism, a problem which must be reckoned with if it comes to pass.

Those questions could turn out to be moot, depending on what Bob Folsom decides to do in 1979. After all, there is some substance to the notion that the new establishment is purely the result of the right man finding the right time and place. If Folsom does run for another term, the new establishment is assured of at least two more years of survival. However, if he decides he’s had enough of politics, new power in Dallas could lose its impetus. And unlike its predecessor, the new establishment has no assurance that new generations will follow in its footsteps.