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By D Magazine |

STEVE BaRTLETT THINKS FAST and talks fast. Always has.

he was finding his way around Washington as a newly minted GOP congressman, a constituent approached to wish him well and to inquire about another Dallas congressman, Democrat John Bryant. Was Bryant much like the pugnacious Jim Mattox?

“No,” Bartlett quipped without missing a beat. “Bryant is intelligent, and he’s a gentleman.”

Later that week, as we ate breakfast in a hotel coffee shop, a hulking, white-haired man lumbered through the lobby. I took him for House Speaker Tip O’Neill, but Bartlett quickly set me straight: “If it had been Tip, he would have had his entourage with him.”

Bartlett’s words came back to me on a cold day in January 1991 as he was sworn in as mayor. Could he fulfill his campaign promise to bring order and “decorum” to the often quarrelsome City Council, or would he throw gasoline on the fire? Bartlett does not suffer fools gladly, and our council is seldom without its quota of fools. How would his partisan spirit, supple mind, and frequently cutting wit serve him as mayor?

Observers will disagree about Bartlett’s track record for a long time to come, but one thing was obvious on a recent visit to City Hall: As he gets ready to take his leave in June, Steve Bartlett is the same proud, confident-to-the-point-of-cocky man he’s always been.

He didn’t seek a second term for reasons that, to him, are crystal clear: He believes he has accomplished most of what he set out to do. A veteran keeper of lists, he noticed one day last summer that most of the items on his mayoral to-do list had been checked off. Violent crime-down. Tax base-expanding. Downtown-perking up. New arena- well, stay tuned. Bartlett is at peace with himself and his decision to bow out.

“It’s a grueling job, and you pay a price for doing it,” Bartlett said. “You get hammered. All my predecessors paid the same way. If what you’re buying is change-a lower crime rate, for instance–then it’s worth it. But if you’ve done what you wanted to do, then you’re just paying the price.”

Bartlett seems proudest of the decrease in the city’s violent crime rate. “We went from number two in violent crime per capita to number 10,” he said, thumping his desk for emphasis.

“By May or June, we should be out of the top 10 for the first time in a decade. We went from 500 homicides in 1991 to less than 300 in 1994. That’s not a small change.”

Those lives were saved, Bartlett believes, because he took the lead, announcing in his inaugural speech that the city would reduce crime-no ifs, maybes, committee reports, or apologetic footnotes. While he’s boasting about those safer streets, Bartlett digs at those who say he never learned the “people” skills, the ego-stroking niceties that some believe are required in a weak-mayor system. Case in point: He did not seek the council’s assent before planting the flag against violent crime.

“[Former councilmember] Lori Palmer would say I should have gone to the council and had them come up with the words. But I could never have gotten that statement out of the council. So you water it down until it’s meaningless. If I had done that, we would have orphans today whose parents would have been murdered.”

As for the promised council decorum, Bartlett has checked that one off his list, too-despite his clashes with Paul Fielding. “We don’t have to have consensus, but we do have to have respect,” Bartlett said. “The council holds Paul Fielding and me to a standard of orderly debate. No games, no dirty words. That’s a huge change,”



SPEAKING OF CHANGE: WHETHER OR NOT RON KIRK WINS the mayor’s race, he will make history as the first African-American to mount a serious, well-funded campaign for the office. That’s why we asked contributing editor Jim Schutze to examine the impact that race-and money. Max Goldblatt, and the Trinity River-will have on this election. His story begins on page 56. As for the question posed on our cover.. .well, Election Day is May 6.

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