A year ago, former state Rep. Eric Johnson defeated former Council member Scott Griggs to become the 62nd mayor of Dallas. It has been a tough year to learn how to lead a city. Since Johnson took office, he has had to face a sharp rise in violent crime, a devastating category-3 tornado, a pandemic, and now mass protests over police brutality.

During that time, we have learned a lot about the mayor’s leadership style—and yet not a lot about the mayor. Johnson comes across as a reserved, private figure, protective in his language and careful with his actions. Around the horseshoe, he leans on parliamentary procedure and public statements to advance policy objectives. He prefers to communicate with the public via press conferences, television interviews, and social media.

In recent weeks, we have seen how this leadership style can create confusion and contention at City Hall. Matt reported on the mayor’s ongoing spat with the city manager over the balance of power at City Hall, a tussle that has played out via a series of lengthy communiques but few actual conversations between Dallas’ two most powerful leaders. In the June issue of D Magazine, I write about how this leadership style has also cast a shadow over the mayor’s relationship with his colleagues on the Council, alienating nearly half of them and sowing distrust among Dallas’ governing body.

As the last week has shown, Dallas is at a pivotal moment in its history, a time when inspirational leadership, strong moral guidance, and real reformative action are needed more than ever. Is Eric Johnson up for the task? His behavior during his first year in office raises doubts.

Here’s the piece. It’s online today.

On Super Tuesday, nearly 320,000 Dallasites cast their votes in the primaries. Many of those voted without incident. But some didn’t. If this is a run-through for November, the county has a lot of work to do. At some polling locations, election workers simply didn’t show up. At others, the machines were broken. As the clock ticked near 7 p.m., lines—like at the Oak Lawn branch library—snaked past two hours. And late Friday, the county asked for permission to recount the ballots. Election administrator Toni Pippins-Poole said 44 tabulating machines weren’t counted; her office found the flash drives.

On Tuesday, as Shawn reported, a judge approved the recount. They believe they’ll need to cross reference between 7,000 and 8,000 ballots and do not believe that this will change the outcome of any of the races. Both parties basically stood pat until the ruling came. Rodney Anderson, the Republican party chair for the county, told the Texas Tribune, “We anxiously await the explanation from the election department on how this could possibly happen. Until such time when we have this, I’m not going to deal in supposition and what ifs.” On Tuesday, they fired shots at one another from the hallway of the courthouse.

We didn’t know which of the 454 polling locations were affected until Tuesday. But the new machines—which printed out a ballot with a unique barcode for each voter after the selections were entered digitally—weren’t exactly smooth. I voted the Friday before Super Tuesday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center. After I got my ballot, I tried to feed it into another machine for tabulation. The machine wasn’t working. We slid our ballots into a locked bin instead, and the judge told us they would be counted later. She told us this situation is why there was a paper trail and reiterated that in court on Tuesday.

Around 7 years ago, I was sitting at Ascension in the Design District with Rob Allyn, the former Dallas political consultant, who was telling me about his new movie idea. That Allyn was working on a film was already something of a novelty. If you follow local politics at all, you know Allyn’s name. The firm he founded still dominates the local political landscape. Allyn left that firm a while back to reinvent himself as a filmmaker. During that time Allyn had managed to produce a string of action films shot in Indonesia. But his new film idea was a different beast.

As Allyn described his film about 19th century British explorer James Brooke, who fought pirates in Borneo and became king of the indigenous head-hunting tribes there, images of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo flashed through my mind. To make that movie, the famous German director drove his cast and crew into the Amazonian jungle where his lead actor went mad and members of the crew died after the director forced them to drag a boat over a mountain. The idea of shooting a film about Brooke in the juggles of Borneo sounded like a similarly madcap escapade, and I told Allyn I wanted to write about his movie. I’d be lying if part of the allure of following the film’s production wasn’t the pure adventure of the thing and the chance that, like Herzog, it might all go up in flames.

We lost touch. I figured Allyn hadn’t managed to convince enough people to invest in his lark of a film. But then, last September, Allyn texted to say they were about to begin shooting the movie, called Rajah, in Borneo. Before I re-pitched the story to Tim, I checked the airfare. Remarkably, it was only $850 or so, which I figured wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. The flight would be long, especially given the time-constricted travel schedule, but it also required a couple of long layovers in Singapore, and, having watched more than a few Anthony Bourdain episodes set there, that didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

I got the thumbs up, packed my bags, and headed to the other side of the world. The story about what happened next appears in the March issue of D Magazine and goes online today.

Overcast skies loomed over Dallas on Super Tuesday as thousands of voters from across the city flocked to the polls to cast their ballots in Texas’ primary elections.

Dallas County offered 14 voting precincts and 243 cumulative voting locations. Before Super Tuesday, 1,085,065 Texan Republicans and 1,000,231 Democrats had taken advantage of early voting. But the big day started with some hiccups.

By 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, 383 voters had cast their ballots at North Dallas High School in Uptown. The location got off to a slow start because of technical difficulties.

Election Judge Bill Barnes said the election volunteers weren’t given the usernames and passwords to login in to the computers and pull up the voting pages. Later in the day, two express voting machines malfunctioned. Another failed mechanically. All three machines were fully functioning by noon. Voters reported similar problems across town at the Lochwood branch library, where none of the machines were running at 7 a.m. The voting machines are a hybrid of a digital and analogue, with voters electronically voting but receiving their ballots on a sheet of paper with a unique bar code. The voter gets a receipt and turns in the ballot to another machine. Other issues weren’t even technical. The Dallas Morning News reported some poll workers just didn’t show up to their locations to run the machines.

But it seemed most of the problems were solved by the afternoon. Dallas resident Danny Tipton said he only waited about 10 minutes in line at North Dallas High, and most of the voters around him seemed content with the wait.

“The guy in front of me was getting a little impatient, but honestly it wasn’t bad,” he said.

It’s Super Tuesday. I hope you’ve voted. If not, go here to find out where you can. The good news is that you don’t have to vote in your designated precinct, so if you want to skip out at lunch and head to your nearest voting location, do it!

Depending on where you live and what party primary you are voting in, you may be confronted with a down ballot battle between current Dallas County Democratic Party Chair Carol Donovan and her opponent, Michelle Espinal-Embler. The race sets up as a stand-off between the local Democrat old guard and a young, insurgent newcomer. Check out Donovan’s list of endorsements. It’s a who’s who of local political players. But then head over and read this Eric Celeste piece from 2017 about how it is exactly those entrenched political leaders who are holding back young and progressive voices in the local party. You’ll begin to understand why Michelle Espinal-Emblar, a young community organizer and activist, is running against Donovan.

A taste from Celeste’s column:

Today is Super Tuesday, when voters in Texas, 13 other states, and one territory go to the polls to choose their party’s nominees in races ranging from president to constable.

It also means your mailboxes—and my apartment complex’s parking lot—will soon be less cluttered by colorful, joyful, and strange mailers from campaigns and political action committees.

By Wednesday, the onslaught of campaign ads for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg broadcast on everything from television to Shopkick should disappear, at least for a while. Don’t worry, Democrats: you’ll see another round come from two runoffs, one for the U.S. Senate and perhaps for state House District 108, where three Democrats are vying to defeat state Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-Highland Park, in the fall.

If the state’s numerous barriers to voting haven’t stopped you from voting, get in line by 7 p.m. and bring one of the approved permitted forms of identification. This year, you’ll be voting electronically but will receive a printed sheet with a barcode and your selections. You’ll submit that paper, creating a trail. On Twitter, there are reports of equipment problems from Mansfield to East Dallas. We’re calling election judges to figure out what’s going on.

According to numbers guru Derek Ryan, 1,085,065 Texan Republicans already voted compared to Democrats’ 1,000,231. Statewide more people voted Republican in 219 counties compared to Democrats’ 35. Collin and Denton are among the 219 while Dallas and Tarrant counties are among the 35.

Primary numbers don’t translate into general election voters, however, much like yard signs don’t vote. But the turnout shows both sides are energized going into the fall.