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At Eric Johnson’s election night party, the crowd, like the candidate, took its time. Maybe the group was so confident that they were willing to spend a few more minutes at home or pop over to another candidate’s gathering first. From here, the result seemed like a foregone conclusion. Johnson’s campaign had even printed the phrase “VICTORY PARTY” on the staff and media passes. Regardless, it made for a strange moment when early voting results appeared on the county’s election website at 7 p.m. The party had yet to take off, but Eric Johnson had won.

There were a few slow conversations at the sparsely populated tables inside the Fairmont Hotel’s International Ballroom, in downtown. One gentleman at a table was on his phone, maybe checking the results and maybe not. There had been months of buildup to this moment, with nine candidates, dozens of forums, millions of dollars spent. Johnson emerged with what proved to be an insurmountable lead—a full 7,000 votes up, 16 percentage points.

His opponent, North Oak Cliff Councilman Scott Griggs, hadn’t arrived at his own party when those results were published. His campaign had booked the historic Longhorn Ballroom in the Cedars, a 2,500-person venue that attracted maybe 250 to 300 during the peak of the night. At one point, the power even went out—an ominous sign. There had been hope that Griggs’ message resonated with voters in the month before the runoff election. The candidate courted support from the largest police and fire unions and called public safety his top concern. In May, there were 40 homicides in Dallas, the most in a single month in almost three decades. It became the headline-grabbing topic of the many debates—Griggs calling it a “crisis,” Johnson arguing that the mayor should instead keep a cool head about it.

The two had emerged as very different candidates, with Johnson courting support from the city’s business class. Griggs mostly stayed at the neighborhood level, garnering more donations in the runoff but about $500,000 less than his opponent. When there were nine people vying for your vote, it was tough to tell what set them apart. With two, you saw Griggs the policy wonk, a man who took to forums the depth of knowledge that comes with being a councilman for eight years, doing his best to avoid the alphabet soup of acronyms that sustains city policymakers. Johnson, meanwhile, spoke in broad terms about growing the tax base in southern Dallas and reforming the ethics policies at City Hall, a place where multiple council members had admitted to taking bribes in recent years. Johnson tied Griggs to his allies, namely the hawk-eyed but volatile Councilman Philip Kingston, whose bombast Johnson said was partly why he decided to seek the mayor’s seat in the first place.

Johnson argued that he was the man to bring the city together, that Kingston and Griggs had done more to create an unhelpful us-versus-them atmosphere.

Like in any Dallas municipal election, you are speaking to a narrow slice of registered voters. About 10 percent of the registered voters went to the polls. So true or not, Johnson’s pitch was welcomed by far more. By the end of the night, Johnson had vanquished Griggs by 11 percentage points, and Kingston had been defeated by a man whom he had beaten easily in 2013, the mortgage banker and father of seven David Blewett.

“I saw my city at a turning point,” Johnson said. “At a very, very important juncture in its history where we had a choice to make as to whether or not we were going to double down on division and name calling and lack of decorum and lack of unity of purpose and lack of unity of spirit. Or we were going to change direction?”

The mayor’s race was basically over at 7 p.m., when early voting results hit the county’s website.

State Rep. Eric Johnson came out of the gate with an 18-point lead over Councilman Scott Griggs and didn’t look back. He’d end the night with 41,208 votes, almost 10,000 more than his opponent, winning by 11 percent. Only 10 percent of registered voters cast a ballot.

Griggs and his closest ally, the downtown-Uptown-East Dallas Councilman Philip Kingston, both cratered in the runoff. Kingston lost by 7 percentage points—745 votes—to the mortgage banker David Blewett, the same guy he easily beat in 2013 when he first ran for the District 14 seat. If you are the type who looks for broader meaning in such things, it would seem a stunning rebuke of the confrontational and theatrical legislating that originated from Kingston’s seat. In the many debates leading up to last night, Johnson tied Griggs to his buddy Philip. It proved to be a winning strategy. They were the “divisive” crew, the two representatives who would set the city back, the “progressive bloc” that didn’t believe in the type of growth that would grow the tax base. True or not, it resonated.

Kingston and Griggs both ran on campaigns touting their customer service—if there’s a pothole near you, we’ll get city staff out to fix it. Griggs fought against what he called vanity projects, such as the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. He put his cell phone number on his campaign literature. But he was still close with Kingston, the councilman who once tore up a colleague’s amendment, threw the paper in the air, and then got in the mayor’s face during a Council meeting.

Johnson even said during a debate that Kingston was almost “singlehandedly” the reason he decided to run. They’d worked together on the tricky redo of the Garland-Grand-Gaston intersection in Lakewood. “For the first time ever I was directly impacted by the tactics that has caused our City Council to become as divided as it currently is,” he said.

Johnson positioned himself as a unifier and collaborator, and he got the city’s business community behind him. Griggs had less money and the support of neighborhoods, as well as the largest unions for the police and fire departments. He made public safety his top issue, calling it “a crisis,” and the month of the runoff there were 40 murders in the city of Dallas—the most since the 1990s. (Johnson described Grigg’s public safety focus as scare tactics, then later ranked it as his number one priority in late-in-the-race political tweets.) Many Dallas politics wonks thought the race would be a tossup. It wasn’t. Kingston, too, had the support of the working class; I ran into a volunteer with the Workers Defense Project who had been sitting outside the Oak Lawn Library in 95-degree heat since 7 a.m., thanking people who voted. None of that moved the dial.

State Rep. Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas) on Thursday penned a letter to a United States Trade Representative urging the federal government to reconsider tariffs on imported Mexican goods announced by president Donald Trump last week.

Trump says he’ll impose a 5 percent tariff starting this Monday, with increases gradually up to 25 percent by October. That would be “devastating to both the United States and Mexican economies, with particularly harmful implications for the state of Texas,” writes Anchia. The letter was signed by 56 members of the Texas House, including nine from North Texas.

Trump’s threat is an attempt to get Mexico to crack down on the flow of migrants across the border. More from Anchia’s letter:

Texas serves as the biggest exporter of goods and services in the United States—totaling $264.5 billion in 2017. The volume of Texas exports was larger than that of the second-largest exporting state by more than $90 billion. Texas companies maintain well-developed cross-border supply chains, and a mutually-beneficial trade relationship with our state’s number-one trading partner, Mexico. In 2017, our state exported $97.3 billion, and imported $89 billion from Mexico, with an additional 382,000 Texas jobs that depend on trade with Mexico.

There is a runoff election on Saturday.

We’ve written plenty on this in the last few months, and with Election Day now, oh, 40something hours away, it’s time to dive into some highly scientific predictions. To do so, we wrangled our own local political Nostradamus, Eric Celeste (our former city columnist), to the Old Monk to share how he pretty much nailed the general election, when nine candidates were in the running for mayor.

We talk about David Blewett’s challenge to Philip Kingston and whether the former’s impressive general election results (47 percent! So close!) will stick. Will Tiffinni Young return to the horseshoe to represent Fair Park and South Dallas? How will the race between Erin Moore and Paula Blackmon shake out over in District 9, which is down a council member after Mark Clayton decided not to have another go? Will Carolyn King Arnold continue her reign over District 4, a seat she won after it was vacated by the felon Dwaine Caraway? We talk about early voting turnout a bit, which you can read about in more detail right here. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the return of Zac Crain, who found a microphone in his hand for the first time in three months. He brought his son to bear witness. It was fun to be in that spot while it lasted, even if we were never able to get state representative and mayoral hopeful Eric Johnson across from us. At least Mayor Mike Rawlings showed up.

Please go vote. The city’s future depends on you. You don’t want to let your city down, do you?

On Monday afternoon, Reverchon Recreation Center in District 14 was completely deserted. During one 45-minute period, not a single voter went in or out. No campaigners came out either. Despite it being a clear, sunny day—and despite the district’s contentious battle between incumbent Philip Kingston and challenger David Blewett—election officials said it had been slow. Only 68 voters had trickled in by 11:30 a.m.

“For the amount of people registered, we need more voters,” election judge Valerie Hutchins said.

Although early voting turnout outpaced comparable Dallas elections in recent years, the slow morning at Reverchon underscores just how difficult it is to get Dallas, the city with the lowest voter turnout in the country, to the polls.

Early returns this year suggest we’re making progress. So far in the joint runoff election for Dallas mayor and City Council, 50,819 ballots have been cast. About 47,000 of those came via in-person early voting, 17,000 more than were cast that way during the 2011 runoff—the last municipal runoff involving a mayor’s race—and 32,000 more than during the 2017 City Council runoffs, which included battles in West Dallas’ District 6, South Dallas’ District 7, and southern Dallas’ District 8.

Mid-day trips to polling locations told a much different story. During stops by five different polling locations spread across four different Council districts, voters were generally hard to come by.

Of the tens of thousands of words written about our local elections, very few of them have focused on the aesthetics of each campaign. This is a shame. It is the aesthetics—the visual choices, colors, slogans—that can resonate with voters far quicker and longer than any particular policy position or campaign promise. This is perhaps seen most clearly with two of our most recent presidents: Barack Obama and Donald Trump. President Obama’s breakthrough campaign in 2008 introduced the slogan “Yes We Can” and the Shepard Fairey-designed Hope poster. Similarly, it is impossible to imagine President Trump’s 2016 campaign without the slogan “Make America Great Again” and the signature red MAGA hat. For their respective followers, these images, slogans, and merchandise became shorthand for the movement and the candidate’s politics themselves.

Dallas’ municipal elections obviously exist on a smaller stage. The two runoff candidates for Dallas mayor—Councilman Scott Griggs and state Rep. Eric Johnson—do not have the most appealing campaign signage. But this was clearly not a hindrance for them.

Last night, Robert and Maggie Murchison held a fundraiser at their Preston Hollow home for mayoral hopeful and state Rep. Eric Johnson. A surreptitious audio recording of the proceedings was passed along to D Magazine. It shows some interesting — and not altogether truthful — ways in which his opponent, Councilman Scott Griggs, is being depicted to donors.

On the bill was Mayor Mike Rawlings, Councilwoman Jennifer Staubach Gates, and Dallas ISD Trustee Dustin Marshall. (All referred to on the flyer as “Hon.,” as to not violate the city’s ethics code that bars sitting elected officials from using their office to endorse another candidate.) They did what you’d expect.

Marshall, who attended the Greenhill School with Johnson, opened the evening talking about his longtime friend and their battles on the football field. Gates spoke next, saying Johnson was the candidate who would work to build coalitions, adding, “I’ve worked with his opponent now for six years. We are friends, we get along. My mom is here. She said not to say anything bad about somebody so I’m going to leave it at that.” Johnson then delivered a more casual version of what you hear during candidate forums, focusing on how to improve workforce training and his desire to grow the tax base in southern Dallas.

Then came former U.S. Ambassador Jeanne Phillips, a senior vice president at Hunt Oil. She delivered the evening’s most interesting remarks. She claimed that Griggs “has voted for every single tax increase since he’s been on the City Council.”

That’s not true. According to the Dallas Central Appraisal District, the city’s property tax rate, as set by the Council when it passes its annual budget, is actually lower now than it was in 2011, Griggs’ first year as a councilman. Peruse them here. I can find no evidence of Griggs voting to raise the property tax rate. It remained the same from 2012 until 2016, and then has dropped each year since 2017. Griggs has voted for cuts to the property tax rates each of the last three years.

Phillips said that a national group called Our Revolution “is actively and aggressively” supporting Griggs, adding, “It’s dangerous for outside groups to come into our hometown and run a national agenda regardless of what side of the aisle you’re on.” Someone in the room interjected that Our Revolution “is the former Bernie Sanders campaign team and platform that celebrates socialism.” This revelation led to audible gasps.

Again, this information isn’t quite accurate. The local chapter of Our Revolution has indeed independently endorsed Griggs; there’s no evidence of outside influence from anyone working on a national level. Griggs today told me, “We have not been endorsed by Bernie Sanders or any national groups.” He said, “We do not coordinate with any other outside groups.” For context, according to an analysis by the Dallas Morning News, about $50,000 of Johnson’s donations—roughly a tenth of his first campaign finance report—came from out-of-state donors.

But I have no doubt about the veracity of the most interesting thing that Phillips said last night. It was a story about how she and Ray Hunt first met with Johnson “about four months ago.” Both Johnson and Phillips confirmed for me today that this meeting took place after Johnson had announced his run for mayor; he says he came to the decision to run “after prayerful consideration with my family.” I’m going to give you the full anecdote transcribed and then the audio itself. Here’s the story Phillips told:

The verbal chippiness from the early mayoral runoff debates is fading as the final two candidates make their closing appeals to voters. Councilman Scott Griggs and state Rep. Eric Johnson spent their lunch hour on Wednesday seated next to one another appealing to a room of about 275 people at the Communities Foundation of Texas.

Their messages are now tailored and focused, and neither one is easily drawn offsides. (Notice I said verbal: before the debate, Johnson on Twitter urged Griggs supporters who are apparently jacking his yard signs to “#TryMe.”) Griggs wants to use the time he has to explain existing city policy, his role in passing it, and how it could be implemented further once he’s in office. Johnson wants you to know he feels he is a better consensus builder, using his nearly-decade long experience as a Democrat in a Republican-controlled legislature as evidence. That, and his bevy of endorsements from past mayors and sitting council members. He paints big pictures, and is hoping his leadership argument will convince voters to bet on him.

As was explained by moderator Crayton Webb, the former journalist who now heads Sunwest Communications, Dallas’ weak mayor system means the person in that seat will need to line up seven votes behind them to pass policy. Griggs argued that he’s worked within the system for eight years, as he helped usher in the city’s first housing policy and found the money in the general fund to raise starting cop salaries from $48,000 to $60,000. Johnson used his endorsement from seven sitting council members to illustrate their faith in him over their colleague, Griggs. (Griggs has support from five of his own.)

Johnson has beaten this theme like a punching bag since the two emerged out of the crowded race. He is looking to tie his opponent to a progressive bloc of the City Council—alongside which Griggs frequently votes, made up of colleagues he has advocated for—that has pushed hard against what they view as the status quo in operations at City Hall, particularly big-picture projects like the Trinity tollroad and privatizing Fair Park without putting it out to bid. The word “divisive” has come up so often in these forums that Griggs riffed on how even its pronunciation has split voters.

It seems more and more that your vote will be decided by your view of this narrative.

Tuesday’s hourlong mayoral runoff forum at El Centro was in many ways a continuation of yesterday’s Dallas Bar-sponsored debate at the Belo Mansion. There were plenty of jabs between Councilman Scott Griggs and state Rep. Eric Johnson, but their policy differences are becoming more apparent.

This event—hosted by The Dallas Morning News, NBC 5, and the Dallas Regional Chamber—covered a wide range of topics, from ethics reform to how to grow southern Dallas. But each candidate seemed most focused on establishing how their personalities, ethics, and leadership differ. Johnson posited himself as a candidate who has proven in the Legislature that he can work with people who think differently than him, a crucial quality in a weak-mayor system like what exists in Dallas. Councilman Scott Griggs presented himself as the back-to-basics candidate, the longtime City Hall representative who will prioritize the needs of the city over the region and go to work on improving infrastructure and bolstering resources for public safety.

The two candidates to make it out of the May 4 election have been rapidly lining up their supporters. Hours after Tuesday’s forum, Johnson stood on the roof of a Cedars hotel with seven council members and Mayor Mike Rawlings, who announced that they “wholeheartedly endorse” the state representative. (That group included Lee Kleinman, Carolyn King Arnold, Casey Thomas, Adam McGough, Tennell Atkins, and Jennifer Staubach-Gates.) Just before that, The Real Estate Council, the powerful promotions and education arm of the city’s development community, added its endorsement to Johnson’s list, which is getting to be too long to fit on a mailer.

Griggs has earned the support of the Dallas Police Association, which waited until after the runoff to endorse a candidate, and five of his colleagues on the City Council—Adam Medrano, Omar Narvaez, Mark Clayton, Sandy Greyson, and Philip Kingston. He raised less than half of his runoff opponent in the primary, and he has used this as an underdog rallying cry that Johnson refutes.

“For too long in the city of Dallas, we’ve had a select group of power brokers that send out a letter to pick the next mayor,” Griggs said. “They have a fundraiser, raise half a million dollars, one and done. That needs to change. It’s actually suppressing the vote in the city of Dallas. We want to give the people of Dallas a choice.”

This dichotomy has already painted the two debate forums.

Scott Griggs is late. It’s a little after 7 p.m. on Saturday, and early voting returns have just been published. The term-limited councilman begins in second place in the mayoral race, trailing only the state Rep. Eric Johnson. Everyone at Trees seems to understand that Griggs is set; turnout will be low, and the molehill of a lead Griggs has is probably still too much for anyone to climb. So maybe it doesn’t matter that he isn’t here, and that he won’t be here for another two hours.

The cocktail tables are full of supporters munching on tacos and nachos and trying to avoid dribbling the food on their phones, which are all zoomed into the county’s election website. The curiosity at this point is focused on Lynn McBee, the volunteer and nonprofit CEO who is behind Griggs by a hair under three percentage points. The other curiosity is Councilman Philip Kingston, Griggs’ closest ally who began early voting at a 200-vote deficit to former SMU football player David Blewett.

But first, McBee. District 13, the Preston Hollow enclave that has attracted voters like something resembling a magnet, has only a handful of precincts reporting. The collective wisdom is that high turnout in this district and its neighbors will benefit McBee and developer Mike Ablon, who lives there. Ablon’s immediately in fourth, about 800 votes behind McBee and just under 2,000 below Griggs. Only 45,635 people voted early. Eight hundred votes is a lot to make up when you’re spreading out votes like bird seed.

“I’m feeling good about tonight,” says Councilman Adam Medrano, another Griggs buddy who cruised to an easy victory in District 2. His face is in his phone. I ask if he’s worried about Kingston. “I mean, yeah, but we’ll be all right.”

Kingston is at the bar speaking to a few people, nursing a beer. “Let me talk to you a little later,” he says. Omar Narvaez is here, too. It’s sort of his celebration as well, a progressive bloc party. He was challenged in his West Dallas district by the woman he ousted two years ago, Monica Alonzo. Like Medrano, he won easily. “I declare victory already,” he says a little before 8 p.m. “I did what I came to do.”