Dallas Still Controlled by Straights
Saturday was the runoff for Dallas City Mayor. The race had made news nationally as one candidates, former city councilman Ed Oakley is openly gay. I'm sure that each campaign will say that it didn't factor in the race, but when you had African American preachers telling their congregations not to vote for the Democratic-aligned Oakley because he's gay, and you have other right-wing groups making calls to citizens stating that Mr. Oakley will push the homosexual agenda (and therefore you need to vote for Tom Leppert and family values) you know it is an issue.
Chris and I did our duty this afternoon. There was a short line, even though turnout was considered high. Less than 20% of citizens voted, so you have to think that there was a lot of money spent with very little payoff when 80% of people didn't even respond to it.
Tom Leppert won 58% of the vote, so it was a pretty solid victory. The map, as usual in Dallas showed a very big divide between the more affluent north side of the city and the poorer south. Mr. Leppert ran as a business man trying to bring in new ideas after a long time mayor has decided to step down. You could say that he was pretty Republican. Mr. Oakley touted his long time service on city council.
Had Mr. Oakley won, he would have been the first openly gay mayor of a top 20 city in the US. There's gay mayors in Paris and Berlin, but the US has lagged behind in electing gays to higher offices.
One of the bigger things that bothered me about Mr. Leppert was the wonderful phrase "I'm going to run government like a business." Years ago I'd be all for that, but these days i know better. Those who think government can be run that way tend to find that they can't run government at all. It's a completely different animal. You just can't fire your city council, or an elected department head, or often, a civil servant when things go wrong. You also can't make a change without going through layer after layer of bureaucracy. You can't make shareholders happy by cutting costs. It's a naive position.
Sure, I voted for Mr. Oakley because he's one of us - I didn't even know he was gay when the regular election had come up. at that time he was one of 10 candidates running. Once it got down to two, the choice for me was pretty clear. Dallas isn't a city in trouble, and doesn't need many changes except for trying to develop it's south side, but an insider would do that better, one that had the ear of the south side rather than a newcomer that's going to represent the businesses of the north side. I don't think in the long run it really mattered what Mr. Oakley's orientation was, but it was a nice little additional connection.
I'm pretty sure that Dallas as a whole isn't ready to have a gay mayor. It's a surprisingly closer thing than I would have thought, but still, Dallas is still safely led by a heterosexual. A recent story in Time touting the "lavender" nature of Dallas - such as having a lesbian sheriff and a large gay population- seemed to draw more concern here than favor at how open Dallas could be.
Dallas might be more liberal than it was...but not that liberal. It's still a part of Texas. It's still Bush country (thought not as much as Utah), but the cities are diversifying, and both Dallas and Houston have had women and African American mayors. Perhaps the gay mayor will be right around the corner.
Chris and I did our duty this afternoon. There was a short line, even though turnout was considered high. Less than 20% of citizens voted, so you have to think that there was a lot of money spent with very little payoff when 80% of people didn't even respond to it.
Tom Leppert won 58% of the vote, so it was a pretty solid victory. The map, as usual in Dallas showed a very big divide between the more affluent north side of the city and the poorer south. Mr. Leppert ran as a business man trying to bring in new ideas after a long time mayor has decided to step down. You could say that he was pretty Republican. Mr. Oakley touted his long time service on city council.
Had Mr. Oakley won, he would have been the first openly gay mayor of a top 20 city in the US. There's gay mayors in Paris and Berlin, but the US has lagged behind in electing gays to higher offices.
One of the bigger things that bothered me about Mr. Leppert was the wonderful phrase "I'm going to run government like a business." Years ago I'd be all for that, but these days i know better. Those who think government can be run that way tend to find that they can't run government at all. It's a completely different animal. You just can't fire your city council, or an elected department head, or often, a civil servant when things go wrong. You also can't make a change without going through layer after layer of bureaucracy. You can't make shareholders happy by cutting costs. It's a naive position.
Sure, I voted for Mr. Oakley because he's one of us - I didn't even know he was gay when the regular election had come up. at that time he was one of 10 candidates running. Once it got down to two, the choice for me was pretty clear. Dallas isn't a city in trouble, and doesn't need many changes except for trying to develop it's south side, but an insider would do that better, one that had the ear of the south side rather than a newcomer that's going to represent the businesses of the north side. I don't think in the long run it really mattered what Mr. Oakley's orientation was, but it was a nice little additional connection.
I'm pretty sure that Dallas as a whole isn't ready to have a gay mayor. It's a surprisingly closer thing than I would have thought, but still, Dallas is still safely led by a heterosexual. A recent story in Time touting the "lavender" nature of Dallas - such as having a lesbian sheriff and a large gay population- seemed to draw more concern here than favor at how open Dallas could be.
Dallas might be more liberal than it was...but not that liberal. It's still a part of Texas. It's still Bush country (thought not as much as Utah), but the cities are diversifying, and both Dallas and Houston have had women and African American mayors. Perhaps the gay mayor will be right around the corner.