Over the last half-decade or so, Dallas has mostly slowly but surely done what it can to make itself a more egalitarian city. The City Council passed a comprehensive LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinance, gone as far as Texas law allows with regard to marijuana decriminalization by implementing cite-and-release and required city…
Its real name on tax records is the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, but now it calls itself VisitDallas, because nowadays you have to have an ungrammatical neologism for your name if you want to be hip. I don’t know how hip it is really, but VisitDallas is maybe the…
It’s not really a surprise, but it’s still news: Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has endorsed Regina Montoya in Dallas’ mayoral race. Clinton’s endorsement is the cherry on top of an impressive couple of weeks for Montoya, who’s also picked up nods from Emily’s List and the Dallas County…
The noise, literal and figurative, is unavoidable. Downtown residents, having just been awakened by a truck driving over one of the steel plates that patch one of the neighborhood’s streets under construction, take to Facebook to commiserate about another lost hour of sleep. “Because of AT&T construction, traffic is being…
Given the narratives and media coverage that surrounded the Senate race between Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, one could easily be forgiven for thinking that something snapped in Texas last fall. Surely, all the enthusiasm and hype — not to mention the raw numbers of voters who…
You don’t know this, because you don’t read D, the city magazine of Dallas, but they’ve been running a mayoral poll on their online Frontburner page. You click to vote for your favorite candidate. This week they admitted the poll probably is being gamed. Shawn Shinneman wrote: “It’s possible —…
’Four years ago, the last time Dallas elected a mayor, the anonymous online high jinks were limited and mostly amusing. The dumb/brilliant Mayor Mike Rawlings Twitter parody @fauxmayormike and some enterprising cyber-squatting by opponents of then-candidate Casey Thomas livened things up. Wylie H, the website commenter turned social media soothsayer,…
Get ready for another round of text messages from Team Beto O’Rourke. According to social media reports from volunteers for the former El Paso U.S. representative’s senatorial campaign, O’Rourke and his team sent out an email Wednesday afternoon, informing the volunteers that O’Rourke needed help pushing out some text messages…
The City Council campaign in District 13 north of the Park Cities is shaping up to be strangely like a very important chapter in my own past, although it’s also totally different. Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller (2002-2007) is running to unseat the incumbent, Jennifer Staubach Gates, who has represented…
The mayor of Dallas and the editorial page of The Dallas Morning News have revived an incident from 2015 in which Dallas City Councilman Scott Griggs, now a candidate for mayor, was accused of violently threatening a city official, then-Assistant City Secretary Bilirae Johnson. A Dallas County grand jury dismissed…
There’s parody, self-parody and then whatever the hell the Dallas County Republican Party is doing with the lineup it’s put together for its annual Reagan Day Dinner next week. The slate of speakers the local GOP has assembled is so absurd that, when first spotted in the wild by the…
The Texas Secretary of State’s Office confirmed late Monday afternoon that multiple Texas counties inadvertently received new names of potential noncitizen voters for possible investigation from the office Monday. A spokesman for the office blamed a vendor for the mix-up. “Just like we told the counties and the court last…
My well-known modesty, one of my many admirable personal traits, won’t allow me to tell The Dallas Morning News how to do its job. But if I had been the editor on that story last week about a suburban mayor and her husband getting convicted on federal bribery charges, the…
If at any point over the last seven years you’ve found yourself on the east side of downtown Dallas, you’ve encountered it — the quagmire of detour signs, potholes and uneven pavement that have accompanied Dallas’ quest to fix up Pearl Expressway and Cesar Chavez Boulevard on the eastern edge…
Last Monday, Observer columnist Jim Schutze wrote a story in which he accused The Dallas Morning News editorial page of telling lies about Dallas City Council member and mayoral candidate Scott Griggs. Schutze suggested this was a deliberate smear campaign aimed at attacking a candidate, Griggs, opposed by the mayor…
Sunday morning, the clock on your smart phone, as it does once a year, is going to roll straight from 1:59 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., costing you an hour’s sleep and causing a small to moderate amount of pain as you struggle through Sunday and the beginning of the week…
From the outside, it’s hard to know what Texas Secretary of State David Whitley was thinking when he made his quixotic attempt to purge thousands of voters from the state’s rolls late last month. Rather than just doing his job and making sure Texas’ election machinery runs smoothly, Whitley chose…
Voting in Dallas County is going to be a lot easier this November. Tuesday afternoon, the Commissioners Court voted to switch the county from its present Election Day system, which requires voters to show up to their home precincts to cast ballots, to one that allows Dallas County residents to…
The Dallas Morning News on its editorial page last week repeated again a flagrant and malicious lie about Dallas City Council member and mayoral candidate Scott Griggs. The lie is a window on how the old-guard leadership in the city really operates and the depths to which it is willing…
Longtime Fair Park and South Dallas City Council member Carolyn Davis accepted more than $40,000 in bribes in exchange for her support of a low-income housing project. According to a federal plea agreement unsealed Friday morning, prosecutors and Davis’ legal team have agreed to a three-year prison term. Without a…
Turns out, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke was playing a little game when he told Oprah on Feb. 5 that he’d decide whether he’d run for Senate or president “before the end of the month.” Though the El Paso native has made his decision, according to multiple reports, he isn’t…
Dallas’ youth curfew is going back into effect March 4 following a lengthy back-and-forth at City Hall about balancing kids’ and neighborhoods’ safety — perceived or otherwise — with equitable policing. Fines for curfew violations will be lowered from $500 to $50 and the city will give Dallas parks $500,000…
