Politics & Government

Like their counterparts across the state, Dallas County voters have voted early and often throughout the state’s early voting period. Throughout Texas, voters are showing up as if the Nov. 6 election was for president, rather than a midterm. According to numbers released by the Texas secretary of state Sunday…

The family of Botham Jean, the 26-year-old accountant shot and killed in his own apartment by an off-duty Dallas police officer on Sept. 6, sued the city in federal court late Friday. The suit alleges that Amber Guyger, the police officer who shot Jean, used excessive force and violated Jean’s…

Three days. That’s how quickly it would’ve been over if Dallas had just let Jeff Handy have his convention in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. Instead, here we are two-and-a-half years later with no end in sight to the legal battle between Handy and the city. Wednesday, the 5th…

Kevin Felder, the Dallas City Council member I have been calling King Cuckoo, cuckooed me big-time Wednesday I guess, winning a 13-2 vote against the South Dallas car wash that I have been defending from time immemorial. Another big winner in the deal — this one really sticks in the…

Dallas is out of the business of managing Fair Park. By a unanimous vote Wednesday afternoon, the Dallas City Council voted to turn over the reins of the city’s biggest vein of untapped potential to the Fair Park First Foundation, which will oversee management of the park. Spectra — a…

Dallas County residents kept up the momentum and then some on day two of early voting. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said more than 55,000 registered voters cast ballots at polling places throughout the county Tuesday, eclipsing 53,000-plus who voted the second day of early voting during the 2016 presidential…

Today the Dallas City Council will be asked to vote to commit a form of public fraud. The council will be asked to launch a process that would shut down a private business as a public nuisance, even though years of extraordinary effort have failed to prove it’s a nuisance. But…

If you’ve been to a political event this election season, there are two dates that speakers have tried to sear into your memory. The first is obvious. Nov. 6, two weeks from Tuesday, is Election Day, the first chance Texas and the rest of the United States will have to…

The Dallas Police Department wants to start patrolling the space between its cops on the ground and its helicopter unit, DPD Assistant Chief Paul Stokes said Monday. The department wants drones, he said, to keep officers safe and provide better surveillance of protests, demonstrations and other large events. Stokes compared…

Former Dallas City Council member Larry Duncan faces up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty to one count of tax evasion, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas announced Monday. In court documents, Duncan admits that he took $245,000 in…

Monday night in Houston, Texas’ junior senator, governor and lieutenant governor will take the stage with the president of the United States, two weeks and a day ahead of the Nov. 6 mid-term election. At almost any other point in American history, the rally wouldn’t be a surprise or even…

Last week I told you a story about Dallas City Hall that made no sense whatsoever — nothing new there — but this week I have it sort of figured out, and I want to share. Last week I said the city had formed a special taxing district to raise…

There’s probably a more delicate way to put it, but former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez is getting molly-whopped by incumbent Greg Abbott in their race to be Texas’ governor. That’s the only takeaway one can draw from the new gubernatorial forecasts published by polling guru Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight on Wednesday…

Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price gave local Republicans a gift earlier this month when he sent out a mailer encouraging his constituents to vote a straight Democratic ticket in the mid-term elections by comparing President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.  Predictably and rightfully, much of the local media, led…

After two debates in their race to the U.S. Senate, it’s hard to imagine what Texas voters might’ve learned about U.S. Senator Ted Cruz or U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke that they didn’t know going in. Tuesday night in San Antonio, as they did in Dallas a couple of weeks ago,…

I may join the Republican Party and start pinching women on elevators. I swear I’ll do it. The one thing that could drive me to it, the only thing that might actually push me out of the Texas Democratic Party for good is the Texas Democratic Party. It’s the party…

Anyone planning to gather outside Dallas City Hall early today and cheer as council members pedal their bikes into work for the Bike to City Hall event can sleep in instead. The event has been canceled because of inclement weather. What Bike to City Hall event, you ask? Beats us…

Monday, more than a year after the Texas Legislature, the Dallas City Council and the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund struck a deal to give the city some breathing room from the threat posed by a massive shortfall in the retirement system, Dallas residents got a peek at what’s…

Throughout his campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, El Paso U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke has remained unrelentingly positive. Cruz and his campaign have, in ads or in person, called him a socialist, insinuated that he supports flag-burning and painted him as an enemy of law enforcement, but O’Rourke has…

Dwaine Caraway’s City Council district is about to do the same thing again: elect somebody who owes her or his soul to outsiders. It’s the tragic flaw in Dallas’ system of city government. Nobody who might really represent a poor district, who might truly stick up for it, can beat…