Saturday was (an) Election Day here, and the turnout was about as bad as I can ever remember. Although there are 1,559,554 people of voting age in Dallas County, only 71,421 votes were cast in the Dallas Mayor's race (11 candidates).
As I predicted a few weeks ago, there will indeed be a runoff in this race, in about 5 weeks. Among friends, I had predicted that Don Hill and Max Wells would survive the runoff - I was wrong on both counts (Hill placed 3rd and Wells 4th). So much for my insights.
Tom Leppert (a loyal Bushie) and Ed Oakley (a gay Dallas City Councilmember) survived the runoff and one of them will be Mayor (a mostly ceremonial position here, due to the power-balancing that's been in place for decades). Leppert got 27% to Oakley's 21%, enough to propel them into the June 16 runoff.
Not that I expect the next five weeks to devolve to name-calling, but I do anticipate some negative phone calls from anonymous callers, as happened in the election just completed. I suspect the whisper campaign (especially against Oakley) is in full swing, as the Soccer Moms (read:demure gay-bashing society women) go into attack mode.
Oakley's certainly a City Hall veteran and is the better candidate, but Leppert (the outsider) has already spent millions to get this far and isn't likely to stop. It'll be interesting to watch, fer sher.
2 comments:
Oakley's "Tear Down North Dallas Apartments" plan is really bothersome to me. Where will the residents go? Instead of razing the apartments how about working on crime prevention? I dunno. Just don't like the choices.
Ni disagreement, Stella. Oakley has the reputation for razing everything in sight .. and then you have Leppert -the-Loyal-Bushie in the other corner.
My candidate didn't even crack the top 4 in the primary. {sigh}
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