Posted on 06/04/2007 2:29:11 PM PDT by Zakeet
This conservative metropolis could become the nation's largest city to elect an openly gay mayor if a longtime city council member wins a runoff election later this month.
Ed Oakley's candidacy is the latest indication that Dallas' reputation as a conservative stronghold is giving way to more diversity. The city is already home to several gay elected officials, including the sheriff.
"Dallas is less and less the Dallas that people think it is," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. "And Dallas is less and less the Dallas that it used to be."
In the mayoral race, Oakley and former construction company CEO Tom Leppert emerged from a crowded 11-candidate field that included another openly gay man and a transgendered woman. Oakley and Leppert will be the only candidates in the June 16 runoff.
But if Oakley, 54, is on the edge of history, he doesn't talk about it. His sexuality hasn't figured prominently in the campaign. Oakley said his internal polling showed it had little impact on voters.
"I have never made this an issue, a part of what I am or who I am or what I have done to represent the community," said Oakley, a small business owner.
Dallas, with a population of 1.2 million, is home to a growing gay community with an estimated 120,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered households.
The city has nondiscrimination policies covering sexual orientation and gender identity and offers health insurance to the domestic partners of city employees, measures praised as progressive by local gay-rights activists.
"I think some people don't realize that Dallas is very diverse: economically, ethnically, culturally," said Pete Webb, president of the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
My sister-in-law gets the Dallas Morning News delivered, and whenever we visit I am floored to find that there is a newspaper more goofy-liberal than the Philadelphia Inquirer. The point is, there's really nobody minding the store in Dallas.
A perfect Freudian slip..
But I've been to Oklahoma...
Well, they tell me I was born there..
but I really don't remember..
In Oklahoma, not Arizona..
What does it matter...
What does it matter...
“For a minute I thought it was going to be Troy Aikman.”
Last I heard, Mr. Aikman at least has a hacienda in Santa Barbara, CA.
I don’t know if that’s his legal domicile.
Dallas, like all TX cities, does not elect mayors according to party. They are all officially nonpartisan. There was a nominally Republican mayor in the 1960s named Eric Jonsson (not sure of the spelling).
When I first met my niece's fiancee, who was from Ft. Worth Texas, I said the only thing that comes out of Texas are steers and queers. Later on that evening I felt bad about saying that and apologized to him for it.
Looks like I was right after all..........
I haven’t done intensive research on TX, yet (I’m currently up through to Ohio), but I know that despite the non-partisan label, it’s baloney, as the Democrats continued to almost completely dominate all city mayoral elections in the state. I don’t have any info on several of the mayors during the ‘70s from Dallas, but made the assumption they were Democrats. It was only Bartlett that I knew was definitively was a Republican (how come he served just the one term ?). The Mayor you’re referring to is apparently Jon Eric Jonsson, who served from 1964-71, and died at the age of 94 in 1995.
I don’t have any specific details about Mayor Jonsson beyond the fact that he succeeded Democrat Earle Cabell after Cabell defeated the-then longest serving Republican in state history, 10-year incumbent Bruce Alger (who still lives today and turns 89 a week from tomorrow), when the TX Democrats made a total and complete sweep of the House delegation (leaving only John Tower as the long Republican). Supposedly the claim that the defeat of Alger was Dallas County’s “penance” for JFK’s assassination.
Or as we more accurately called them: transvestities.
Better a fag than a traitorous scumbag like Mark Cuban.
DJ, I believe that I read that the late Mayor Jonsson was a northern industrialist transferred in to Dallas.
That is very true. We gotta feel a little sorry for finallyatexan who goes looking for a loft in Sundance Square and is shocked to be surrounded by gay men! LOL
Location, location, location! Always do some research on a neighborhood before you decide to live there!
Ooooooh; he’s cute. /s
True dat. Cuban has this Dallas-area resident now proudly yelling "Go Spurs!"
No surprise, every male in Texas wears high heeled boots, and fancy hats.
‘The real sexual confusion isn’t in San Francisco, its in Dallas!’
Gallagher, circa 1984
Who was mayor before Bill White, Satan?
Not in Sundance Square she won’t. That was the joke, she took her son to SS to look for a loft and was surprised to see gays.
If, this Saturday, Dallas does elect the first openly gay mayor in a major American city, something San Francisco has never done, I’ll be very surprised.
Nah, I won’t be surprised, not much of anything surprises me these days.
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