The month after an election is generally thought to be a political 鈥榪uiet time.鈥� This year, the past few weeks in North Texas has been pretty noisy. First, Fort Worth mayor Betsy Price announced her re-election bid on 四虎影院, and this week, the mayor of Dallas said he鈥檒l run again. GromerJeffers with The Dallas Morning News sat down to talk about local politics in this week鈥檚 Friday Conversation.
Interview Highlights: Gromer Jeffers鈥�
鈥n Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings鈥� decision to run for re-election:
鈥淗e actually considered just leaving it at one term. There were folks who didn鈥檛 want the chaos if he decided not to run again. He has all these projects out there that need to come to some sort of climax.
[Rawlings] will probably have one or two opponents, but he鈥檒l have all the money, all the resources, and it will be extremely difficult for an opponent to mount some sort of campaign.鈥�
鈥n the significance of Susan Hawk鈥檚 win over Craig Watkins:
鈥淚f you look at the others on the ballot, every other Democrat won comfortably. Craig Watkins collapsed. People were deselecting him on a straight-ticket ballot, which meant they voted for all the other Democrats but did not vote for him. He didn鈥檛 have any crossover appeal, he didn鈥檛 run a real campaign, he had no resources to reach voters in southern Dallas鈥檚 base. It was just a horrible campaign."
鈥n the future of the Dallas County political parties:
"For Democrats, Darlene Ewing has been chairwoman since 2005鈥� If Democrats can coalesce around a candidate, they鈥檒l be okay because what they have going for them is the demographics.
Wade Emmert, the local Republican Party chair, wants to replace Steve Munisteri, who will leave sometime next year. If [Emmert] leaves, Republicans will have to find another local party chairman and that could be difficult. They鈥檝e been losing a lot, so who wants to take over? It鈥檚 a tough job."
