|
Stan Aten
Michael Davis
David Tuthill
James Waghorne
| |
03/23/06 Barbara Mallory
Caraway - State Rep-Elect
DallasArena.com readers know I haven't always been a
big fan of Mr. or Mrs. Dwaine Caraway. I worked very hard to help Ed
Oakley defeat Dwaine when they ran to succeed Barbara on the city council from
District 6, which was configured much differently than the current District 6.
|
During redistricting, the late Joe May and Mad Max Aaronson drew both Ed Oakley
and Dwaine Caraway out of District 6. Ed was drawn into District 3 and had
to run for a different district than the one he was elected to represent.
From that point on, the only part of District 6 that had representation at City
Hall was the small section that was drawn into District 3. Caraway was
drawn into District 4, which has been misrepresented for the past several years
by Brain-Dead Maxine Thornton-Reese. |
|
|
3/23 Bob Hosea:
I still have my large Dwaine button and T-Shirt. I liked
Dwaine. As a potential constituent, I
went over and spoke with him and his opponent
on separate occasions. It took all of 4 seconds to pick Dwaine.
He took me over to see the
changes to Cedar Crest Clubhouse while
it was under construction. A change for the
good.
I met Barbara at that time. She
impressed me as a very literate speaker who could articulate her ideas
-- much unlike her political enemies.
I saw how the ballots were
handled on election night and am unconvinced Dwaine
really lost. I wish him well. |
|
Dwaine and I have become friends. I have a soft spot for people who
refuse to quit, who bounce back after disappointment and who get stuff done.
Dwaine and Barbara Caraway are not quitters.
Dwaine lost a heartbreaker to Ed Oakley in a runoff. Ironically, Ed's
winning margin came from Northwest Dallas neighborhoods, most of which were
drawn out of District 6 by Joe May because they were too White.
Dwaine has since run twice unsuccessfully against Councilwoman T-Reese, and he's
going to run for the seat again May, 2007 when she's termed out. I
sincerely hope he wins because Dallas needs his energy and stamina.
He's done more for South Dallas than any elected official. I'm going to
take a little credit for some of the Caraway's recent successes because they
have been accomplished with their new community partner, Michael Davis (DallasArena.com
contributor). When others were advising Michael to avoid Dwaine and
Barbara, I urged him to give them a second look.
It has been a great partnership. Michael is just indefatigable. He
probably only sleeps every other night.
Dwaine and Barbara and their associates have worked tirelessly to shut down the
hot-sheet motels in the Scyene area. It's been a real Don Quixote effort,
and exactly the kind of project that Michael Davis loves to take on.
Once Dwaine and Michael teamed up, things really came together on several
fronts. Just this week, they got the American Inn closed.
Michael was part of Barbara's army that helped her unseat a 7-term incumbent,
but that doesn't mean the victory was not Barbara's. She ran that campaign
much like her city council campaign that unseated Councilwoman Mattie Nash.
She did it by walking door-to-door -- again. Once again, she bucked the
Black establishment, and she won.
 |
Butt Naked; Jesse
Jones, emperor of Singing Hills, had no clothes, it seems
By
Jim Schutze Article Published Mar 23, 2006 |
To the extent black Dallas is southern Dallas--and I'm not sure how
much water that cliché still holds--then black Dallas wants to be known as a
solid bloc these days.
I see a crack.
Southern Dallas did defeat two recent
ballot propositions for so-called "strong mayor" reforms at City Hall. In
the March 7 Democratic primary, southern Dallas did make Craig Watkins the
Democratic nominee in the race for district attorney. But those elections
had a lot to do with solidarity against people perceived as invaders from
the north.
What happens when there are no
blue-bellies at the gates? How solid is the bloc, and how strong a hold on
southern Dallas voters does the traditional southern Dallas leadership hold?
Judging by the District 110 Texas House race, I'd say less than it thinks,
less than it used to.
In that contest Barbara Mallory
Caraway should have gotten her butt kicked up one side of the block and down
the other, and Jesse Jones, the seven-term incumbent backed by virtually all
of southern Dallas political royalty, should have trotted into office on
palm leaves.
But it was Jones' well-financed,
heavily endorsed butt that took the kicking. Caraway won against the solon
of Singing Hills, the well-off African-American neighborhood near Loop 12
(Ledbetter Drive) and Interstate 35.
And that was in spite of Dallas
County Commissioner John Wiley Price, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk and state
Senator Royce West on black radio every few seconds hectoring everybody to
go be good Democrats and send Dr. Jones back to Austin for his eighth tour
of duty.
Caraway, a 49-year-old former Dallas
City Council member, fooled them all when she beat Jones, a 74-year-old
professor of chemistry at Baylor University in Waco. She beat him by only 78
votes, but only 4,598 people voted, less than 5 percent of the district's
voting-age population.
... An incumbent Democrat in Dallas is like
the director's son at the all-girl's camp--handsome and flawless by
definition.
It's the main reason he was supported
by the holy trinity of Dallas black politics, Kirk, Price and West. I wasn't
able to reach West, but I think he's actually busy.
"He is an incumbent," Kirk told me,
"and he's a good friend. I think he has very well and
honorably represented that district.
... Price said: "Dr. Jones has been a good
soldier. There was no reason to be against him. He carried legislation for
Dallas County. How do you go against somebody who has been a good soldier?
It's not as if any of them have been kicking up any dust down there in the
Legislature."
... The western end of Caraway country is poor and
rough, similar to the poorer parts of Old South Dallas below Fair Park. By
the time you get across Kiest Boulevard things are definitely looking up.
Finally you arrive at the area around
the Cedar Crest Municipal Golf Course, and now you're looking at a
neighborhood on the verge of better days. The houses here were built from
the mid-1950s to the early '80s. They range in size from 1,700 square feet
to 4,000 and in value from $100,000 to $300,000.
The more important thing is what you
see with your eyes: Up and down these streets are signs of recent
renovation, new landscaping and investment--the unmistakable signs of
improvement ahead, especially given what's going on in the rest of the city.
It's too good a buy.
At the center of this area, like a
castle on the hill, is the city's $2.2 million Cedar Crest Clubhouse, opened
in 2001--the ruby in the tiara of the Cedar Crest municipal course, which
recently benefited from a $3 million makeover.
... The movement to renovate the golf course and
build the new clubhouse began when Barbara Mallory Caraway was on the
council and her husband was vice president of the park board. It was very
much their baby.
... The new clubhouse is an architectural homage
to the 1920s golf palace that once stood in its place. It serves as
community hall, wedding chapel, ballroom and all-around social center to the
surrounding area. And, I noticed, there sure were a lot of
prosperous-looking white boys out there on the links on a fine spring day.
If this was southern Dallas' secret for a while after the renovation, it
ain't a secret anymore.
... the Caraways are people who were able to bring
home some real bacon for the neighborhood.
"Barbara shouldn't have come within
1,000 votes of Dr. Jones," Dallas Plan Commission Chair Betty Culbreath told
me. "They want to try to make light of her winning by 70 votes, but, hell,
she shouldn't have come within 1,000 votes. The fact that she came up to him
and got 70 more was a yeoman of a job."
... Price and Kirk know why Caraway beat Jones. If
Ron Kirk is the reigning heavyweight champion of City Hall politics in
Dallas, John Wiley Price is the undisputed guru of precinct campaigning.
Price said Caraway won because "she campaigned."
... On the phone last week, I asked Price if it
was not a good sign, finally, that a door-knocking hard-campaigning
candidate could win an election in southern Dallas against an establishment
figure who can't behoove himself to hit a lick. All I could hear on the
other end was groaning and gnashing of teeth, which I took for agreement.
... |
This is a good day for Dallas,
and a bad day for the ODB. It's been a long time since John Wiley Price
was a man of the people of South Dallas or Oak Cliff. He's been ODB (Our
Downtown Betters) for a long time. He carries water for the ODB as much as
Con Jerk/Ron Kirk did as Mayor.
Even if we had not had a rapprochement, I would be thrilled with Barbara's
victory. It's always a good day when hard work and determination overcomes
a fat checkbook. Barbara did not win her campaign alone, no one ever does,
but she worked hard for almost two years to make this happen.
Dwaine has not stopped running for the city council, despite his set backs, and
he has not stopped working to improve his community while he's been campaigning.
As Schutze says, the Clubhouse at Cedar Crest has been a catalyst for
improvement in the surrounding neighborhood. As much as anyone else, I
criticized that expenditure as a conflict of interest for Dwaine as Vice Chair
of the Park Board. Obviously, I was wrong.
Another thorn in the Black establishment's side is Betty Culbreath. She's
going to run for Don Hill's seat, and I hope she wins.
 |
The price of loyalty;
By SCOTT FARWELL / The Dallas Morning
News
12:00 AM CST on Thursday, March 16, 2006 |
The first time she met Laura Miller,
Betty Culbreath threatened to throw her "skinny ass" out a second-story
window.
That was in
1991, when Ms. Culbreath was a political devotee of incendiary Dallas County
Commissioner John Wiley Price and Ms. Miller was a reporter pawing over his
personal life.
... Fifteen years later,
Ms. Culbreath is still cussing, and she's still unflinchingly loyal – but
today her allegiance runs to Ms. Miller, the Dallas mayor.
... Ms. Culbreath, 64, is the mayor's most
prominent – and virtually only public – black ally.
Last fall, Ms. Miller elevated her
former foe to chairwoman of the Plan Commission, the most powerful appointed
position in the city, an opening move in next spring's high-stakes citywide
election.
Ms. Miller will seek a second full
term as mayor. Ms. Culbreath plans to run for the seat being vacated by
council member Don Hill, one of 14 openings on the May 2007 ballot.
After 40 years of public life, Ms.
Culbreath is known best for building and burning bridges with Dallas' black
political leaders.
She worked under Mr. Price,
campaigned for City Council member James Fantroy and massaged the black body
politic with activist Diane Ragsdale.
Ms. Culbreath was the first black
chairwoman of the Plan Commission, the first black woman to lead the
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Board, and the first black,
nonphysician director of the Dallas County Health and Human Services
Department.
... "I'm not afraid to support the candidate of my
choice," she said. "I don't care if it's George Wallace. I stand on what I
believe to be right and what's in the best interests of the citizens of
Dallas. If I stand on it alone, that's fine."
... "I'm critical of a system that has made people
dependent on it. Every story I read about a refugee from New Orleans is a
woman with two or three babies and a fiancé ... all with different daddies.
They're making a mockery out of the word fiancé.
"We've got a system where this
government will give you a Section 8 voucher, a welfare check, a food stamp
card – and make you think that's the way you're supposed to live for the
rest of your life.
... Ms. Culbreath has campaigned for Democrats and
Republicans, liberals and conservatives, blacks and whites – Lyndon B.
Johnson, both Presidents Bush, Jesse Jackson, Steve Bartlett, Al Lipscomb
and now Laura Miller.
... Mr. Price, who once referred to Ms. Culbreath
as a mentor, snorted with contempt when asked whether he thinks his former
aide is ready to play in the big leagues.
... Last spring, Mr. Price turned his back on Ms.
Culbreath as she prayed before a Dallas County Commissioners Court meeting.
He said it was a gesture of disrespect.
... It wasn't the first time she blamed public
discord on discrimination. In 1988, Ms. Culbreath denounced her colleagues
on the North Central Texas Health Facilities Board as racists and sexists
before walking out of a meeting. She was angry about being passed over for
board president.
Two years later, she made a similar
claim during a debate on the Plan Commission when opponents said she was too
abrasive to lead. Ms. Culbreath dismissed the criticism as veiled racism.
Today, she says that she was wrong
and that politicians who claim racial bias actually betray the black
community.
... Ms. Culbreath said her loyalty to the mayor
will be a political liability during her expected City Council campaign next
spring. But she said it proves her central message to southern Dallas voters
– that she's a fearless and independent thinker. ... |
I was on the P&Z with Betty and
one of those who publicly opposed her being picked as chair. Once it was a
done deal, I walked up to her at the next meeting and told her I would not be
her enemy or try to undermine her. She accepted my hand. It took
awhile, but we became good friends and still are. Betty's not a quitter
either. She steps up the plate and takes the arrows and shots, and she
stands her ground.
Dallas needs people in public office who "can take a licking and keep on
ticking", like the old Timex watch commercials.
Dallas needs people in public office who aren't afraid to break some eggs to
make a better cake.
What we've been doing is not working. Single member districts under 14-1
have turned the city into little fiefdoms with out-going council members passing
on their seat to anointed heirs. Hopefully, Betty Culbreath and Dwaine
Caraway will break that cycle.
State Rep-Elect Barbara Mallory Caraway has already proved the Southern Sector
is ready for a change and tired of faux representation in Austin. Let's
hope the next council elections will show that part of town is ready for serious
representation at City Hall, too.
Come next Spring, the same trio who opposed Barbara (Con Jerk/Ron Kirk, State
Sen. Royce West and Commissioner John Price) will campaign against Betty
Culbreath. It will be interesting if Commissioner Price actually supports
Lynn Flynt Shaw over Betty considering his long-running feud with Lynn's
husband, Rufus Shaw.
Barbara Caraway knocked a big hole in the false power base of the Old Guard of
Black politicians (the water carriers for the ODB). The city needs for her
supporters to put the same energy into victories for Dwaine Caraway and Betty
Culbreath in 2007.
The Old Guard's gotten soft and greedy.
sb
| |
|
