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Speaker 1: sixty fifty five eight eight four three. Welcome. It is
Speaker 1: Verdict with Center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you, and
Speaker 1: right now I'm in New York City getting ready to
Speaker 1: host out Numbered on Fox News Channel.
Speaker 2: It is two a m.
Speaker 3: Center.
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz is in Texas right now where it is
Speaker 1: one am. He is traveling the state and we for
Speaker 1: the last hour have been trying to get a connection
Speaker 1: that was stable for us to do the podcast. This
Speaker 1: is what happens on a regular basis when he's on
Speaker 1: the road and I'm on the road. And tonight the
Speaker 1: internet won and we lost. So what does that mean, Well,
Speaker 1: it means that the Senator and I were chatting a
Speaker 1: moment ago on the phone about all right, what do
Speaker 1: we do now. There was an interview that we did
Speaker 1: with Eric Johnson and his incredible story being an African
Speaker 1: American Democrat who switched to the Republican Party. In fact,
Speaker 1: when we did this interview, it was the most listened
Speaker 1: to episode of the month, the month of this came
Speaker 1: out and it was one that went viral. So many
Speaker 1: people were inspired by this story of Eric Johnson and
Speaker 1: the bravery of switching from the Democratic Party to the
Speaker 1: Republican Party and talking about his life being the sixtieth
Speaker 1: mayor of Dallas. We've decided we were going to replay
Speaker 1: that for you now and the Senat and I were
Speaker 1: going to be back with you on Friday as normal.
Speaker 1: We did everything we could, I want to tell you
Speaker 1: the last hour and dealing with it and tech sport,
Speaker 1: everything we could to try to get a connection to record,
Speaker 1: and it just didn't work. So what we're going to
Speaker 1: do instead is we're gonna let you hear that interview.
Speaker 1: If you missed it, we really want you to hear
Speaker 1: it because it was an incredible interview. It was a
Speaker 1: great conversation. And also please share it on social media.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast, is also out.
Speaker 1: I will give you an update on the latest breaking news,
Speaker 1: so if you're looking for that as well, today download
Speaker 1: my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast. It is done and
Speaker 1: you can hear that on those in between days when
Speaker 1: we don't put out vertic. You can grab the Ben
Speaker 1: Ferguson podcasts as well. So, like I said, here is
Speaker 1: our conversation with the Mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson in
Speaker 1: the center. I will see you back here on Friday
Speaker 1: with all the latest breaking news.
Speaker 2: Do not worry well.
Speaker 4: I am incredibly proud to welcome onto the Verdict podcast
Speaker 4: a good friend of mine, the sixtieth mayor of the
Speaker 4: City of Dallas, the current sitting mayor, Eric Johnson, and
Speaker 4: I want Eric welcome.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here, so thanks.
Speaker 2: For having me.
Speaker 4: Now I want to tell our podcast listeners some of
Speaker 4: Eric's background, because many of you may know him, but
Speaker 4: some of you may not. Eric is the current mayor
Speaker 4: of Dallas. Eric was He went to Harvard College, he
Speaker 4: went to University of Pennsylvania Law School. He got a
Speaker 4: master's from mi alma mater, Princeton, UH. He was elected
Speaker 4: to the Texas State Legislature and he was an elected
Speaker 4: Democrat in the state legislature.
Speaker 2: And Eric is African American.
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 2: It's an audio show, so I so one.
Speaker 3: Has to paint the picture.
Speaker 4: And then Eric was elected mayor of the City of
Speaker 4: Dallas again as a Democrat. And then he was just
Speaker 4: recently re elected mayor of the city of da He
Speaker 4: was re elected with ninety three percent of the vote
Speaker 4: in the City of Dallas.
Speaker 3: Technically ninety eight point seven, but i'll take ninety three.
Speaker 3: We'll take ninety three.
Speaker 4: And then after his reelection, Eric announced to the city
Speaker 4: of Dallas in the world that he was switching parties
Speaker 4: and he left the Democrat Party and he became a Republican.
Speaker 2: And it was.
Speaker 4: A decision that those of us who knew him and
Speaker 4: had worked with him, I have to say I was
Speaker 4: not shocked or surprised, but it did shock and surprise
Speaker 4: a lot of people. And so Eric is I think,
Speaker 4: a very important leader in Texas and a very important
Speaker 4: leader in the country. And so Eric, I appreciate your
Speaker 4: coming and joining us this evening and being a guest
Speaker 4: on Verdict.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: This is a real honor to be here. Thank you
Speaker 3: for the invitation, and great to see all of you.
Speaker 4: All Right, So you go to the Texas State Legislature,
Speaker 4: you get elected mayor of Dallas, You get re elected
Speaker 4: mayor of Dallas. This entire time you've been an elected
Speaker 4: Democrat and there's an elected Democrat, there's an ecosphere around you.
Speaker 4: You've got donors, you've got volunteers, you've got supporters. Walk
Speaker 4: us through your decision making, because switching party is a
Speaker 4: big deal and and I know you didn't make that
Speaker 4: decision lightly, so so what led you to change parties?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I don't know how how deep
Speaker 3: we can dive into this guy.
Speaker 4: Was exactly the joy of a podcast, as we can
Speaker 4: go as deep as you want. And that's that's actually
Speaker 4: what's fun That we're not on TV with a six
Speaker 4: minute sound bite.
Speaker 2: We can actually get about what's really going on.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what I wanted to know, because unfortunately, because
Speaker 3: of the structure of the traditional media, you really have
Speaker 3: to sort of hit that question quick and then get
Speaker 3: out of it. And you don't really get to give
Speaker 3: a full answer to that because it's because it's way
Speaker 3: more complicated than you know. There was this one thing
Speaker 3: that happened and I just said, I'm out of here.
Speaker 3: It's an evolution for me and just kind of coming
Speaker 3: to accept who I have always been and why I've
Speaker 3: struggled as a Democrat the whole time.
Speaker 1: Was it the issues that made you think about becoming
Speaker 1: a Republican.
Speaker 3: The issues were a manifestation, a policy manifestation of problems
Speaker 3: I had been having with the Democratic Party because of
Speaker 3: who I am as a person for a long time.
Speaker 3: So I'll give you, I'll give you some idea what
Speaker 3: I'm talking about. I was born in West Dallas, very
Speaker 3: poor community, to working class parents who never went to college,
Speaker 3: but you know, got married right out of high school,
Speaker 3: still married to this day, raised four of us. And
Speaker 3: I was raised in a community that was very and
Speaker 3: in a family that was very, very faith oriented. The
Speaker 3: church was hugely important to us. I mean, grew up,
Speaker 3: I spent more time in church than really any place else.
Speaker 3: We'd go to church Sunday morning, stay almost all day,
Speaker 3: go home for just a couple hours, and come back
Speaker 3: for Sunday evening. We'd go to Bible class. On Wednesday,
Speaker 3: we'd have you know, I wasn't in the choir, I
Speaker 3: couldn't sing, but you know, we had song practice and
Speaker 3: things like that. So I spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: in the church, spent a lot of time with grandparents
Speaker 3: who were very, very very about the Church of Christ.
Speaker 3: And that's how that's the tradition I was raised in.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: We were sort of taught and it was separate apart
Speaker 3: from anything political. My family wasn't political at all. No
Speaker 3: politicians in the family. I'm not even sure we had
Speaker 3: a real awareness of what was going on around us politically,
Speaker 3: but a very strong sense of just right wrong. You know,
Speaker 3: this is how you treat people, this is how you
Speaker 3: behave you follow the law, you obey the law, you
Speaker 3: work hard, you you know, an honest day's work, honest
Speaker 3: day's pay. That is sort of that was just always
Speaker 3: in the background. And so I think I was always
Speaker 3: politically in a weird posture with the Democratic Party because
Speaker 3: at its core, and I didn't understand this at the
Speaker 3: very beginning. Because and I hope we can actually get
Speaker 3: to this and talk about this, there are some you
Speaker 3: sort of inherit the Democratic Party as a cultural heirloom
Speaker 3: when you're African American in this country. Yeah, this sort
Speaker 3: of gets handed to you as part of who you are.
Speaker 3: I probably had more phone call I know I had.
Speaker 3: I had more phone calls with people distraught about this
Speaker 3: party switch than I ever would have gotten if I
Speaker 3: had told people that I was actually leaving the church.
Speaker 3: There's no question about it. Wow, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: I will say that loudly and on the record. I
Speaker 3: had more panicked phone calls from people genuinely concerned about
Speaker 3: what I was doing and why I could do how
Speaker 3: I could do this, then I would have gotten if
Speaker 3: I'd said, I just don't think I'm into this Jesus
Speaker 3: thing anymore like this, don't think I'm not a Baptist,
Speaker 3: or I'm not a Church of pristper or I'm not.
Speaker 3: I don't think I would have had anywhere near the
Speaker 3: same reaction. It's that cultural.
Speaker 2: How intense was that?
Speaker 3: Was it?
Speaker 1: Family?
Speaker 2: Was it friends?
Speaker 3: It was? It was a lot of consternation. The family
Speaker 3: and friends was well meaning, but I think a lot
Speaker 3: of other folks it was just, you know, we have
Speaker 3: to we have to take this guy down now. And
Speaker 3: it got it was it got to be pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: This the traditional standard partisan warfare stuff. But kind of
Speaker 3: going back to what I was, and I said, I
Speaker 3: want to know how deep we could go, because this
Speaker 3: is actually pretty I haven't had a chance to talk
Speaker 3: about this with anybody. The fit was almost in some
Speaker 3: ways inevitable. It was going to there was gonna be
Speaker 3: a problem because at the Democratic Party's core. Who I
Speaker 3: was saying is a belief that how things turn out
Speaker 3: for you in this country are largely determined by things
Speaker 3: that are outside of your control. The race you're born,
Speaker 3: the neighborhood you're born in. It just kind of it
Speaker 3: excuses away your failures, and it excuses away your success
Speaker 3: is to something that's out of your control. If you're
Speaker 3: successful and you're white and males, because of course you are,
Speaker 3: and if you're unsuccessful as an African American, it's well,
Speaker 3: the deck was stacked against you. And I just wasn't
Speaker 3: a person who ever believed that, and that wasn't how
Speaker 3: I was raised and it's not how I was taught,
Speaker 3: but it was the overarching political philosophy of my party.
Speaker 3: And there was always just that tension between wanting to
Speaker 3: tell people, hey, this actually is a country where anything
Speaker 3: you want to do you can do. And I'm living
Speaker 3: proof of it, yep, Because at every turn, if I
Speaker 3: put the work in, I was told repeatedly, over and
Speaker 3: over by people who didn't look like me, who didn't
Speaker 3: come from my community, were proud of you. We'd like
Speaker 3: to give you more opportunity. I was having doors slammed
Speaker 3: in my face. The harder I pushed, I was having
Speaker 3: more of them given to me. So the story of
Speaker 3: my life and then the rhetoric that my party wanted
Speaker 3: me to put out there as the justification for what
Speaker 3: we were doing politically just never really matched.
Speaker 4: Because I've always thought one of the most important differences
Speaker 4: between the parties is that the Republican Party believes in
Speaker 4: individual responsibility and believes in merit and a meritocracy. Now
Speaker 4: that's not to say that there aren't things that are unfair,
Speaker 4: but in the reason people come from all over the
Speaker 4: world to America is there's no country on Earth where
Speaker 4: people can achieve their dreams the way you can hear
Speaker 4: and you know, and I do think a lot of
Speaker 4: the a lot of the Democrat Party is there. The
Speaker 4: ideology in today's Democrat Party is about eliminating individual responsibility
Speaker 4: and eliminating merit. And I think about you're a black man,
Speaker 4: I'm an Hispanic man. I think about what my father
Speaker 4: said to me when I was a kid about racism.
Speaker 2: And my dad, you.
Speaker 4: Know, as you know, he came from Cuba as an immigrant.
Speaker 4: And my dad said when he came out of University
Speaker 4: of Texas in nineteen sixty one, and my father said, look,
Speaker 4: I'm obviously an immigrant. My father had had and still
Speaker 4: has a very heavy Spanish accent, you know my dad,
Speaker 4: And he said, listen, if I'm applying for a job
Speaker 4: and I'm applying against an American and we're equally qualified,
Speaker 4: my dad said, you know what, they'll hire the American. Now,
Speaker 4: my father wasn't particularly outraged at that. He said, you
Speaker 4: know what, in Cuba, they'd hire me. That's just kind
Speaker 4: of human nature, that's the way people often behave. And
Speaker 4: my father's answer to that, he said, I'm just going
Speaker 4: to be three times as good as the other guy.
Speaker 2: I'll make it so.
Speaker 4: You'd have to be a blithering idiot to hire the
Speaker 4: other And when you take individual responsibility, and it's not
Speaker 4: to say racism doesn't exist, racism absolutely exists, but how
Speaker 4: you respond in the face of adversity. And I think
Speaker 4: the the the principle of work harder, be better, be
Speaker 4: more excellent.
Speaker 2: I think that is a path that every one.
Speaker 4: Of us think about what you teach your kids.
Speaker 3: That's if you don't mind, please, I'll jump in here
Speaker 3: and say this because there's so much that I could
Speaker 3: say about this and again, this is the slow burn
Speaker 3: over a career. But there's the specific policy things that
Speaker 3: came about as the mayor that made this decision something
Speaker 3: that needed to happen and something that became much more
Speaker 3: urgent for me. But while we're talking about sort of
Speaker 3: the underpinnings of this, and you talk about what you
Speaker 3: teach your children, that's really kind of the point in
Speaker 3: terms of the problem that I have with the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party's philosophy on this particular issue is you have to decide,
Speaker 3: one way or the other, what you're going to tell
Speaker 3: a generation of African American kids or kids who are
Speaker 3: growing up in tough circumstances. Are you going to tell
Speaker 3: them that your country doesn't work for you. Doesn't really
Speaker 3: matter what you do, it doesn't work for you. It's
Speaker 3: not built for you, it's not designed for you. The
Speaker 3: system is stacked against you. And just hope that they
Speaker 3: don't turn to crime or turn to other things because
Speaker 3: you've told them that essentially that's fine, that's okay, because
Speaker 3: there's no way you could do the things you'd like
Speaker 3: to do legitimately. You can't get where you want to
Speaker 3: go legitimately anyway. The deck stacked against you. Or do
Speaker 3: you want to tell them the truth, which is the
Speaker 3: system that we have is the best on earth for
Speaker 3: translating people's hard work and effort into tangible increases and
Speaker 3: improvements in their life's circumstances. It just is. And I've
Speaker 3: told old my liberal friends for many years, even before
Speaker 3: I switch parties, I said, for the ones who go
Speaker 3: around sort of bashing the country, I say, guys, if
Speaker 3: there was a place on earth where they did it better,
Speaker 3: where they really did convert your effort and your work
Speaker 3: into benefits better, why don't you live and raise your
Speaker 3: don't you owe it to your children to raise them there?
Speaker 3: If you really believe there's a place that's doing it better.
Speaker 3: And they don't believe that. It's rhetoric, but it's rhetoric
Speaker 3: with the purpose. And this is kind of where being
Speaker 3: a part of the party for so long and understanding
Speaker 3: sort of the you know, the thought behind the strategy.
Speaker 3: Really it's strategy. How do you how do you convince
Speaker 3: large swaths of people, large groups that are just really
Speaker 3: holding themselves together by identity, politics, race, or how do
Speaker 3: you convince them to give their loyalty so completely to
Speaker 3: a political party? If you can't convince them first that
Speaker 3: they really need this political party to help them overcome
Speaker 3: these horrible flaws in the system.
Speaker 4: So basically this well, the Democrat Party, I think is
Speaker 4: is vested in selling dependency.
Speaker 3: Correct. And there's no question.
Speaker 4: Example I've used also in my family, you know, with
Speaker 4: my dad in nineteen fifty seven, when he showed up
Speaker 4: in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 2: He couldn't speak English, and so.
Speaker 4: The first job he had was washing dishes, and he
Speaker 4: made fifty cents an hour. And I've said a lot
Speaker 4: of times, thank god some well meaning liberal didn't come
Speaker 4: along and put his arm around him and say, Ralphiel,
Speaker 4: let me take care of you. Let me give you
Speaker 4: a government check, let me make you dependent on the government.
Speaker 4: You don't need to work anymore, you don't need to
Speaker 4: be responsible for your life. I'm going to take care
Speaker 4: of you. That would have been utterly destructive. It would
Speaker 4: have been the worst thing you could have done to him.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: And it's you know, we're talking about what you teach
Speaker 4: your kids. You know, you think about it. If you
Speaker 4: have a kid in kindergartener first grade who'struggling with how
Speaker 4: many of us will do your kids homework? None of
Speaker 4: us will, because doing your kid's homework is not helping
Speaker 4: the kid. Now, you may, you may work with the kid,
Speaker 4: you may get a tutor with the kid. You may
Speaker 4: walk through and say if you having problems with But
Speaker 4: you understand, you know, you and I are both fathers.
Speaker 4: Uh Ben, You're a father, You understand when you're when
Speaker 4: you're raising your kids, they need to learn those skills
Speaker 4: and if someone else does it for them, it doesn't
Speaker 4: help our children. That same thing is true for all of.
Speaker 3: Us, Absolutely true. I had a conversation with one of
Speaker 3: your colleagues, Senator Scott, when he was through Dallas a
Speaker 3: few months ago, and we had a private lunch and
Speaker 3: one of the things that we talked about, and I
Speaker 3: said to him that resonate with him because he also,
Speaker 3: you know, believes this is absolutely the.
Speaker 2: Case, and it's right Him's a great guy.
Speaker 3: It's right in line with what we're talking about right now.
Speaker 3: I said, Tim, do you agree that there's really nobody
Speaker 3: in our community who's achieved a high degree of success
Speaker 3: who actually did it using anything other than conservative principles
Speaker 3: as applied to their life. I go, but why do
Speaker 3: so many of us when we get to that level
Speaker 3: of success with these principles, pretend like it's something else
Speaker 3: that got us there. It was working hard, staying out
Speaker 3: of trouble, persevering when other people had given up, and
Speaker 3: basically playing by the rules what we called it, that
Speaker 3: got you there. But you get there and then you
Speaker 3: pretend like you know, those aren't essential values and success.
Speaker 3: And I told him, I said, here's why I think
Speaker 3: that happens, because there's a price to pay socially in
Speaker 3: terms of being accepted if you don't pretend like you
Speaker 3: don't know what you know and you don't sort of
Speaker 3: excuse the things that we were talking about. In other words,
Speaker 3: long story short is every successful African American in this
Speaker 3: country basically got to be successful by working hard and
Speaker 3: doing what they're supposed to do. But they don't want
Speaker 3: to be once they've achieved that level of success not
Speaker 3: accepted by the community at large and appear to be
Speaker 3: out of touch, and so they pretend like they don't
Speaker 3: know the formula. They don't know the winning formula. I
Speaker 3: just think we need to be more honest about what
Speaker 3: the winning formula is. And the winning formula ends up
Speaker 3: being exactly what the conservative ideology would tell you. It
Speaker 3: has to do with taking upon yourself the responsibility for
Speaker 3: yourself and not believing that the Democratic Party or any
Speaker 3: party is there to save you. And the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: wants you to believe they do. They want you to
Speaker 3: believe you can't get there without them, which you.
Speaker 4: Know, there's an old saying that every time I see
Speaker 4: luck luck, it looks amazingly like hard work.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's very true. It's very true. So now to
Speaker 3: the policy things. So this is you know, so I'm
Speaker 3: bumping if anybody who's I don't presume that anyone in
Speaker 3: this room has followed my you know, my relatively insignificant
Speaker 3: legislative career, but it was marked with just fighting with
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party about various issues, and we're just bumping
Speaker 3: heads the whole way.
Speaker 4: Well, as mayor, you showed enormous courage. So there were
Speaker 4: Democrats on the City Council pushing with the radical left
Speaker 4: movement to defund or to abolish the police, and you
Speaker 4: were a fellow Democrat at the time, and you stood
Speaker 4: up and fought them, and that that that's when you
Speaker 4: and I first got to know each Other's when you
Speaker 4: were newly elected and I came by your office.
Speaker 2: I wanted to meet you, and we worked.
Speaker 4: Together closely, but the courage you showed fighting for the
Speaker 4: people of Dallas really stood out early on in your.
Speaker 3: Tam Well, I appreciate you saying that, and I was
Speaker 3: going to get to that eventually about how we met
Speaker 3: and about what the you know, what we've been doing
Speaker 3: for the past five years. I've been mayor, but in
Speaker 3: the legislature, even when I was part of a partisan caucus,
Speaker 3: I was a terrible by the Democratic Party's own. Once
Speaker 3: I left the party, they were honest. Their statements are
Speaker 3: very interesting. If you read the statements with the state Party,
Speaker 3: they all say some pretty interesting things like he was
Speaker 3: always a terrible Democrat, good riddens were glad he's gone.
Speaker 3: It's like, I'm not sure they understood what they were
Speaker 3: admitting to. It's like, you know, but they acknowledged that
Speaker 3: it was always a bad fit. But what they're really
Speaker 3: talking about is when I would be honest about voter fraud. Well,
Speaker 3: the voter fraud that happens in our large cities in
Speaker 3: Texas that I'm aware of, but I've seen it happening
Speaker 3: to me in my own races. I'm like these there
Speaker 3: are people who are outright stealing the votes of the elderly.
Speaker 2: As a period, elaborate on that a little bit.
Speaker 3: I came out very vocally and upset the party by
Speaker 3: saying that there is a systematic in the large urban
Speaker 3: cities like Dallas, Absentee or you know, ballad arvesting operation
Speaker 3: where people are going to old folks homes and taking
Speaker 3: ballots out of their mailboxes and voting these ballots for
Speaker 3: these people, or going and collecting ballots from these folks,
Speaker 3: and if they don't like the way the vote was
Speaker 3: already cast, it goes into garbage. And I said that
Speaker 3: that that kind of thing is wrong, and it upset
Speaker 3: people and upset people in the party when I spoke
Speaker 3: out against corruption in the party. And so I started
Speaker 3: off in a posture with the party that was already
Speaker 3: a little bit antagonistic, and it's got worse and worse.
Speaker 3: So this is the slow burn. Well, now I've become
Speaker 3: the mayor and my whole job changes. I'm not a
Speaker 3: part of some legislative caucus where I'm just sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, having to be a good team player. I'm
Speaker 3: responsible for people's lives, like I'm responsible for making the
Speaker 3: call to keep people alive and make sure that my
Speaker 3: city is you know, people are safe there and so
Speaker 3: oh it's supposed to it should. Once you've been given
Speaker 3: that kind of responsibility, it should change you, like you
Speaker 3: should look at things differently. And sure enough, I get
Speaker 3: tested pretty early on with this to fund the police thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I'm just going to break it down for about
Speaker 3: what the choice became very simple.
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Speaker 1: you guys for getting involved. Here's some people know that
Speaker 1: listening around the county because I think it's an important point.
Speaker 1: The defund the police movement that was rolled out nationwide.
Speaker 1: They wanted it to be successful in big cities. Dallas
Speaker 1: was one of them. This was a lot of outside
Speaker 1: pressure as well, from coming from outside of Dallas where
Speaker 1: they were organizing.
Speaker 3: What happened I've never seen since they didn't even live
Speaker 3: in I don't even know where. They don't even show.
Speaker 3: It was a national it was a national campaign with
Speaker 3: people who were you know, rent a protester types, I guess.
Speaker 3: But here's my point. It's absolutely true there was a
Speaker 3: national movement. But the choice was pretty clear. If you
Speaker 3: were a mayor of a major American city, and more
Speaker 3: than likely you were a Democrat, then because I think
Speaker 3: the number is roughly seventy five percent of the top
Speaker 3: one hundred seas in America are run by Democrats, and
Speaker 3: every mayor in the top ten before me it was
Speaker 3: a Democrat, you really had two choices go along with
Speaker 3: to defund the police idea, because that's where the left was,
Speaker 3: that's where the activists were, That's where the pressure was,
Speaker 3: was to defund and defund men anything from like what
Speaker 3: they did here in Austin, a forty percent across the
Speaker 3: board cut to your police department for no reason, not
Speaker 3: based on any fact, just because some activists decided that
Speaker 3: sound like a good number. The proposal in Dallas was
Speaker 3: sixty that's what they wanted in Dallas sixty percent. You
Speaker 3: can either do that and be a good Democrat and
Speaker 3: people to leave you alone, or you could be a
Speaker 3: sellout and a bad Democrat and not do it and
Speaker 3: incur the ire. You're looking at the one Democratic mayor
Speaker 3: that I'm aware of in the United States who said
Speaker 3: I'm not doing that. And the result and this is,
Speaker 3: like I said, when we started to get close closer,
Speaker 3: I mean, the result was protests for weeks on end
Speaker 3: at night against Dallas City ordinances with amplification and bullhorns
Speaker 3: and all stuff, against Dalla City ordinances, standing on my
Speaker 3: private property, not on the street in an acceptable protest perimeter,
Speaker 3: but like on the grass, looking in the windows with
Speaker 3: two little children and a wife, like intentionally trying to
Speaker 3: intimidate me into changing my position to defund the police.
Speaker 3: And I never caved, even though it was horrible, horrible,
Speaker 3: horrible from my family. And that is when I really
Speaker 3: start to understand this isn't the fringe anymore of the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party. This is the Democratic Party. Like this is
Speaker 3: where we are on public safety as the Democratic Party now.
Speaker 3: And if you actually believe in law and order and
Speaker 3: making sure that people are safe, then there is no
Speaker 3: more part of the Democratic Party that is with you
Speaker 3: on that, because I'm looking for those people. I'm waiting
Speaker 3: for the phone calls from just one, for just one
Speaker 3: Democratic congress person or one Democratic officeholder to say we're
Speaker 3: with you. You know you're doing the right thing, and
Speaker 3: here's the truth. And I've never said this public but
Speaker 3: i'll say it now. The only calls I got during
Speaker 3: that entire time saying hold the line, keep your people safe,
Speaker 3: you're doing a good job. We're from Republicans and I
Speaker 3: was a Democrat as far as they knew, and there
Speaker 3: was no you, There's no there was no reason other
Speaker 3: than it's the right thing to do what you're doing,
Speaker 3: and we won't let you know that. There was nothing
Speaker 3: to be gained politically from you standing with me publicly
Speaker 3: and saying this is the right thing to do. Greg
Speaker 3: Abbott did it, You did it, Dan Patrick did it.
Speaker 3: A lot of people just said that mayor's doing the
Speaker 3: right thing. And so Democrats, I saw at that point
Speaker 3: were pretty lost on the public safety issue. But then
Speaker 3: on top of that, I started to see and I
Speaker 3: didn't have this responsibility as a legislator and I got it.
Speaker 3: As the mayor, I have to protect people's incomes and
Speaker 3: make sure people can actually afford to live in this
Speaker 3: city because we are bleeding residents to lower tax jurisdictions.
Speaker 3: So I started to really dig into our tech policy
Speaker 3: and saying, you know, what are we doing to help
Speaker 3: our residents be able to live here, have businesses here,
Speaker 3: and be competitive with our local you know, our competitors.
Speaker 3: And it turns out that we were doing a pretty
Speaker 3: bad job of actually even making an attempt to protect
Speaker 3: our taxpayers. We had the highest tax rate in Dallas
Speaker 3: of any of the cities in the area, and we
Speaker 3: have the second highest of any major city in the state,
Speaker 3: and so I really wanted to change that. The resistance
Speaker 3: that I got from the left leaning members of our
Speaker 3: council was incredible, and the way the argument was couched,
Speaker 3: and the way the strategy is to couch any effort
Speaker 3: to rein in spending at all, even to hold it
Speaker 3: steady from your to year, is being heartless and not
Speaker 3: caring about people. That resonated with me because I realized
Speaker 3: now that's actually been what the Democratic Party has been
Speaker 3: about all along, and what I've sort of been an
Speaker 3: unwitting accessory to which is painting people who just want
Speaker 3: to leave people alone or leave people with more of
Speaker 3: their income, people do what they want to do for
Speaker 3: their families, supposed to taking it from them and spending
Speaker 3: it on things they never asked for in the first place,
Speaker 3: primarily so that politicians can have something to campaign on.
Speaker 3: They perfected the art of making anyone who was opposed
Speaker 3: to that seem like they were against the people they
Speaker 3: were trying to help.
Speaker 2: Them, that they demonized you, they attack personally.
Speaker 3: And so I became heartless. I became someone who didn't
Speaker 3: care about people. I'll give you an example of just
Speaker 3: last week. I'm in a I'm in the minority. I'm
Speaker 3: in a twelve to three minority vote that I lost
Speaker 3: on my city council last week because I voted against
Speaker 3: us appropriating almost three quarters of a million dollars to
Speaker 3: make sure that anybody in Dallas who needs tampons or
Speaker 3: other femine hygiene products could have them from the City
Speaker 3: of Dallas. I said, I don't know why on earth
Speaker 3: we think that is something that we ought to be
Speaker 3: doing as a city with people's tax dollars. Well, there's
Speaker 3: three hundred more programs just like that, and when you
Speaker 3: add them all together, that's how you end up with
Speaker 3: a budget that grows year after year after year. We've
Speaker 3: gotten into more and more things that we don't need
Speaker 3: to be into, and so I said, I'm in the
Speaker 3: wrong party of public safety for sure, but I'm also
Speaker 3: not really into this hole. Just tax people to death
Speaker 3: so you can do all this liberal experimentation and so on.
Speaker 3: The matter, on the issues that were most important as
Speaker 3: a mayor and that were most important in my family,
Speaker 3: the Democratic parties was battened a goose egg on those issues,
Speaker 3: and I started to think, there really is very little
Speaker 3: reason why a person who is a common sense, fiscally
Speaker 3: responsible person ought to be voting Democrats, particularly at the
Speaker 3: local level, unless there's some sort of social reason that
Speaker 3: you just can't give up where you need to be
Speaker 3: accepted by your friends and family, and I just don't
Speaker 3: have that. I don't have that need.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about that a little more.
Speaker 4: But I will say one of the greatest ironies is
Speaker 4: the rhetoric that the left uses in support of their
Speaker 4: policies I think is one hundred and eighty degrees opposite reality. So,
Speaker 4: for example, the effort to defund the police is advanced
Speaker 4: by movements and activists and billionaire donors who are embracing
Speaker 4: the slogan black Lives Matter. Now as a statement, black
Speaker 4: lives matter is unequivocally, absolutely true, but the undeniable fact
Speaker 4: is that when you defund the police, inevitably more African
Speaker 4: Americans are more Black lives are lost because for a
Speaker 4: great many of our African American citizens and our Hispanic citizens,
Speaker 4: they live in in more low income neighbor neighborhoods that
Speaker 4: are that are more subject to crime. And when you
Speaker 4: pull law enforcement out, you know, we're we're at a
Speaker 4: dinner right now. I guarantee you anyone here if we
Speaker 4: told you, hey, we're gonna pull the cops out of
Speaker 4: your neighborhood, everyone here would say no, no, that's a terrible idea.
Speaker 4: But yet we see these left wing activists, in the
Speaker 4: name of a slogan black Lives Matter, removing police protections
Speaker 4: from vulnerable black families, and the result is far more
Speaker 4: African American murders, and yet they continue to embrace that
Speaker 4: same rheter.
Speaker 3: So I don't have to guess about it, because not
Speaker 3: only do I have the knowledge of being the mayor
Speaker 3: and knowing the crime statistics for my city. But I
Speaker 3: also have the the experience, the lived experience of growing
Speaker 3: up African American in Dallas in the very communities that
Speaker 3: we're talking about. So I am familiar with this issue
Speaker 3: is intimately as you can possibly be, both from sort
Speaker 3: of the policy making standpoint and just the life experience.
Speaker 3: And I can tell you I'm going to end the
Speaker 3: suspense for folks. I'm not guessing about it. I can
Speaker 3: speak on it with authority. And It's why the people
Speaker 3: I'm left or even they don't even challenge me on
Speaker 3: this because they know that I'm not only am I right,
Speaker 3: but that I have the credibility on that I got
Speaker 3: the street credit to speak on this. The Black Lives
Speaker 3: Matter thing and the defund the police thing are kind
Speaker 3: of issues that have been conflated, but the truth of the
Speaker 3: matter is is defund the police, for sure, was a
Speaker 3: construct of frankly white liberals who don't live in those
Speaker 3: communities at all yep, and was never asked for irrespective
Speaker 3: of their partipulation by African Americans who lived in crime
Speaker 3: ridden neighborhoods. Never African Americans never at any point said
Speaker 3: we want the police out of our communities. They said,
Speaker 3: we want more police than our communit. We want them
Speaker 3: to be well trained, we want them to know, we
Speaker 3: want we want to live in a safe community, and
Speaker 3: we believe the police are part of that. So it
Speaker 3: was never true to begin with. It was a political
Speaker 3: thing to begin with.
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Speaker 1: was the reaction of police officers when this was going down.
Speaker 1: I mean, we saw a lot of them were trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, be quiet, say the politics.
Speaker 3: But you were a Democrat.
Speaker 1: You have a large police force with a lot of
Speaker 1: minorities in it. What were they saying to you privately
Speaker 1: during that time?
Speaker 3: Well, I'll just I'll answer that one really quickly. Everybody
Speaker 3: I believe in law enforcement could not believe and was
Speaker 3: so relieved that they had the one person who in
Speaker 3: this role everywhere else in the country was caving who
Speaker 3: was standing up. They were very grateful and it's what
Speaker 3: earned me the just enduring support of law enforcement for
Speaker 3: my entire mayoralty because I stood by them. But I
Speaker 3: wasn't standing by them just to send a message. I
Speaker 3: was saying because it was absolutely what the city needed.
Speaker 3: Law enforcement hadn't done anything wrong where they deserved for
Speaker 3: that rhetoric to be thrown out around them, and having
Speaker 3: cutting sixty percent from a police department that's not trimming
Speaker 3: around the edges. That's salary and benefit, that's recruitment, that's
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a real that's putting them in more
Speaker 3: danger doing our aready a dangerous job, and so they
Speaker 3: really appreciated that. But I want to put a fine
Speaker 3: point in this issue with African American community when as
Speaker 3: it relates to public safety, because it relates to what
Speaker 3: I believe is part of why I think that this
Speaker 3: party switch to mind is not important because I switched part.
Speaker 3: It's a that's almost insignificant, But what it represents for
Speaker 3: the potentiality for this group of people who I honestly
Speaker 3: believe just have not had anybody come to them in
Speaker 3: a spirit of love and concern who's operating from within
Speaker 3: the community, not saying I sort of exist outside of it,
Speaker 3: and let me lecture you about what you should a
Speaker 3: acknowledged and accepted and proud member of it, saying, let
Speaker 3: me explain to you why we've been duped a little
Speaker 3: bit here and why what was once maybe a good
Speaker 3: idea or sounded like one has now actually been categorically
Speaker 3: proven to be a failed strategy.
Speaker 2: Me drill down on that a little bit. And this
Speaker 2: is just something that they're.
Speaker 3: Strong about, this one. This is a this is bigger, way,
Speaker 3: bigger than one guy switching. This ought to be about
Speaker 3: people going, why am I still a Democrat? If this
Speaker 3: is what I care about?
Speaker 4: You know well, and this is a theme you of
Speaker 4: referenced several times that I think is really important. I
Speaker 4: emphatically believe and I think you do as well, that
Speaker 4: the policies of the left, the policies of liberal Democrats,
Speaker 4: have been deeply harmful to the African American community, to
Speaker 4: the Hispanic community. That they exacerbate poverty, they exacerbate crime,
Speaker 4: They they have that they throttle educational excellence and opportunity.
Speaker 4: And yet we still have in Texas at across the
Speaker 4: country an overwhelming majority of African Americans voting Democrat. And
Speaker 4: so I guess I want to ask two things. One,
Speaker 4: you made reference to it before about how kind of
Speaker 4: culturally you're essentially told you're a Democrat, that's what it
Speaker 4: means to be black. I'd like you to kind of
Speaker 4: explain a little bit why you think that is. And
Speaker 4: then the second part of it is, Look, we're seeing,
Speaker 4: especially in Texas, but other parts of the country, we're
Speaker 4: seeing the Hispanic community is getting more and more Republican
Speaker 4: every day, and we're seeing the African American community. I
Speaker 4: think there's some movement, but we've got a lot further
Speaker 4: to go in the African American community. What do you think,
Speaker 4: what do you think is persuasive? What should Republicans do
Speaker 4: to earn more support in the African American community going forward.
Speaker 3: I think it's an amazingly important question, and I appreciate
Speaker 3: you asking it, and it's complicated, yeah, but I think
Speaker 3: if we're going to start that conversation tonight a little bit,
Speaker 3: and I really appreciate you having this conversation with me.
Speaker 3: I've not ever had an opportunity to talk about this
Speaker 3: is stuff that I've been thinking about my whole life. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that had really any opportunity to really do anything
Speaker 3: about it. And I feel like I'm at this at
Speaker 3: this point in my life now where maybe we can
Speaker 3: actually see the numbers of African Americans change to support
Speaker 3: the Republican Party. I think this. I think it's perfectly
Speaker 3: understandable in a limited resource environment, which is what any
Speaker 3: political campaign is or any political party is, Like resources
Speaker 3: are infinite. To say to any group that at any
Speaker 3: point in time is only throwing you ten percent of
Speaker 3: their support, they're against you ninety percent of the time,
Speaker 3: that that's not where we ought to be investing. I
Speaker 3: think that's a perfectly rational decision. Well, that the perfectly
Speaker 3: rational decision in a lot of ways to not play
Speaker 3: the game at all because it's it's not perceived to
Speaker 3: be a particularly fruitful game plays very easily into a
Speaker 3: narrative that and therefore that party doesn't care at all. Right,
Speaker 3: So you got one party that may be able to
Speaker 3: be criticized for being inefficient and ineffective, but they're telling
Speaker 3: you they care, and you got another party they might
Speaker 3: not be telling you they hate you, but they're just
Speaker 3: sort of focused on groups that produce more efficiently support.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a it's a tough slog when you're
Speaker 3: talking about ninety ten, and so it's understandable, but it's
Speaker 3: coming a cost. What I'm saying, and what I'm feeling
Speaker 3: instinctively politically right now, is that there's a there's been
Speaker 3: a maturation that was inevitable in African Americans position in
Speaker 3: this country. We are better off than we've ever been.
Speaker 3: Are we as well off as we like to be? No,
Speaker 3: but we we are better off. We're better educated, we're
Speaker 3: better everything. There's anybody who says we're not better off
Speaker 3: today than we were, you know, in the immediate aftermath
Speaker 3: of the Civil War or Durns Rights era is just
Speaker 3: playing a game. They're playing a retortal game. Yes we are,
Speaker 3: We're not where we'd like to be, but we are
Speaker 3: better than We're further than we've ever been. What that means, though,
Speaker 3: is that people maybe have more of an opportunity now
Speaker 3: to sit back and look at things and ask that
Speaker 3: question of how has this approach of making everything about
Speaker 3: the community in terms of everything I do is written
Speaker 3: off to societal factors? Right? We can't hold we can't
Speaker 3: even hold a criminal accountable because it's society's fault. Everything
Speaker 3: in the Democratic Party, my experience was anything you tried
Speaker 3: to actually pin on an individual was written off to society.
Speaker 3: So as a mayor, for example, I am really deeply
Speaker 3: concerned about the victims of crime because they did nothing wrong.
Speaker 3: The law enforcement folks who are out there risking their
Speaker 3: lives to prevent crime and to address crime, and and
Speaker 3: then there would be victims of crime that we're trying
Speaker 3: to protect. Right, That's why I care about victims, would
Speaker 3: be victims, cops. The Democrat Party really seems, i mean
Speaker 3: legitimately seems to care more about the perpetrators of crimes
Speaker 3: than the victims of crimes or the would be victims
Speaker 3: or the police. And I tell you what my evidence
Speaker 3: of that is is whenever somebody does anything, the finger
Speaker 3: gets pointed at the rest of us and we get
Speaker 3: told how if we just had built another recreation center,
Speaker 3: or you know, if we had put more money into
Speaker 3: the schools, this person may not have murdered that person,
Speaker 3: or this person may not have raped that person. I
Speaker 3: grew up as poor and as black as you can
Speaker 3: grow up, and I can tell you in every poor
Speaker 3: black community in this country, eighty percent of the people,
Speaker 3: like in any other group, are making the decision every
Speaker 3: single day to follow the law and do it by
Speaker 3: the rules. It's twenty percent, like in any group.
Speaker 4: Well, look, the whole country saw the image just couple
Speaker 4: of weeks ago of the six illegal immigrants in New
Speaker 4: York City who beat up to New York cups. They
Speaker 4: get arrested and within hours they get released no bail,
Speaker 4: and they walk out and with both hands they're flipping
Speaker 4: the bird at everyone.
Speaker 3: And that.
Speaker 2: To me, that image.
Speaker 4: Of those angry illegal immigrants flipping the bird, I think
Speaker 4: sums up the absolute depravity of the view of the left.
Speaker 4: And we're seeing, Look, we're seeing great American cities being destroyed.
Speaker 4: As you know, Heidi, my wife is a native California,
Speaker 4: and you look at California, look at a city like
Speaker 4: San Francisco. San Francisco is an iconic American city. In
Speaker 4: the last couple of years, twenty two major retailers have
Speaker 4: shut down downtown because the crime has gotten so bad.
Speaker 4: And I remember Heidi's family lives in California, called and
Speaker 4: they just said on the phone door said, well, gosh,
Speaker 4: you know, what can we do? People just go into
Speaker 4: stores and and you know, just take stuff. There's nothing
Speaker 4: we can do about it. I remember I'm listening to that,
Speaker 4: and I said, yes, there is. You throw their ass
Speaker 4: in jail.
Speaker 2: Like put them in handcuffs, or arrest them.
Speaker 3: It's worse than But if it's worse than that center,
Speaker 3: and this is what I'm getting at too, it's worse
Speaker 3: than that. It's it's quite predictable when you when you
Speaker 3: literally change the policies in the prosecutor's office and you
Speaker 3: say we won't prosecute theft of any amount underneath one
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, and then you don't just make that some
Speaker 3: sort of and it would still be bad internal memorandum.
Speaker 2: You go on the news, the publicize, you let every
Speaker 2: criminal know.
Speaker 3: Is it really a surprise that you have an uptick,
Speaker 3: not even an uptick, a sharp increase in smash and
Speaker 3: grab jobs and and shoplifting again in an effort to
Speaker 3: do some of these things that sound good on paper.
Speaker 3: Because society is at fault, not individuals, we do crazy things,
Speaker 3: these das and things. Stop prosecuting crimes because it's not fair.
Speaker 3: You know what, back to the eighty twenty split, which
Speaker 3: is just sort of the metaphorical split in any group
Speaker 3: of people who are doing the right thing, people aren't.
Speaker 3: That twenty percent just needs to be held accountable for
Speaker 3: making an individual choice to break the law and kill
Speaker 3: someone or rape someone or terrorize the community. And we
Speaker 3: need to stop pretending like everything can be attributed to
Speaker 3: some societal factor. It's just not the way it actually is.
Speaker 4: All right, we need to wrap up soon, but I
Speaker 4: want to ask two questions to close.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 4: In your view, part of what you answered in terms
Speaker 4: of how Republicans can do a better job in the
Speaker 4: African American community is just showing up and demonstrating that
Speaker 4: they give a damn.
Speaker 2: And I think that absolutely is.
Speaker 3: I didn't really say all I need to say on
Speaker 3: that because it's not just about it's not about emoting
Speaker 3: and showing up into saying we care. It's I think
Speaker 3: having an alternative to the liberal approach.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's where my question was going to go,
Speaker 4: which is what issues do you think resonate most powerfully
Speaker 4: in the African American community that by focusing on those issues,
Speaker 4: have a potential to earn their support by saying, look,
Speaker 4: this is an issue that is going to make a
Speaker 4: difference in your life and your family. I am deeply
Speaker 4: passionate on school choice. I think school choice is the
Speaker 4: most fundamental civil rights issue in the entire country.
Speaker 2: But I'm interested in your.
Speaker 4: Thoughts of what issues actually will resonate and cause voters
Speaker 4: who have voted Democrat their whole life to reconsider. Gosh,
Speaker 4: maybe that maybe the policies that they're foisting upon me
Speaker 4: are not working.
Speaker 3: I think if a Republican candidate for president, candidate for governor,
Speaker 3: candidate for mayor, candidate of anybody who's actually perceived to
Speaker 3: be running for an executive type position in charge went
Speaker 3: to an African American community, I'm talking of people who
Speaker 3: are members of the community who are going to vote
Speaker 3: and participate in the process. You know, people who are
Speaker 3: invested in their community and said, I'm the person who's
Speaker 3: going to come in here and I'm going to make
Speaker 3: this a safe community for you, because no one before
Speaker 3: me has done that, no one either side this community
Speaker 3: is you deserve a safer neighborhood than you're living in.
Speaker 3: I want you to be able to walk from your
Speaker 3: house to the end of the block and back home
Speaker 3: without being worried about being mugged. Or robbed or killed
Speaker 3: out and you don't feel safe doing that right now.
Speaker 3: I want your grandson to feel safe walking from the
Speaker 3: school bus home, and he doesn't feel safe doing that
Speaker 3: right now. I want to restore a genuine sense of
Speaker 3: safety to this community. That's number one. Number two, understand
Speaker 3: that the burden of high taxes falls disproportionately on you.
Speaker 3: I have polling from my mayoral campaigns that shows in Dallas, Texas,
Speaker 3: the groups of voters who most want their taxes lowered
Speaker 3: are African Americans, followed by Latinos. Whites are in third
Speaker 3: place because they're paying a higher percentage of their income
Speaker 3: and the taxes it hits them the hardest. They are
Speaker 3: the most worked up about their property tax. Build would
Speaker 3: most like to see. I'm going to take it.
Speaker 2: It's a barrier entry.
Speaker 4: If you're climbing the economic ladder, it hits you the
Speaker 4: hardest on the earliest round.
Speaker 3: This is supported by polling data. It will show you
Speaker 3: that poorer folks actually are most crippled by reckless tax
Speaker 3: policy at the local level, in particular, because there's no
Speaker 3: there's no game, there's no play a game around that.
Speaker 3: There's no tax credit this, and you know, figure that out.
Speaker 3: Like the tax bills just do or they foreclose on
Speaker 3: the house and you just gotta find a way to
Speaker 3: pay it. And that's just all there is to that.
Speaker 3: So high property taxes is a horrible thing for poor folks.
Speaker 3: You come in and you tell them we're gonna we're
Speaker 3: gonna deal with this, these tax burdens that you're facing.
Speaker 3: We're gonna deal with the safety in these communities, and
Speaker 3: we're gonna give your kids viable choices for schooling. We're
Speaker 3: gonna make sure that you actually have a shot at
Speaker 3: a decent education. I think at that point people are like,
Speaker 3: I don't care, I don't know what party you said
Speaker 3: you're with, but I'm ready to sign I'm ready to
Speaker 3: sign up for that. And you say, well, actually, everything
Speaker 3: I have just describe to you is right dead down
Speaker 3: the center of the fairway Republican policy. Yep, everything I
Speaker 3: just told that's Republican policy. I think people will literally say, then,
Speaker 3: I don't know why I've been voting Democrat this whole time.
Speaker 1: All Right, there's gonna be a lot of people that
Speaker 1: are listening and they're gonna want to ask this questions.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask it if you were up for reelection
Speaker 1: right now running into Republican for mayor. Yes, your policies
Speaker 1: haven't changed. The only things changed they d went to
Speaker 1: an car.
Speaker 3: Correct, could you win? I'd win overwhelmingly. I don't have
Speaker 3: any doubt about it, no doubt about it. And I'll
Speaker 3: tell you why I believe that. I'll tell you why
Speaker 3: I'm glad someone finally asked me that on the record.
Speaker 3: That's sort of the chatter as well.
Speaker 1: That's why I ask I going to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this thay I could never win. That's why he waited
Speaker 1: till the end of his serve and then switch parties.
Speaker 3: So here here's the reality that people have to ignore
Speaker 3: to even make that argument. But I understand why people
Speaker 3: need to make it. I mean I told someone, I said,
Speaker 3: you know, you don't switch parties in the two parties
Speaker 3: from one or the other and think the other party
Speaker 3: is going to say, well, you know, we wish him
Speaker 3: the best.
Speaker 2: He was great and it's our loss.
Speaker 3: You know, they got to come up with something and
Speaker 3: that kind of These are the kinds of arguments they've
Speaker 3: come up with. But here's the reality. I won my
Speaker 3: last election with It wasn't ninety three percent. Dallas City,
Speaker 3: you know, has ordinances about how right in candidates get
Speaker 3: on the ballot, and if you write in a name
Speaker 3: other than the actual right in candidate's name, that's there.
Speaker 3: You just essentially didn't vote. You threw your vote, your
Speaker 3: bowt in the trash of the cast votes, which we were
Speaker 3: canvassed by the city and are the official records of
Speaker 3: the city. Ninety eight point seven percent of the vote.
Speaker 3: That's Democrats and Republicans in that group. That's a pretty
Speaker 3: hearty endorsement of the incumbent mayor. And I didn't run
Speaker 3: with a D or an R behind my name. I
Speaker 3: ran just with you, know, as Eric Johnson, because you
Speaker 3: don't run in Texas, in any city with a D
Speaker 3: or for folks who aren't from Texas, we don't actually
Speaker 3: have partisan elections in Texas for mayor. You just run,
Speaker 3: and you don't run with a party support. Now, what
Speaker 3: do I think would have actually happened if I had
Speaker 3: just come out and said six months before the election,
Speaker 3: I'm actually a Republican. Here's what would have happened. Some
Speaker 3: Democrats would have gotten together and said, well, this is
Speaker 3: an opportunity for us to run an ostensibly just overtly
Speaker 3: partisan candidate. We're going to do something that's never been
Speaker 3: done in dallasmore, which is to just make it partisan,
Speaker 3: like to say, Okay, we got an R running and
Speaker 3: now we're going to run a D against him. The
Speaker 3: problem is that the are you're talking about for four
Speaker 3: years well enough to clear the field and win with
Speaker 3: ninety eight or seven percent of the vote. But that
Speaker 3: didn't happen yet. So let's just go back and say
Speaker 3: a Republican has been that effective who happens to also
Speaker 3: be African American and supported by the African American community.
Speaker 3: We think that that person would lose simply by saying
Speaker 3: I've become a Republican. I think what happens is is
Speaker 3: I won the first race in a contested nine person
Speaker 3: field that it went to a runoff with twelve percent
Speaker 3: of the vote. I won, you know, fifty six forty four.
Speaker 3: I think that goes down to the normal, you know,
Speaker 3: pretty solid win of a you know, fifty four fifty
Speaker 3: three percent win. But I still win. There's still question
Speaker 3: I still win that race because I'm the incumbent at
Speaker 3: that point. No incumbent mayor if we've had Republican and
Speaker 3: Democrat mayors before. By the way, no incumbent mayor seeking
Speaker 3: re election in Dallas has ever lost ever.
Speaker 4: Let me ask a final question, which is you have
Speaker 4: started now a national organization, a Republican Mayor's Association, and
Speaker 4: you have been out articulating that Republicans need to have
Speaker 4: an agenda for the cities, that we can't just write
Speaker 4: off big cities where an awful lot of Americans live.
Speaker 4: And I think that's a very important message. It's something
Speaker 4: and I want to ask you what's your vision for
Speaker 4: the message Republicans should have in the cities and how
Speaker 4: do we end up with a lot more.
Speaker 2: Republican mayors the big cities. What's the path forward there?
Speaker 3: I said this in the Wall Street Journale, and I
Speaker 3: meant it. It's a two way benefit for America and
Speaker 3: for our party. America needs the leadership that Republicans provide
Speaker 3: at the local level because of the things we talked
Speaker 3: about just a few minutes ago. A Republican mayor is
Speaker 3: going to is going to because it's part of the
Speaker 3: DNA of the party, is going to be right on
Speaker 3: order issues, going to be right on public safety. People
Speaker 3: who've asked me about that I've said, let me just
Speaker 3: quiz you very quickly. Every bad idea you can think
Speaker 3: of about public safety came from one side of the aisle.
Speaker 3: There's not even a mixed bag on this issue. If
Speaker 3: it's a bad idea when it comes to public safety,
Speaker 3: you know, defund the police, don't prosecute, shop with whatever.
Speaker 3: Republicans don't propose ideas that undermine law and order. They
Speaker 3: not every Democrat believes them, but they only emanate from
Speaker 3: the Democrat. Yeah, that's just a factual statement. So a
Speaker 3: Republican is going to be right on law and order
Speaker 3: in public safety, a Republican mayor is going to be
Speaker 3: right on taxes. A Republican mayor ought to be right
Speaker 3: on infrastructure spending and investing prudently. And there's studies that show,
Speaker 3: I mean been they have proven that you actually have
Speaker 3: lower debt levels and you issue less debt when you
Speaker 3: have a Republican mayor versus a Democrat when they've mit
Speaker 3: professor actually studied this and concluded that it is a
Speaker 3: statistically significant different level of debt associated with a city
Speaker 3: when there's a Republican in charge and a Democrat in charge.
Speaker 3: So we actually need Republicans running our major cities because
Speaker 3: eighty percent of Americans live in the cities. By twenty fifty,
Speaker 3: that number is going to be ninety percent. So the
Speaker 3: country actually needs the leadership. But I'm actually telling you
Speaker 3: as a group of partisans, we actually have to pay
Speaker 3: attention to this. And I think we have to pay
Speaker 3: attention to it because I, in my heart of hearts,
Speaker 3: believe that by being competitive in the cities, by basically
Speaker 3: re engaging, because we were once engaged. There was a
Speaker 3: Republican Majors Association at one time. It had a similar name.
Speaker 3: It was like the Republican Conference. It was during the
Speaker 3: Ford administration, and it's at some point we just lost
Speaker 3: interest in competing at that level and it sort of
Speaker 3: just faded away. But it was very active at one time,
Speaker 3: and we were more competitive in our cities at one time.
Speaker 3: We need to get more competitive there again, because the
Speaker 3: margin of victory at the state level in states like Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: in states like Michigan, states like Pennsylvania, is the difference
Speaker 3: between performing at the city level in You're ready, Madison,
Speaker 3: Green Bay, and in Detroit and in Philadelphi and Pittsburgh
Speaker 3: by just five or ten percent points better. So in
Speaker 3: other words, engaging in the cities in a more significant
Speaker 3: way and having the GOP brand associated with the things
Speaker 3: we're talking about. At the local level. It doesn't take
Speaker 3: that many votes, and now all of a sudden, the
Speaker 3: whole state is no longer lock stock and barrel going
Speaker 3: one direction because of the advantage has been run up
Speaker 3: in the cities. You've cut into the advantage that the
Speaker 3: cities have.
Speaker 2: You know, Eric, I'll tell you on that point.
Speaker 4: So Heidi and I met twenty five years ago when
Speaker 4: we were both working on the George W. Bush campaign
Speaker 4: in two thousand, the presidential campaign. And actually in that campaign,
Speaker 4: you know, I was a young, twenty nine year.
Speaker 2: Old staffer, but I wrote.
Speaker 4: A memo urging that the campaign consider at the time
Speaker 4: Condoleeza Rice as a VP nominee. And in the course
Speaker 4: of the memo, I laid out all sorts of reasons
Speaker 4: why I thought this was worth considering carefully. But one
Speaker 4: of the things I did is I did an electoral analysis.
Speaker 4: I looked at the three preceding presidential elections, and I
Speaker 4: posited a series of hypotheticals. I said, what would have
Speaker 4: happened if Republicans had gotten five percent more ten percent
Speaker 4: more or fifteen percent more of the African American and
Speaker 4: Hispanic vote. So I didn't posit what if we get
Speaker 4: fifty percent more? I did five, ten or fifteen, so
Speaker 4: goals that were achievable, I believe, And I ran through
Speaker 4: the numbers, and the one that was most that stood
Speaker 4: out the most was if the Republicans had gotten an
Speaker 4: additional fifteen percent of the African American and Hispanic vote
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety six, Republicans would have won an additional
Speaker 4: ninety six electoral votes. I mean, it flips the election dramatically.
Speaker 4: But to do that, we've got to compete.
Speaker 3: It's a whole different national conversation about the competitiveness of
Speaker 3: this party if we are a factor at the city level, yep,
Speaker 3: because it's just where so many people are concentrated. It's
Speaker 3: getting harder and harder to figure out how to win
Speaker 3: elections where we're just not even playing there, and we
Speaker 3: just it's just not even we ought to be competing
Speaker 3: in every major city where we're currently just sort of saying,
Speaker 3: you know, a Democrat hasn't won, I mean Repokic had
Speaker 3: won there a long time, so let's not try. We
Speaker 3: just flipped just in this last cycle, the mayor, the
Speaker 3: current mayor of I believe is Charleston, South Carolina, is
Speaker 3: now a Republican. They hadn't elected a Republican mayor in
Speaker 3: Charleston in like one hundred and seventy five years. So
Speaker 3: it can happen. It can be done. You have to
Speaker 3: run the right Candi. He was a former legislator like
Speaker 3: I was, and he ran a great campaign. Now they've
Speaker 3: got a Republican mayor. So what's gonna happen next is
Speaker 3: he's going to do a good job. And when he
Speaker 3: does a good job, these people who've been voting for
Speaker 3: Democrat mayors for one hundred and seventy five years are
Speaker 3: going to say, you know, when Republicans are in charge,
Speaker 3: the city just seems to be it's safer, we hire
Speaker 3: more cops, and crime goes down, and you know what,
Speaker 3: the taxes go down, and you know, things are just better.
Speaker 3: The brand means something to them at the local level,
Speaker 3: and not just the brand will always have a federal
Speaker 3: aspect to it, it will always have a state aspect
Speaker 3: to it. But right now in this party, we're missing
Speaker 3: a brand at the local level. It doesn't mean anything
Speaker 3: right now, at the local level, and we get to
Speaker 3: decide what it means. And I'm saying we should be
Speaker 3: running solid conservatives at the local level winning elections in cities. Well,
Speaker 3: and then that makes people with the look let will go, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm actually a Republican. I love my Republican mayor, and
Speaker 3: so I'm a Republican. And that has benefits for people
Speaker 3: running for US Senate, running for president, running for governor.
Speaker 3: But we are right now just aren't doing anything. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was shocked to find that there was no one
Speaker 3: even in this lane. I wasn't even stepping on anybody's
Speaker 3: nose by doing this.
Speaker 4: Well, let me say, Eric, I appreciate you. I appreciate
Speaker 4: your friendship, I appreciate your leadership, and I appreciate your
Speaker 4: joining us on the Verdict.
Speaker 3: Buckcat, appreciate that. Man.
Speaker 1: Give a big round of a pause from Mayor of Dallas.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on Verdict. Don't forget We do
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Speaker 3: I will see you back here in a couple of days.