Dallas may become first major U.S. city with openly gay mayor

On June 16 gay city councilman Ed Oakley and former Turner Construction CEO Tom Leppert will face off in Dallas for a runoff mayoral election. Should Oakley win the election, Dallas, the nation’s ninth-largest city, according to 2005 population estimates, would become the first major American city with an openly gay mayor.

Though Oakley’s candidacy has not been without opposition, attempts to derail his campaign have failed thus far. On the morning of the initial May 12 election, involving 11 candidates, many residents received an anonymous call claiming, “Ed Oakley has a radical gay agenda for Dallas,” and adding, “Dallas needs a strong conservative leadership.”

The call ignited outrage in the blogosphere, with many claiming that it was a violation of Texas Ethics Commission rules.

But Oakley spokesman Craig Murphy was not surprised by the tactic. “We expected the call,” he says. “It’s the anonymous sort of advertising that you would never put on TV.”

Nonetheless, Oakley, who currently represents district 3 on the Dallas city council, placed second with 21% of the vote while Leppert led the pack with 27%. Since no candidate received a majority of the votes, the two with the highest percentages are slated for a runoff.

Oakley, a Dallas resident for the past 25 years, has served on the city council since 2001. His previous positions include six years on the city planning commission and two years on a zoning committee.

“Oakley is an insider who really knows city policy,” says Dallas resident Jeff Phillips.

Oakley recently garnered endorsement from the Dallas Police Association. “This endorsement was the big one,” says Murphy, crediting Oakley’s strong call for crime reduction during his campaign. His plans include hiring additional police officers and tearing down 2,000 of the most crime-ridden apartments in Dallas.

Oakley also has the endorsement of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a national LGBT political action committee working to increase the number of openly LGBT elected officials across the country. The Victory Fund is working to raise $100,000 for Oakley’s campaign; so far it has amassed just over $71,000 toward this goal.

“[Oakley’s] election has the capacity to change politics,” says Victory Fund vice president for communications Denis Dison. “And I think he will.”

While not making any official statements regarding his stance on LGBT issues, Leppert has been known to support antigay Texas representative Pete Sessions, contributing $2,000 to Session’s 2004 reelection campaign. On the Human Rights Campaign’s 2006 Congressional Scorecard, which rates legislators based on their votes on LGBT issues, Sessions received a score of 0 out of 100. Leppert also did not return an endorsement questionnaire from the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance, one of the city’s largest gay rights organizations.

Though it may come as a surprise that Dallas is the setting for this potentially historic election, a largely unnoticed wave of liberalism has been sweeping over this city once renowned for its macho swagger and buxom cheerleaders.

Last November, Democrats won 47 local offices, many of which had previously been held by long-standing Republican incumbents.

The Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau’s LGBT microsite boasts that “Dallas truly is the most liberal city in Texas!” with its “sassy drag queens and strapping gay rodeo champs.” Dallas also has the ninth-largest concentration of same-sex couples in the country, according to the Williams Institute, a think tank studying sexual-orientation law and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. Furthermore, the Cathedral of Hope, the world’s largest gay church, with a congregation of 3,500, is located in Dallas.

The growth of gay representation in Dallas politics has its own extensive history. In 1991 a judge ordered that the city council districts be redivided among 14 seats, thus ensuring better minority representation. The first openly gay city council member was elected two years later. Dallas currently has a few county-level elected officials who identify as gay, including Sheriff Lupe Valdez and county judge (chairman of the county commissioners) Jim Foster.

Looks like Austin’s got some competition for “most gay-friendly city” in Texas. (Padraic Wheeler, The Advocate)

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