Johnson’s apparent affinity for the Republican Party prompted us to ask his office over the summer whether he had broken up with the Dems. They shoo-flied us away, casting observations of a focused political shift as “inaccurate.”
Turns out that the mayor either underwent a serious change of heart by Sept. 22, the date of the Wall Street Journal op-ed announcing his transition to the Republican Party, or he didn’t want to reveal his conservative bent quite yet.
Whatever the case, we feel a teensy bit gaslit, which is a polite way of saying "lied to." But we're used to that from pols.
Now some political observers are insisting that the mayor’s very public party switch signifies he has designs on higher office. The Observer reached out to ask for comment about whether that’s the case but didn’t hear back.
Although we may have been ignored, Johnson did recently tell conservative radio host Mark Davis that he has no such goals. During an interview last week, the mayor shot down speculation that he’s aiming to climb the political ladder.
“I’m not running for anything else,” he told Davis at the time. “I want to do this job, and I want to do it the way I’ve been doing it for the past four-plus years. So, I hope people take me at face value there because I mean it. I’m on a mission to make my hometown the best city that I can make it, and I’m going to do that as a Republican.”
Uh-huh.
Forgive us for being somewhat skeptical of this full-throated assertion. The mayor has also developed a little habit of puffing up his latest ballot count.
Johnson has repeatedly bragged about receiving 98.7% of the vote in his May reelection bid, when in fact he earned around 93%, D Magazine reported in June.
News of Johnson’s post-election party shift is making many of the state’s liberals see red. Now, the Dallas County Democratic Party is demanding that he resign.
“This switch is the launch of a selfish and cynical strategy to get his next job at the expense of his current job, the one Dallas voters elected him to do,” the party wrote in a statement last week. “He is putting politics, and his resume, ahead of the people.”
"You've got to be pretty light on your political and rhetorical feet to go from moderate Democrat to conservative Republican and keep your lines straight." – Dr. Cal Jillson, SMU
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So, when it comes to Johnson’s supposed lack of higher-office ambitions, should we take him at his word?
Johnson still has several years left in his term, noted Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. The mayor is likely keeping his options open to see what develops during that time.
“I think he probably is more focused on an appointed position, either in Texas or in Washington, or a federal appointment in Texas, because he's not a particularly stirring campaigner,” Jillson said.
Johnson previously served as a representative for Texas House District 100. To secure that spot, he had to run as a Democrat — no way he would’ve won as a Republican, Jillson said.
The same is true for the times he vied for mayor of Big D, he added. Even though the city office is technically nonpartisan, voters had assumed that Johnson was still a Democrat, which he needed to be to win.
Jillson said it’s difficult for candidates to ascend from municipal to higher office, even for leaders of major cities. Take, for instance, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who was defeated in a 2002 bid for U.S. Senate by then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, a Republican.
It can hard be for municipal politicians to make inroads with folks outside city lines.
“There is a great deal of work to be done to introduce yourself, and you've got to raise a great deal of money to do it,” Jillson said. “So, my assumption is that [Johnson is] keeping his options open, but the more natural option for him would be an appointed position rather than an elected one — a partisan elected office.”
The leap from middle-of-the-road Lone Star liberal to the deep right wing will be tricky, he continued, but Johnson will have to figure it out if he’s hoping to win statewide.
“You can't be a Joe Straus or a Dade Phelan or even a John Cornyn; you’ve got to be right of that some good distance,” Jillson said. “And you've got to be pretty light on your political and rhetorical feet to go from moderate Democrat to conservative Republican and keep your lines straight.”
