It’s our job to keep track of what our elected leaders say and do. But if we’re being honest, there are times when we worry we might be dropping the ball when it comes to Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson.
That’s because so little of what he says and does seems connected to actual leadership of the city we live and work in. It often feels as if he’s the mayor of Somewhere Else.
That was the feeling that washed over us after a July 3 social media post he had fired off started making the rounds.
“If your city is (or is about to be) a sanctuary for criminals, mayhem, job-killing regulations, and failed socialist experiments, I have a modest invitation for you: MOVE TO DALLAS. You can call us the nation’s first official ‘Sanctuary City from Socialism.’”
Opinion
Johnson followed that up with an Independence Day post that read, “Happy Independence Day from America’s first Sanctuary City from Socialism!”
To be clear, we oppose socialism as an economic or governance model. It doesn’t work. We would never want that for Dallas. That said, we know of no socialist-governed cities in all of Texas. Being a non-socialist city, in fact, is far more common than being a socialist city.
But Dallas is hardly the bastion of conservatism that Johnson would have his followers believe. If you really understand the place, you know it’s a fairly liberal city inside a red state.
In late June, reacting to democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Johnson invited New Yorkers to move to Dallas, “where we … value our partners in the business community” and “shun excessive regulation.” We know some business leaders who would take issue.
So there is nothing “official” about anything Johnson wrote. It’s just something he puts out there because our mayor isn’t really in the business of being the mayor of Dallas. He’s in the business of polishing a political résumé for some other job.
We sent his office an email that we would be writing this editorial and offered him a chance to respond. He didn’t take us up on the offer.
Self-serving social media posts are part and parcel of being a politician these days, so we get that Johnson is playing a part.
It would be easier to look past that if Johnson were rolling up his sleeves and digging into the business of Dallas. But he isn’t. He doesn’t.
Anytime a big issue comes down the pipe where the city needs Johnson to step up, he’s absent.
Dallas has a weak-mayor system, but the system only really works when the mayor is a convenor, a person with vision, someone who gets involved in the difficult work that has to be done.
From where we sit, Johnson doesn’t want that job. Maybe Somewhere Else wants him.