Newsroom
May 07, 2017
Seniors Win in Dallas
Next-day election results show that Philip Kingston, the candidate endorsed by the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans, defeated two opponents with 55% of the total vote in Dallas City Council District 14.
Kingston has stood up for Texas retirees, and we stood up for him. In the photo, Kingston helped us demand better Medicare.
Retirees were not passive in these local elections. We turned out for candidates, for the AFL-CIO, and for our own organization. We called everybody on our list that we suspected of being in District 14. Organizer Judy Bryant was a regular at every opportunity for phone banking during the campaign.
The big money was arrayed against our candidate. One Political Action Campaign tied informally but closely to Mayor Rawlings, marshalled $200,000 against him. The Dallas newspaper, itself a pillar of the Citizens Alliance shadow government, never missed an opportunity to publish vague accusations and allegations against Kingston. Then they endorsed his wealthiest opponent.
The Kingston campaign refused to allow the newspaper’s photographer into their election watch party!
In their election coverage, the newspaper acknowledged the big-money PAC against Kingston, but conveniently forgot their own role in trying to bring him down. Columnist Robert Wilonsky wrote, “This was the race Mayor Mike Rawlings probably watched closer than any: The PAC’s run by Mari Woodleaf, Mayor Mike Rawlings’ campaign consultant, and its campaign treasurer is Tom Karol, a decades-long friend of Mayor Mike Rawlings who — oh, by the way — served as finance chair of Rawlings’ first run for mayor six years ago.
‘District 14 didn’t just vote for Kingston. They voted against the mayor. They voted against a toll road next to the Trinity River. They voted against handing over Fair Park without asking questions first. And, most of all, they voted against the old way of doing business in Dallas.”
That’s kind of how we saw it, too, except that we would have added that we retirees backed our candidate because he backed us!
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–Gene Lantz, President
Texas Alliance for Retired Americans
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