Openly gay mayoral candidate lost in Dallas on Saturday


On Saturday, Dallas elected a political newcomer over the three-term openly gay City Councilman Ed Oakley to be mayor of the city. The vote was 58 to 42 percent. It had been wrongly predicted to be a close race.

People had various explanations of the results. Some said there was a lot of last minute gay bashing by conservative groups. Political co-chair of the HRC local steering committee also attributed the loss to the attention paid to the race by local and national media. I don't know why it's unusual that local media would pay attention to the mayoral race. Dallas Voice's DVTV reported that the loss might be attributed to lots of rain, which Democratic voters were said to be notorious for letting keep them from the polls. The turnout in the five heavily gay districts of Dallas was 29.3%, twice as high as elsewhere in the city. I guess those Democratic voters are the exception.

Three other gay candidates in the runoff election also lost their races. The Dallas Voice reported, "In all of the runoff races involving gay candidates, either the candidates or their supporters had complained about conservative groups using gay-baiting tactics to attack the gay candidates."

Posted: Wednesday - June 20, 2007 at 09:37 AM          

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