Verdict Welcomes Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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getting free silver in your account today one eight hundred
sixty fifty five eight eight four three. Welcome. It is
Verdict with Center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you, and
right now I'm in New York City getting ready to
host out Numbered on Fox News Channel.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
It is two a m.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Center.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Ted Cruz is in Texas right now where it is
one am. He is traveling the state and we for
the last hour have been trying to get a connection
that was stable for us to do the podcast. This
is what happens on a regular basis when he's on
the road and I'm on the road. And tonight the
internet won and we lost. So what does that mean, Well,

(02:10):
it means that the Senator and I were chatting a
moment ago on the phone about all right, what do
we do now. There was an interview that we did
with Eric Johnson and his incredible story being an African
American Democrat who switched to the Republican Party. In fact,
when we did this interview, it was the most listened
to episode of the month, the month of this came

(02:32):
out and it was one that went viral. So many
people were inspired by this story of Eric Johnson and
the bravery of switching from the Democratic Party to the
Republican Party and talking about his life being the sixtieth
mayor of Dallas. We've decided we were going to replay
that for you now and the Senat and I were
going to be back with you on Friday as normal.

(02:56):
We did everything we could, I want to tell you
the last hour and dealing with it and tech sport,
everything we could to try to get a connection to record,
and it just didn't work. So what we're going to
do instead is we're gonna let you hear that interview.
If you missed it, we really want you to hear
it because it was an incredible interview. It was a
great conversation. And also please share it on social media.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
I my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast, is also out.
I will give you an update on the latest breaking news,
so if you're looking for that as well, today download
my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast. It is done and
you can hear that on those in between days when
we don't put out vertic. You can grab the Ben
Ferguson podcasts as well. So, like I said, here is
our conversation with the Mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson in

(03:41):
the center. I will see you back here on Friday
with all the latest breaking news.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Do not worry well.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
I am incredibly proud to welcome onto the Verdict podcast
a good friend of mine, the sixtieth mayor of the
City of Dallas, the current sitting mayor, Eric Johnson, and
I want Eric welcome.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here, so thanks.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
For having me.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
Now I want to tell our podcast listeners some of
Eric's background, because many of you may know him, but
some of you may not. Eric is the current mayor
of Dallas. Eric was He went to Harvard College, he
went to University of Pennsylvania Law School. He got a
master's from mi alma mater, Princeton, UH. He was elected

(04:33):
to the Texas State Legislature and he was an elected
Democrat in the state legislature.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
And Eric is African American.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
I am.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
It's an audio show, so I so one.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Has to paint the picture.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
And then Eric was elected mayor of the City of
Dallas again as a Democrat. And then he was just
recently re elected mayor of the city of da He
was re elected with ninety three percent of the vote
in the City of Dallas.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Technically ninety eight point seven, but i'll take ninety three.
We'll take ninety three.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
And then after his reelection, Eric announced to the city
of Dallas in the world that he was switching parties
and he left the Democrat Party and he became a Republican.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
And it was.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
A decision that those of us who knew him and
had worked with him, I have to say I was
not shocked or surprised, but it did shock and surprise
a lot of people. And so Eric is I think,
a very important leader in Texas and a very important
leader in the country. And so Eric, I appreciate your
coming and joining us this evening and being a guest

(05:45):
on Verdict.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Thank you so much.
This is a real honor to be here. Thank you
for the invitation, and great to see all of you.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
All Right, So you go to the Texas State Legislature,
you get elected mayor of Dallas, You get re elected
mayor of Dallas. This entire time you've been an elected
Democrat and there's an elected Democrat, there's an ecosphere around you.
You've got donors, you've got volunteers, you've got supporters. Walk
us through your decision making, because switching party is a

(06:16):
big deal and and I know you didn't make that
decision lightly, so so what led you to change parties?

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah, and you know, I don't know how how deep
we can dive into this guy.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
Was exactly the joy of a podcast, as we can
go as deep as you want. And that's that's actually
what's fun That we're not on TV with a six
minute sound bite.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
We can actually get about what's really going on.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
That's exactly what I wanted to know, because unfortunately, because
of the structure of the traditional media, you really have
to sort of hit that question quick and then get
out of it. And you don't really get to give
a full answer to that because it's because it's way
more complicated than you know. There was this one thing
that happened and I just said, I'm out of here.

(07:01):
It's an evolution for me and just kind of coming
to accept who I have always been and why I've
struggled as a Democrat the whole time.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Was it the issues that made you think about becoming
a Republican.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
The issues were a manifestation, a policy manifestation of problems
I had been having with the Democratic Party because of
who I am as a person for a long time.
So I'll give you, I'll give you some idea what
I'm talking about. I was born in West Dallas, very
poor community, to working class parents who never went to college,

(07:43):
but you know, got married right out of high school,
still married to this day, raised four of us. And
I was raised in a community that was very and
in a family that was very, very faith oriented. The
church was hugely important to us. I mean, grew up,
I spent more time in church than really any place else.

(08:03):
We'd go to church Sunday morning, stay almost all day,
go home for just a couple hours, and come back
for Sunday evening. We'd go to Bible class. On Wednesday,
we'd have you know, I wasn't in the choir, I
couldn't sing, but you know, we had song practice and
things like that. So I spent a lot of time
in the church, spent a lot of time with grandparents

(08:26):
who were very, very very about the Church of Christ.
And that's how that's the tradition I was raised in.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
And so.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
We were sort of taught and it was separate apart
from anything political. My family wasn't political at all. No
politicians in the family. I'm not even sure we had
a real awareness of what was going on around us politically,
but a very strong sense of just right wrong. You know,
this is how you treat people, this is how you
behave you follow the law, you obey the law, you

(09:00):
work hard, you you know, an honest day's work, honest
day's pay. That is sort of that was just always
in the background. And so I think I was always
politically in a weird posture with the Democratic Party because
at its core, and I didn't understand this at the

(09:21):
very beginning. Because and I hope we can actually get
to this and talk about this, there are some you
sort of inherit the Democratic Party as a cultural heirloom
when you're African American in this country. Yeah, this sort
of gets handed to you as part of who you are.
I probably had more phone call I know I had.
I had more phone calls with people distraught about this

(09:43):
party switch than I ever would have gotten if I
had told people that I was actually leaving the church.
There's no question about it. Wow, there's no doubt about it.
I will say that loudly and on the record. I
had more panicked phone calls from people genuinely concerned about
what I was doing and why I could do how

(10:04):
I could do this, then I would have gotten if
I'd said, I just don't think I'm into this Jesus
thing anymore like this, don't think I'm not a Baptist,
or I'm not a Church of pristper or I'm not.
I don't think I would have had anywhere near the
same reaction. It's that cultural.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
How intense was that?

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Was it?

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Family?

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Was it friends?

Speaker 3 (10:20):
It was? It was a lot of consternation. The family
and friends was well meaning, but I think a lot
of other folks it was just, you know, we have
to we have to take this guy down now. And
it got it was it got to be pretty quickly.
This the traditional standard partisan warfare stuff. But kind of

(10:40):
going back to what I was, and I said, I
want to know how deep we could go, because this
is actually pretty I haven't had a chance to talk
about this with anybody. The fit was almost in some
ways inevitable. It was going to there was gonna be
a problem because at the Democratic Party's core. Who I
was saying is a belief that how things turn out

(11:01):
for you in this country are largely determined by things
that are outside of your control. The race you're born,
the neighborhood you're born in. It just kind of it
excuses away your failures, and it excuses away your success
is to something that's out of your control. If you're
successful and you're white and males, because of course you are,

(11:22):
and if you're unsuccessful as an African American, it's well,
the deck was stacked against you. And I just wasn't
a person who ever believed that, and that wasn't how
I was raised and it's not how I was taught,
but it was the overarching political philosophy of my party.
And there was always just that tension between wanting to
tell people, hey, this actually is a country where anything

(11:44):
you want to do you can do. And I'm living
proof of it, yep, Because at every turn, if I
put the work in, I was told repeatedly, over and
over by people who didn't look like me, who didn't
come from my community, were proud of you. We'd like
to give you more opportunity. I was having doors slammed
in my face. The harder I pushed, I was having

(12:05):
more of them given to me. So the story of
my life and then the rhetoric that my party wanted
me to put out there as the justification for what
we were doing politically just never really matched.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
Because I've always thought one of the most important differences
between the parties is that the Republican Party believes in
individual responsibility and believes in merit and a meritocracy. Now
that's not to say that there aren't things that are unfair,
but in the reason people come from all over the

(12:39):
world to America is there's no country on Earth where
people can achieve their dreams the way you can hear
and you know, and I do think a lot of
the a lot of the Democrat Party is there. The
ideology in today's Democrat Party is about eliminating individual responsibility

(13:03):
and eliminating merit. And I think about you're a black man,
I'm an Hispanic man. I think about what my father
said to me when I was a kid about racism.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
And my dad, you.

Speaker 4 (13:14):
Know, as you know, he came from Cuba as an immigrant.
And my dad said when he came out of University
of Texas in nineteen sixty one, and my father said, look,
I'm obviously an immigrant. My father had had and still
has a very heavy Spanish accent, you know my dad,
And he said, listen, if I'm applying for a job
and I'm applying against an American and we're equally qualified,

(13:36):
my dad said, you know what, they'll hire the American. Now,
my father wasn't particularly outraged at that. He said, you
know what, in Cuba, they'd hire me. That's just kind
of human nature, that's the way people often behave. And
my father's answer to that, he said, I'm just going
to be three times as good as the other guy.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
I'll make it so.

Speaker 4 (13:56):
You'd have to be a blithering idiot to hire the
other And when you take individual responsibility, and it's not
to say racism doesn't exist, racism absolutely exists, but how
you respond in the face of adversity. And I think
the the the principle of work harder, be better, be

(14:18):
more excellent.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
I think that is a path that every one.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
Of us think about what you teach your kids.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
That's if you don't mind, please, I'll jump in here
and say this because there's so much that I could
say about this and again, this is the slow burn
over a career. But there's the specific policy things that
came about as the mayor that made this decision something
that needed to happen and something that became much more

(14:47):
urgent for me. But while we're talking about sort of
the underpinnings of this, and you talk about what you
teach your children, that's really kind of the point in
terms of the problem that I have with the Democratic
Party's philosophy on this particular issue is you have to decide,
one way or the other, what you're going to tell

(15:09):
a generation of African American kids or kids who are
growing up in tough circumstances. Are you going to tell
them that your country doesn't work for you. Doesn't really
matter what you do, it doesn't work for you. It's
not built for you, it's not designed for you. The
system is stacked against you. And just hope that they
don't turn to crime or turn to other things because
you've told them that essentially that's fine, that's okay, because

(15:33):
there's no way you could do the things you'd like
to do legitimately. You can't get where you want to
go legitimately anyway. The deck stacked against you. Or do
you want to tell them the truth, which is the
system that we have is the best on earth for
translating people's hard work and effort into tangible increases and

(15:55):
improvements in their life's circumstances. It just is. And I've
told old my liberal friends for many years, even before
I switch parties, I said, for the ones who go
around sort of bashing the country, I say, guys, if
there was a place on earth where they did it better,
where they really did convert your effort and your work

(16:16):
into benefits better, why don't you live and raise your
don't you owe it to your children to raise them there?
If you really believe there's a place that's doing it better.
And they don't believe that. It's rhetoric, but it's rhetoric
with the purpose. And this is kind of where being
a part of the party for so long and understanding

(16:36):
sort of the you know, the thought behind the strategy.
Really it's strategy. How do you how do you convince
large swaths of people, large groups that are just really
holding themselves together by identity, politics, race, or how do
you convince them to give their loyalty so completely to
a political party? If you can't convince them first that

(16:59):
they really need this political party to help them overcome
these horrible flaws in the system.

Speaker 4 (17:07):
So basically this well, the Democrat Party, I think is
is vested in selling dependency.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Correct. And there's no question.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
Example I've used also in my family, you know, with
my dad in nineteen fifty seven, when he showed up
in Austin, Texas.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
He couldn't speak English, and so.

Speaker 4 (17:24):
The first job he had was washing dishes, and he
made fifty cents an hour. And I've said a lot
of times, thank god some well meaning liberal didn't come
along and put his arm around him and say, Ralphiel,
let me take care of you. Let me give you
a government check, let me make you dependent on the government.
You don't need to work anymore, you don't need to
be responsible for your life. I'm going to take care

(17:45):
of you. That would have been utterly destructive. It would
have been the worst thing you could have done to him.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
And it's you know, we're talking about what you teach
your kids. You know, you think about it. If you
have a kid in kindergartener first grade who'struggling with how
many of us will do your kids homework? None of
us will, because doing your kid's homework is not helping
the kid. Now, you may, you may work with the kid,
you may get a tutor with the kid. You may

(18:11):
walk through and say if you having problems with But
you understand, you know, you and I are both fathers.
Uh Ben, You're a father, You understand when you're when
you're raising your kids, they need to learn those skills
and if someone else does it for them, it doesn't
help our children. That same thing is true for all of.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Us, Absolutely true. I had a conversation with one of
your colleagues, Senator Scott, when he was through Dallas a
few months ago, and we had a private lunch and
one of the things that we talked about, and I
said to him that resonate with him because he also,

(18:50):
you know, believes this is absolutely the.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Case, and it's right Him's a great guy.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
It's right in line with what we're talking about right now.
I said, Tim, do you agree that there's really nobody
in our community who's achieved a high degree of success
who actually did it using anything other than conservative principles
as applied to their life. I go, but why do

(19:16):
so many of us when we get to that level
of success with these principles, pretend like it's something else
that got us there. It was working hard, staying out
of trouble, persevering when other people had given up, and
basically playing by the rules what we called it, that
got you there. But you get there and then you

(19:39):
pretend like you know, those aren't essential values and success.
And I told him, I said, here's why I think
that happens, because there's a price to pay socially in
terms of being accepted if you don't pretend like you
don't know what you know and you don't sort of
excuse the things that we were talking about. In other words,

(20:02):
long story short is every successful African American in this
country basically got to be successful by working hard and
doing what they're supposed to do. But they don't want
to be once they've achieved that level of success not
accepted by the community at large and appear to be
out of touch, and so they pretend like they don't
know the formula. They don't know the winning formula. I

(20:22):
just think we need to be more honest about what
the winning formula is. And the winning formula ends up
being exactly what the conservative ideology would tell you. It
has to do with taking upon yourself the responsibility for
yourself and not believing that the Democratic Party or any
party is there to save you. And the Democratic Party
wants you to believe they do. They want you to

(20:45):
believe you can't get there without them, which you.

Speaker 4 (20:48):
Know, there's an old saying that every time I see
luck luck, it looks amazingly like hard work.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Yep, it's very true. It's very true. So now to
the policy things. So this is you know, so I'm
bumping if anybody who's I don't presume that anyone in
this room has followed my you know, my relatively insignificant
legislative career, but it was marked with just fighting with
the Democratic Party about various issues, and we're just bumping

(21:17):
heads the whole way.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
Well, as mayor, you showed enormous courage. So there were
Democrats on the City Council pushing with the radical left
movement to defund or to abolish the police, and you
were a fellow Democrat at the time, and you stood
up and fought them, and that that that's when you
and I first got to know each Other's when you
were newly elected and I came by your office.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
I wanted to meet you, and we worked.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
Together closely, but the courage you showed fighting for the
people of Dallas really stood out early on in your.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
Tam Well, I appreciate you saying that, and I was
going to get to that eventually about how we met
and about what the you know, what we've been doing
for the past five years. I've been mayor, but in
the legislature, even when I was part of a partisan caucus,
I was a terrible by the Democratic Party's own. Once
I left the party, they were honest. Their statements are

(22:09):
very interesting. If you read the statements with the state Party,
they all say some pretty interesting things like he was
always a terrible Democrat, good riddens were glad he's gone.
It's like, I'm not sure they understood what they were
admitting to. It's like, you know, but they acknowledged that
it was always a bad fit. But what they're really
talking about is when I would be honest about voter fraud. Well,

(22:29):
the voter fraud that happens in our large cities in
Texas that I'm aware of, but I've seen it happening
to me in my own races. I'm like these there
are people who are outright stealing the votes of the elderly.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
As a period, elaborate on that a little bit.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
I came out very vocally and upset the party by
saying that there is a systematic in the large urban
cities like Dallas, Absentee or you know, ballad arvesting operation
where people are going to old folks homes and taking
ballots out of their mailboxes and voting these ballots for

(23:09):
these people, or going and collecting ballots from these folks,
and if they don't like the way the vote was
already cast, it goes into garbage. And I said that
that that kind of thing is wrong, and it upset
people and upset people in the party when I spoke
out against corruption in the party. And so I started
off in a posture with the party that was already

(23:32):
a little bit antagonistic, and it's got worse and worse.
So this is the slow burn. Well, now I've become
the mayor and my whole job changes. I'm not a
part of some legislative caucus where I'm just sort of,
you know, having to be a good team player. I'm
responsible for people's lives, like I'm responsible for making the
call to keep people alive and make sure that my

(23:55):
city is you know, people are safe there and so
oh it's supposed to it should. Once you've been given
that kind of responsibility, it should change you, like you
should look at things differently. And sure enough, I get
tested pretty early on with this to fund the police thing. Yeah,
And I'm just going to break it down for about

(24:16):
what the choice became very simple.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
First, I want to say thank you to so many
of you that have got involved and help the people
in Israel. And you know about the atrocites that were
committed by Hamas last October seventh, but there is still
major needs on the ground. This vicious war that has
been kicked off by Israel having to defend herself from
terrorists on every side, and the toll on the Israeli

(24:40):
people is staggering and massive. There are hundreds of thousands
of Israelis that have been forced from their homes, entire
communities that have been torn apart, and lives that have
been devastated by death and destruction. That is why we're
asking you to help get involved with the International Fellowship
of Christians and Jews. You'll know them as IFCJ and

(25:00):
they are right in the middle of this need. Every
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essentials still like things like basic food and water, medicine,
emergency supplies for hundreds of thousands of suffering Jews. The
need is great and that is why I'm asking you
to partner.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
With IFCJ today.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
It doesn't matter how much you can give, because right
now they are doubling in impact and helping provide twice
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is go to support IFCJ dot org to help every
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(25:42):
to support IFCJ dot org. Give as generously as you can,
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That's support IFCJ dot org. Thank you and God bless
you guys for getting involved. Here's some people know that
listening around the county because I think it's an important point.

(26:03):
The defund the police movement that was rolled out nationwide.
They wanted it to be successful in big cities. Dallas
was one of them. This was a lot of outside
pressure as well, from coming from outside of Dallas where
they were organizing.

Speaker 3 (26:18):
What happened I've never seen since they didn't even live
in I don't even know where. They don't even show.
It was a national it was a national campaign with
people who were you know, rent a protester types, I guess.
But here's my point. It's absolutely true there was a
national movement. But the choice was pretty clear. If you
were a mayor of a major American city, and more

(26:38):
than likely you were a Democrat, then because I think
the number is roughly seventy five percent of the top
one hundred seas in America are run by Democrats, and
every mayor in the top ten before me it was
a Democrat, you really had two choices go along with
to defund the police idea, because that's where the left was,

(26:59):
that's where the activists were, That's where the pressure was,
was to defund and defund men anything from like what
they did here in Austin, a forty percent across the
board cut to your police department for no reason, not
based on any fact, just because some activists decided that
sound like a good number. The proposal in Dallas was
sixty that's what they wanted in Dallas sixty percent. You
can either do that and be a good Democrat and

(27:21):
people to leave you alone, or you could be a
sellout and a bad Democrat and not do it and
incur the ire. You're looking at the one Democratic mayor
that I'm aware of in the United States who said
I'm not doing that. And the result and this is,
like I said, when we started to get close closer,
I mean, the result was protests for weeks on end

(27:46):
at night against Dallas City ordinances with amplification and bullhorns
and all stuff, against Dalla City ordinances, standing on my
private property, not on the street in an acceptable protest perimeter,
but like on the grass, looking in the windows with
two little children and a wife, like intentionally trying to

(28:07):
intimidate me into changing my position to defund the police.
And I never caved, even though it was horrible, horrible,
horrible from my family. And that is when I really
start to understand this isn't the fringe anymore of the
Democratic Party. This is the Democratic Party. Like this is

(28:29):
where we are on public safety as the Democratic Party now.
And if you actually believe in law and order and
making sure that people are safe, then there is no
more part of the Democratic Party that is with you
on that, because I'm looking for those people. I'm waiting
for the phone calls from just one, for just one

(28:51):
Democratic congress person or one Democratic officeholder to say we're
with you. You know you're doing the right thing, and
here's the truth. And I've never said this public but
i'll say it now. The only calls I got during
that entire time saying hold the line, keep your people safe,
you're doing a good job. We're from Republicans and I
was a Democrat as far as they knew, and there

(29:13):
was no you, There's no there was no reason other
than it's the right thing to do what you're doing,
and we won't let you know that. There was nothing
to be gained politically from you standing with me publicly
and saying this is the right thing to do. Greg
Abbott did it, You did it, Dan Patrick did it.
A lot of people just said that mayor's doing the
right thing. And so Democrats, I saw at that point

(29:36):
were pretty lost on the public safety issue. But then
on top of that, I started to see and I
didn't have this responsibility as a legislator and I got it.
As the mayor, I have to protect people's incomes and
make sure people can actually afford to live in this
city because we are bleeding residents to lower tax jurisdictions.

(29:57):
So I started to really dig into our tech policy
and saying, you know, what are we doing to help
our residents be able to live here, have businesses here,
and be competitive with our local you know, our competitors.
And it turns out that we were doing a pretty
bad job of actually even making an attempt to protect

(30:21):
our taxpayers. We had the highest tax rate in Dallas
of any of the cities in the area, and we
have the second highest of any major city in the state,
and so I really wanted to change that. The resistance
that I got from the left leaning members of our
council was incredible, and the way the argument was couched,

(30:45):
and the way the strategy is to couch any effort
to rein in spending at all, even to hold it
steady from your to year, is being heartless and not
caring about people. That resonated with me because I realized
now that's actually been what the Democratic Party has been
about all along, and what I've sort of been an

(31:07):
unwitting accessory to which is painting people who just want
to leave people alone or leave people with more of
their income, people do what they want to do for
their families, supposed to taking it from them and spending
it on things they never asked for in the first place,
primarily so that politicians can have something to campaign on.

(31:27):
They perfected the art of making anyone who was opposed
to that seem like they were against the people they
were trying to help.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Them, that they demonized you, they attack personally.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
And so I became heartless. I became someone who didn't
care about people. I'll give you an example of just
last week. I'm in a I'm in the minority. I'm
in a twelve to three minority vote that I lost
on my city council last week because I voted against
us appropriating almost three quarters of a million dollars to

(32:00):
make sure that anybody in Dallas who needs tampons or
other femine hygiene products could have them from the City
of Dallas. I said, I don't know why on earth
we think that is something that we ought to be
doing as a city with people's tax dollars. Well, there's
three hundred more programs just like that, and when you
add them all together, that's how you end up with

(32:22):
a budget that grows year after year after year. We've
gotten into more and more things that we don't need
to be into, and so I said, I'm in the
wrong party of public safety for sure, but I'm also
not really into this hole. Just tax people to death
so you can do all this liberal experimentation and so on.
The matter, on the issues that were most important as

(32:42):
a mayor and that were most important in my family,
the Democratic parties was battened a goose egg on those issues,
and I started to think, there really is very little
reason why a person who is a common sense, fiscally
responsible person ought to be voting Democrats, particularly at the

(33:05):
local level, unless there's some sort of social reason that
you just can't give up where you need to be
accepted by your friends and family, and I just don't
have that. I don't have that need.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Well, let's talk about that a little more.

Speaker 4 (33:18):
But I will say one of the greatest ironies is
the rhetoric that the left uses in support of their
policies I think is one hundred and eighty degrees opposite reality. So,
for example, the effort to defund the police is advanced
by movements and activists and billionaire donors who are embracing

(33:43):
the slogan black Lives Matter. Now as a statement, black
lives matter is unequivocally, absolutely true, but the undeniable fact
is that when you defund the police, inevitably more African
Americans are more Black lives are lost because for a

(34:03):
great many of our African American citizens and our Hispanic citizens,
they live in in more low income neighbor neighborhoods that
are that are more subject to crime. And when you
pull law enforcement out, you know, we're we're at a
dinner right now. I guarantee you anyone here if we
told you, hey, we're gonna pull the cops out of
your neighborhood, everyone here would say no, no, that's a terrible idea.

(34:26):
But yet we see these left wing activists, in the
name of a slogan black Lives Matter, removing police protections
from vulnerable black families, and the result is far more
African American murders, and yet they continue to embrace that
same rheter.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
So I don't have to guess about it, because not
only do I have the knowledge of being the mayor
and knowing the crime statistics for my city. But I
also have the the experience, the lived experience of growing
up African American in Dallas in the very communities that
we're talking about. So I am familiar with this issue
is intimately as you can possibly be, both from sort

(35:05):
of the policy making standpoint and just the life experience.
And I can tell you I'm going to end the
suspense for folks. I'm not guessing about it. I can
speak on it with authority. And It's why the people
I'm left or even they don't even challenge me on
this because they know that I'm not only am I right,
but that I have the credibility on that I got
the street credit to speak on this. The Black Lives

(35:28):
Matter thing and the defund the police thing are kind
of issues that have been conflated, but the truth of the
matter is is defund the police, for sure, was a
construct of frankly white liberals who don't live in those
communities at all yep, and was never asked for irrespective

(35:49):
of their partipulation by African Americans who lived in crime
ridden neighborhoods. Never African Americans never at any point said
we want the police out of our communities. They said,
we want more police than our communit. We want them
to be well trained, we want them to know, we
want we want to live in a safe community, and
we believe the police are part of that. So it
was never true to begin with. It was a political

(36:12):
thing to begin with.

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(37:39):
code vertict for twenty percent off your first order. What
was the reaction of police officers when this was going down.
I mean, we saw a lot of them were trying to,
you know, be quiet, say the politics.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
But you were a Democrat.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
You have a large police force with a lot of
minorities in it. What were they saying to you privately
during that time?

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Well, I'll just I'll answer that one really quickly. Everybody
I believe in law enforcement could not believe and was
so relieved that they had the one person who in
this role everywhere else in the country was caving who
was standing up. They were very grateful and it's what

(38:23):
earned me the just enduring support of law enforcement for
my entire mayoralty because I stood by them. But I
wasn't standing by them just to send a message. I
was saying because it was absolutely what the city needed.
Law enforcement hadn't done anything wrong where they deserved for
that rhetoric to be thrown out around them, and having

(38:47):
cutting sixty percent from a police department that's not trimming
around the edges. That's salary and benefit, that's recruitment, that's
I mean, that's a real that's putting them in more
danger doing our aready a dangerous job, and so they
really appreciated that. But I want to put a fine
point in this issue with African American community when as

(39:07):
it relates to public safety, because it relates to what
I believe is part of why I think that this
party switch to mind is not important because I switched part.
It's a that's almost insignificant, But what it represents for
the potentiality for this group of people who I honestly
believe just have not had anybody come to them in

(39:31):
a spirit of love and concern who's operating from within
the community, not saying I sort of exist outside of it,
and let me lecture you about what you should a
acknowledged and accepted and proud member of it, saying, let
me explain to you why we've been duped a little
bit here and why what was once maybe a good

(39:53):
idea or sounded like one has now actually been categorically
proven to be a failed strategy.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Me drill down on that a little bit. And this
is just something that they're.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
Strong about, this one. This is a this is bigger, way,
bigger than one guy switching. This ought to be about
people going, why am I still a Democrat? If this
is what I care about?

Speaker 4 (40:13):
You know well, and this is a theme you of
referenced several times that I think is really important. I
emphatically believe and I think you do as well, that
the policies of the left, the policies of liberal Democrats,
have been deeply harmful to the African American community, to
the Hispanic community. That they exacerbate poverty, they exacerbate crime,

(40:36):
They they have that they throttle educational excellence and opportunity.
And yet we still have in Texas at across the
country an overwhelming majority of African Americans voting Democrat. And
so I guess I want to ask two things. One,
you made reference to it before about how kind of

(40:58):
culturally you're essentially told you're a Democrat, that's what it
means to be black. I'd like you to kind of
explain a little bit why you think that is. And
then the second part of it is, Look, we're seeing,
especially in Texas, but other parts of the country, we're
seeing the Hispanic community is getting more and more Republican

(41:20):
every day, and we're seeing the African American community. I
think there's some movement, but we've got a lot further
to go in the African American community. What do you think,
what do you think is persuasive? What should Republicans do
to earn more support in the African American community going forward.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
I think it's an amazingly important question, and I appreciate
you asking it, and it's complicated, yeah, but I think
if we're going to start that conversation tonight a little bit,
and I really appreciate you having this conversation with me.
I've not ever had an opportunity to talk about this
is stuff that I've been thinking about my whole life. Yeah,
and that had really any opportunity to really do anything

(42:05):
about it. And I feel like I'm at this at
this point in my life now where maybe we can
actually see the numbers of African Americans change to support
the Republican Party. I think this. I think it's perfectly
understandable in a limited resource environment, which is what any

(42:27):
political campaign is or any political party is, Like resources
are infinite. To say to any group that at any
point in time is only throwing you ten percent of
their support, they're against you ninety percent of the time,
that that's not where we ought to be investing. I
think that's a perfectly rational decision. Well, that the perfectly

(42:50):
rational decision in a lot of ways to not play
the game at all because it's it's not perceived to
be a particularly fruitful game plays very easily into a
narrative that and therefore that party doesn't care at all. Right,
So you got one party that may be able to
be criticized for being inefficient and ineffective, but they're telling

(43:11):
you they care, and you got another party they might
not be telling you they hate you, but they're just
sort of focused on groups that produce more efficiently support.
I mean, it's a it's a tough slog when you're
talking about ninety ten, and so it's understandable, but it's
coming a cost. What I'm saying, and what I'm feeling

(43:32):
instinctively politically right now, is that there's a there's been
a maturation that was inevitable in African Americans position in
this country. We are better off than we've ever been.
Are we as well off as we like to be? No,
but we we are better off. We're better educated, we're
better everything. There's anybody who says we're not better off

(43:52):
today than we were, you know, in the immediate aftermath
of the Civil War or Durns Rights era is just
playing a game. They're playing a retortal game. Yes we are,
We're not where we'd like to be, but we are
better than We're further than we've ever been. What that means, though,
is that people maybe have more of an opportunity now
to sit back and look at things and ask that

(44:13):
question of how has this approach of making everything about
the community in terms of everything I do is written
off to societal factors? Right? We can't hold we can't
even hold a criminal accountable because it's society's fault. Everything

(44:34):
in the Democratic Party, my experience was anything you tried
to actually pin on an individual was written off to society.
So as a mayor, for example, I am really deeply
concerned about the victims of crime because they did nothing wrong.
The law enforcement folks who are out there risking their

(44:56):
lives to prevent crime and to address crime, and and
then there would be victims of crime that we're trying
to protect. Right, That's why I care about victims, would
be victims, cops. The Democrat Party really seems, i mean
legitimately seems to care more about the perpetrators of crimes
than the victims of crimes or the would be victims

(45:18):
or the police. And I tell you what my evidence
of that is is whenever somebody does anything, the finger
gets pointed at the rest of us and we get
told how if we just had built another recreation center,
or you know, if we had put more money into
the schools, this person may not have murdered that person,
or this person may not have raped that person. I

(45:40):
grew up as poor and as black as you can
grow up, and I can tell you in every poor
black community in this country, eighty percent of the people,
like in any other group, are making the decision every
single day to follow the law and do it by
the rules. It's twenty percent, like in any group.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
Well, look, the whole country saw the image just couple
of weeks ago of the six illegal immigrants in New
York City who beat up to New York cups. They
get arrested and within hours they get released no bail,
and they walk out and with both hands they're flipping
the bird at everyone.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
And that.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
To me, that image.

Speaker 4 (46:21):
Of those angry illegal immigrants flipping the bird, I think
sums up the absolute depravity of the view of the left.
And we're seeing, Look, we're seeing great American cities being destroyed.
As you know, Heidi, my wife is a native California,
and you look at California, look at a city like

(46:42):
San Francisco. San Francisco is an iconic American city. In
the last couple of years, twenty two major retailers have
shut down downtown because the crime has gotten so bad.
And I remember Heidi's family lives in California, called and
they just said on the phone door said, well, gosh,
you know, what can we do? People just go into

(47:04):
stores and and you know, just take stuff. There's nothing
we can do about it. I remember I'm listening to that,
and I said, yes, there is. You throw their ass
in jail.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Like put them in handcuffs, or arrest them.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
It's worse than But if it's worse than that center,
and this is what I'm getting at too, it's worse
than that. It's it's quite predictable when you when you
literally change the policies in the prosecutor's office and you
say we won't prosecute theft of any amount underneath one

(47:37):
thousand dollars, and then you don't just make that some
sort of and it would still be bad internal memorandum.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
You go on the news, the publicize, you let every
criminal know.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Is it really a surprise that you have an uptick,
not even an uptick, a sharp increase in smash and
grab jobs and and shoplifting again in an effort to
do some of these things that sound good on paper.
Because society is at fault, not individuals, we do crazy things,

(48:10):
these das and things. Stop prosecuting crimes because it's not fair.
You know what, back to the eighty twenty split, which
is just sort of the metaphorical split in any group
of people who are doing the right thing, people aren't.
That twenty percent just needs to be held accountable for
making an individual choice to break the law and kill
someone or rape someone or terrorize the community. And we

(48:30):
need to stop pretending like everything can be attributed to
some societal factor. It's just not the way it actually is.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
All right, we need to wrap up soon, but I
want to ask two questions to close.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
One.

Speaker 4 (48:44):
In your view, part of what you answered in terms
of how Republicans can do a better job in the
African American community is just showing up and demonstrating that
they give a damn.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
And I think that absolutely is.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
I didn't really say all I need to say on
that because it's not just about it's not about emoting
and showing up into saying we care. It's I think
having an alternative to the liberal approach.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
Well, and that's where my question was going to go,
which is what issues do you think resonate most powerfully
in the African American community that by focusing on those issues,
have a potential to earn their support by saying, look,
this is an issue that is going to make a

(49:30):
difference in your life and your family. I am deeply
passionate on school choice. I think school choice is the
most fundamental civil rights issue in the entire country.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
But I'm interested in your.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Thoughts of what issues actually will resonate and cause voters
who have voted Democrat their whole life to reconsider. Gosh,
maybe that maybe the policies that they're foisting upon me
are not working.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
I think if a Republican candidate for president, candidate for governor,
candidate for mayor, candidate of anybody who's actually perceived to
be running for an executive type position in charge went
to an African American community, I'm talking of people who
are members of the community who are going to vote

(50:17):
and participate in the process. You know, people who are
invested in their community and said, I'm the person who's
going to come in here and I'm going to make
this a safe community for you, because no one before
me has done that, no one either side this community
is you deserve a safer neighborhood than you're living in.
I want you to be able to walk from your

(50:38):
house to the end of the block and back home
without being worried about being mugged. Or robbed or killed
out and you don't feel safe doing that right now.
I want your grandson to feel safe walking from the
school bus home, and he doesn't feel safe doing that
right now. I want to restore a genuine sense of
safety to this community. That's number one. Number two, understand

(51:00):
that the burden of high taxes falls disproportionately on you.
I have polling from my mayoral campaigns that shows in Dallas, Texas,
the groups of voters who most want their taxes lowered
are African Americans, followed by Latinos. Whites are in third

(51:20):
place because they're paying a higher percentage of their income
and the taxes it hits them the hardest. They are
the most worked up about their property tax. Build would
most like to see. I'm going to take it.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
It's a barrier entry.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
If you're climbing the economic ladder, it hits you the
hardest on the earliest round.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
This is supported by polling data. It will show you
that poorer folks actually are most crippled by reckless tax
policy at the local level, in particular, because there's no
there's no game, there's no play a game around that.
There's no tax credit this, and you know, figure that out.

(51:59):
Like the tax bills just do or they foreclose on
the house and you just gotta find a way to
pay it. And that's just all there is to that.
So high property taxes is a horrible thing for poor folks.
You come in and you tell them we're gonna we're
gonna deal with this, these tax burdens that you're facing.
We're gonna deal with the safety in these communities, and
we're gonna give your kids viable choices for schooling. We're

(52:24):
gonna make sure that you actually have a shot at
a decent education. I think at that point people are like,
I don't care, I don't know what party you said
you're with, but I'm ready to sign I'm ready to
sign up for that. And you say, well, actually, everything
I have just describe to you is right dead down
the center of the fairway Republican policy. Yep, everything I
just told that's Republican policy. I think people will literally say, then,

(52:45):
I don't know why I've been voting Democrat this whole time.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
All Right, there's gonna be a lot of people that
are listening and they're gonna want to ask this questions.
I'm gonna ask it if you were up for reelection
right now running into Republican for mayor. Yes, your policies
haven't changed. The only things changed they d went to
an car.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
Correct, could you win? I'd win overwhelmingly. I don't have
any doubt about it, no doubt about it. And I'll
tell you why I believe that. I'll tell you why
I'm glad someone finally asked me that on the record.
That's sort of the chatter as well.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
That's why I ask I going to say, oh, well,
this thay I could never win. That's why he waited
till the end of his serve and then switch parties.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
So here here's the reality that people have to ignore
to even make that argument. But I understand why people
need to make it. I mean I told someone, I said,
you know, you don't switch parties in the two parties
from one or the other and think the other party
is going to say, well, you know, we wish him
the best.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
He was great and it's our loss.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
You know, they got to come up with something and
that kind of These are the kinds of arguments they've
come up with. But here's the reality. I won my
last election with It wasn't ninety three percent. Dallas City,
you know, has ordinances about how right in candidates get
on the ballot, and if you write in a name
other than the actual right in candidate's name, that's there.

(54:00):
You just essentially didn't vote. You threw your vote, your
bowt in the trash of the cast votes, which we were
canvassed by the city and are the official records of
the city. Ninety eight point seven percent of the vote.
That's Democrats and Republicans in that group. That's a pretty
hearty endorsement of the incumbent mayor. And I didn't run
with a D or an R behind my name. I

(54:21):
ran just with you, know, as Eric Johnson, because you
don't run in Texas, in any city with a D
or for folks who aren't from Texas, we don't actually
have partisan elections in Texas for mayor. You just run,
and you don't run with a party support. Now, what
do I think would have actually happened if I had
just come out and said six months before the election,
I'm actually a Republican. Here's what would have happened. Some

(54:43):
Democrats would have gotten together and said, well, this is
an opportunity for us to run an ostensibly just overtly
partisan candidate. We're going to do something that's never been
done in dallasmore, which is to just make it partisan,
like to say, Okay, we got an R running and
now we're going to run a D against him. The
problem is that the are you're talking about for four

(55:04):
years well enough to clear the field and win with
ninety eight or seven percent of the vote. But that
didn't happen yet. So let's just go back and say
a Republican has been that effective who happens to also
be African American and supported by the African American community.
We think that that person would lose simply by saying
I've become a Republican. I think what happens is is

(55:27):
I won the first race in a contested nine person
field that it went to a runoff with twelve percent
of the vote. I won, you know, fifty six forty four.
I think that goes down to the normal, you know,
pretty solid win of a you know, fifty four fifty
three percent win. But I still win. There's still question

(55:47):
I still win that race because I'm the incumbent at
that point. No incumbent mayor if we've had Republican and
Democrat mayors before. By the way, no incumbent mayor seeking
re election in Dallas has ever lost ever.

Speaker 4 (56:00):
Let me ask a final question, which is you have
started now a national organization, a Republican Mayor's Association, and
you have been out articulating that Republicans need to have
an agenda for the cities, that we can't just write
off big cities where an awful lot of Americans live.
And I think that's a very important message. It's something

(56:22):
and I want to ask you what's your vision for
the message Republicans should have in the cities and how
do we end up with a lot more.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Republican mayors the big cities. What's the path forward there?

Speaker 3 (56:36):
I said this in the Wall Street Journale, and I
meant it. It's a two way benefit for America and
for our party. America needs the leadership that Republicans provide
at the local level because of the things we talked
about just a few minutes ago. A Republican mayor is
going to is going to because it's part of the

(56:57):
DNA of the party, is going to be right on
order issues, going to be right on public safety. People
who've asked me about that I've said, let me just
quiz you very quickly. Every bad idea you can think
of about public safety came from one side of the aisle.
There's not even a mixed bag on this issue. If
it's a bad idea when it comes to public safety,
you know, defund the police, don't prosecute, shop with whatever.

(57:20):
Republicans don't propose ideas that undermine law and order. They
not every Democrat believes them, but they only emanate from
the Democrat. Yeah, that's just a factual statement. So a
Republican is going to be right on law and order
in public safety, a Republican mayor is going to be
right on taxes. A Republican mayor ought to be right

(57:41):
on infrastructure spending and investing prudently. And there's studies that show,
I mean been they have proven that you actually have
lower debt levels and you issue less debt when you
have a Republican mayor versus a Democrat when they've mit
professor actually studied this and concluded that it is a
statistically significant different level of debt associated with a city

(58:05):
when there's a Republican in charge and a Democrat in charge.
So we actually need Republicans running our major cities because
eighty percent of Americans live in the cities. By twenty fifty,
that number is going to be ninety percent. So the
country actually needs the leadership. But I'm actually telling you
as a group of partisans, we actually have to pay
attention to this. And I think we have to pay

(58:26):
attention to it because I, in my heart of hearts,
believe that by being competitive in the cities, by basically
re engaging, because we were once engaged. There was a
Republican Majors Association at one time. It had a similar name.
It was like the Republican Conference. It was during the
Ford administration, and it's at some point we just lost

(58:48):
interest in competing at that level and it sort of
just faded away. But it was very active at one time,
and we were more competitive in our cities at one time.
We need to get more competitive there again, because the
margin of victory at the state level in states like Wisconsin,
in states like Michigan, states like Pennsylvania, is the difference

(59:10):
between performing at the city level in You're ready, Madison,
Green Bay, and in Detroit and in Philadelphi and Pittsburgh
by just five or ten percent points better. So in
other words, engaging in the cities in a more significant
way and having the GOP brand associated with the things

(59:32):
we're talking about. At the local level. It doesn't take
that many votes, and now all of a sudden, the
whole state is no longer lock stock and barrel going
one direction because of the advantage has been run up
in the cities. You've cut into the advantage that the
cities have.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
You know, Eric, I'll tell you on that point.

Speaker 4 (59:53):
So Heidi and I met twenty five years ago when
we were both working on the George W. Bush campaign
in two thousand, the presidential campaign. And actually in that campaign,
you know, I was a young, twenty nine year.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Old staffer, but I wrote.

Speaker 4 (01:00:07):
A memo urging that the campaign consider at the time
Condoleeza Rice as a VP nominee. And in the course
of the memo, I laid out all sorts of reasons
why I thought this was worth considering carefully. But one
of the things I did is I did an electoral analysis.
I looked at the three preceding presidential elections, and I

(01:00:29):
posited a series of hypotheticals. I said, what would have
happened if Republicans had gotten five percent more ten percent
more or fifteen percent more of the African American and
Hispanic vote. So I didn't posit what if we get
fifty percent more? I did five, ten or fifteen, so

(01:00:50):
goals that were achievable, I believe, And I ran through
the numbers, and the one that was most that stood
out the most was if the Republicans had gotten an
additional fifteen percent of the African American and Hispanic vote
in nineteen ninety six, Republicans would have won an additional
ninety six electoral votes. I mean, it flips the election dramatically.

(01:01:16):
But to do that, we've got to compete.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
It's a whole different national conversation about the competitiveness of
this party if we are a factor at the city level, yep,
because it's just where so many people are concentrated. It's
getting harder and harder to figure out how to win
elections where we're just not even playing there, and we
just it's just not even we ought to be competing

(01:01:41):
in every major city where we're currently just sort of saying,
you know, a Democrat hasn't won, I mean Repokic had
won there a long time, so let's not try. We
just flipped just in this last cycle, the mayor, the
current mayor of I believe is Charleston, South Carolina, is

(01:02:02):
now a Republican. They hadn't elected a Republican mayor in
Charleston in like one hundred and seventy five years. So
it can happen. It can be done. You have to
run the right Candi. He was a former legislator like
I was, and he ran a great campaign. Now they've
got a Republican mayor. So what's gonna happen next is
he's going to do a good job. And when he
does a good job, these people who've been voting for

(01:02:23):
Democrat mayors for one hundred and seventy five years are
going to say, you know, when Republicans are in charge,
the city just seems to be it's safer, we hire
more cops, and crime goes down, and you know what,
the taxes go down, and you know, things are just better.
The brand means something to them at the local level,
and not just the brand will always have a federal

(01:02:43):
aspect to it, it will always have a state aspect
to it. But right now in this party, we're missing
a brand at the local level. It doesn't mean anything
right now, at the local level, and we get to
decide what it means. And I'm saying we should be
running solid conservatives at the local level winning elections in cities. Well,
and then that makes people with the look let will go, Yeah,

(01:03:04):
I'm actually a Republican. I love my Republican mayor, and
so I'm a Republican. And that has benefits for people
running for US Senate, running for president, running for governor.
But we are right now just aren't doing anything. I mean,
I was shocked to find that there was no one
even in this lane. I wasn't even stepping on anybody's
nose by doing this.

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
Well, let me say, Eric, I appreciate you. I appreciate
your friendship, I appreciate your leadership, and I appreciate your
joining us on the Verdict.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Buckcat, appreciate that. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
Give a big round of a pause from Mayor of Dallas.
Thank you for coming on Verdict. Don't forget We do
this show Monday, Wednesday Fridays. Make sure you hit that
download subscribe auto download button shared on social media wherever
you are in social media and the center.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
I will see you back here in a couple of days.