Like many contentious issues in Dallas, a ballot proposition to increase City Council members’ pay split Tuesday largely along the city’s north-south divide.
Just not in the way that many expected.
In northern Dallas — where voters have historically opposed such raises — support for the measure helped propel it to a 51-49 percent victory. And in southern Dallas — where efforts to increase council pay have been seen as a means to increase diversity — the proposal largely flopped.
“I don’t understand it,” said Mayor Mike Rawlings, who served as the public face of the campaign to pass the proposition. “I don’t.”
The city charter amendment will increase council members’ annual pay to $60,000 from $37,500 and the salary of future mayors — but not Rawlings, should he run again and win — to $80,000 from $60,000.
Many factors influence the outcome of any ballot proposition. There’s the rest of the ballot, which can dictate who’s voting and why. There’s turnout. There’s straight-ticket voting, which doesn’t include city propositions. There’s campaigning, which targets different voter groups in different ways.
In this campaign, there may have been a simple socioeconomic reality: A voter who earns less than $37,500 could be less inclined to give politicians a big raise. And there are more of those voters in the city’s southern half than in the north.
“A lot of where you stand on this depends on where you sit economically,” said Eddie Reeves, a consultant who worked to win approval of the measure.
Backers of the pay raise put forth multiple arguments.
The higher salaries would reflect the demands of what really amounts to a full-time job. Dallas’ council pay lags behind that in comparable big cities. And better pay would attract better, more diverse candidates.
That final point was featured prominently in the outreach to southern Dallas voters.
Rawlings recorded a radio ad comparing the proposal to the landmark U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, stressing the chance to “open the doors of opportunity.”
On Wednesday, he reiterated that the raises would probably have the most impact in less affluent, mostly minority districts.
“Those are the council seats that it will draw greater diversity in,” he said.
Supporters of the council pay raise had to overcome the public’s vague yet persistent belief that politicians simply don’t deserve any more money.
Dallas voters rejected nine of the 10 previous attempts — dating to 1968 — to increase council pay. And many residents still believe that sitting on the City Council is a part-time job that should really be about public service.
When proponents of the measure did polling before the election, they found a slightly negative view of it among voters across the city. But surprisingly, given historical trends, they found deeper opposition in the south.
They thought they could change voters’ minds if they had a chance to explain why the pay raises were needed. But with a campaign budget of just $250,000, the group had to maximize opportunities for gains, Reeves said.
The strategy called for a larger mailer effort, courtesy of Allyn Media, in the city’s northern half, Reeves said. That didn’t mean the southern part of the city was ignored, but the outreach was different.
Some said it perhaps wasn't enough in the southern sector.
“I didn’t see that much campaigning in the south,” said City Council member Tennell Atkins, who represents far southern Dallas.
For Rawlings — who has championed development south of the Trinity River — the underwhelming response of southern voters remains a mystery.
“It’s great we won, but we have so much more work to do,” he said. “We should be winning by 60 or 70 percent.”
Follow Tom Benning on Twitter at @tombenning.
