Did political concerns drive council member Rick Callahan to call for breaking the backs of panhandlers
Earlier this week, Dallas council member Rick Callahan went well over the line in his recommendations about how the city should treat panhandlers – saying “Break their backs, break their spirit — that’s the only way we’re going to win this battle.”
Presumably, by the time you’re standing on a street corner or in the median holding a sign with your hand out, your spirit is already fairly broken. Rare is the beggar filled with vim and vigor for life.
The comments were inappropriate, but I understood Callahan’s frustration. He represents Pleasant Grove, where panhandling doesn’t get the same level of attention that it might at, say, Preston Road and Walnut Hill.
On that basis, it seemed worth chalking this up to a bad moment for someone new to the public eye.
Unfortunately, that isn’t all that there is here.
WFAA’s Tanya Eiserer reported last night that Callahan may have had a major political motive not only for calling for a public crackdown but for quietly insisting police act against panhandlers in his district.
Callahan’s top political rival is Jesse Diaz, a longtime gadfly who has been known to cross a line or two himself.
According to Eiserer’s story, Callahan e-mailed Mayor Mike Rawlings, City Manager A.C. Gonzalez and Police Chief David Brown about Diaz.
In an e-mail with the subject line “my political opponent,” Callahan noted that Diaz was raising cane about panhandlers.
“He will use it as a guerilla tactic against my reelection candidacy. If we are unsuccessful in reigning this problem in, then this area may fall victim to the methods of this man and his poisonous rhetoric. He is not about solutions only the blame game. I need your full response and need it now to end this malaise that has fallen upon Southeast Dallas.”
Here’s where the line gets crossed in a major way. It’s okay to ask police to look into a panhandling problem in your district. That’s good representation.
It’s not okay to do it because you want to save yourself from a future campaign issue and keep your political opponent at bay.
Callahan can’t abide Diaz. He told me that he decided to run based largely, if not solely, on the fact that it looked like Diaz would win by default.
But if panhandlers are such a problem they deserve their backs broken, then Callahan should have been sending these e-mails long before Diaz used the issue to create a problem for him. That’s leadership instead of politics.