A would-be candidate for mayor of Dallas said he plans to sue the City Secretary for allegedly preventing him from being on the ballot despite having fulfilled the necessary requirements.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Johnson announced on February 20 that he will run for reelection unopposed in the City’s upcoming general election on May 6. However, another mayoral hopeful alleges that he is being kept from running due to corruption at City Hall.
Jrmar Jefferson announced his plan to run for mayor in January, and his campaign told The Dallas Express that his application to be on the ballot was “approved and submitted on time.”
In the City of Dallas, 404 signatures are needed to run for mayor. Jefferson is listed as a candidate on the Dallas City Hall website, along with his brother Delmar Jefferson, who is running for City Council District 7. However, both are listed as having not qualified.
“Jefferson presented the City Secretary [Bilierae Johnson] and Dallas Elections Manager, Parris Long, with over 1,050 signatures, nominating Jefferson to be on the ballot for Mayor,” Deputy Campaign Manager Sharlisia Moore wrote in an email to The Dallas Express. “The petitions were signed by Jrmar Jefferson in front of the city’s Election Manager, and they were promptly delivered in his hand.”
However, Moore alleged that only 52 of the 107 pages of signatures were filed. She added that Secretary Johnson said she “personally verified” the 52 pages of 288 registered voters but did not consider the other 55 pages of more than 540 voters.
“The City Secretary stated that the additional pages were not accounted [for] because they were not submitted in a timely manner and were incomplete,” said Moore. “We know this statement to be erroneous.”
The Dallas Express asked the City Secretary for clarification on why Jefferson was disqualified.
Secretary Johnson told The Dallas Express that “petitions are verified in accordance with the 141.062 and 141.063 of the Texas Election Code,” but did not comment directly on Jefferson’s case by the time of publication.
According to Moore, everyone who signed the nomination papers is a registered voter in the City of Dallas.
“This is unethical, illegal, and consist[s] of corruption,” Moore continued. “The city secretary used coercion to prevent people from filing for office. Dallas voters should have had a choice, and nobody should run unchallenged.”
Moore said Jefferson plans to sue Secretary Johnson “for fraud and candidate coercion as well as additional torts for constitutional violations.”
Jefferson has previously run in 13 other elections, all of which he lost, including the race for Texas’ 1st congressional district in the midterm elections last year.
Several weeks before the mayor’s announcement that he would run again, Jefferson spoke with The Dallas Express and discussed what he claimed are unfair systems that allow incumbent candidates to run for reelection unopposed.
“The people [who are] in office right now, many … are going to run unopposed,” he said. “It’s not that they’re running unopposed because people are happy with them. They’re running unopposed because the establishment — we don’t have public[ly] financed elections. And the unfair competition is the same way you have disparity in community to community.”
He alleged that there is corruption in the City government, saying, “I want a seat at the table to keep them honest.”
Mayor Johnson has previously said that eradicating corruption in City Hall is one of his highest priorities, citing his creation of the Office of Inspector General (OIG).
When discussing his reelection prospects, Mayor Johnson said one of his largest successes has been “eradicating corruption at City Hall.”
The Dallas Express reached out to Mayor Johnson for comment on Jefferson’s application, but did not receive a response by the time of press.
Johnson has also boasted about other improvements across Dallas during his tenure as mayor.
“We’ve led the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic,” he said during a February 28 press conference. “Since I became mayor, Dallas has added $14 billion in new development and we have billions more in the pipeline.”
However, Jefferson questioned these professed successes and noted several issues that persist throughout Dallas, including crime, poverty, homelessness, and crumbling infrastructure.
“We’re not making [Dallas] better,” Jefferson said. “I want Dallas to be the jewel of the country. … I want people to come here and spend their money, but we’ve got to fix the potholes first.”
When discussing crime, Jefferson told The Dallas Express he would be “the toughest mayor,” explaining that the City needs to do a better job at keeping its people safe and “rebuild” the relationship between the people of Dallas and law enforcement.
He suggested that improving the economy is an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to confronting crime.
“Poverty is the brick that is crushing everything,” Jefferson said. “If you don’t address poverty as a public safety issue, you can never keep the constituents safe.”
Jefferson said that another consequence of the City’s failure to properly address poverty has been the crisis of homelessness, which continues to persist despite millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on it every year.
“The homeless situation hasn’t been solved,” he said, adding that the crisis “scares business owners” as it creates an environment of “uncertainty.”
“We’re going to solve the homeless solution,” he continued. “We’re going to find the resources. We’re going to work with the county to create … the Dallas Transformation Center, where we [will] transform people’s lives,” he said. “It’s gonna be akin to something like Haven for Hope, but so much better.”
He explained that, like the San Antonio-based Haven For Hope, the proposed Dallas Transformation Center would contain the homelessness crisis in a single geographic space while providing services to the homeless in an effort to get them back on their feet and address any underlying issues such as mental illness or drug abuse.
“It’s gonna take tough love and a tough leader, with compassion and empathy, showing the patience needed and [having] the temperament to be a leader in a crisis,” he said. “Because Dallas is in a crisis right now.”
The one-stop-shop model of Haven For Hope is even favored by Dallas residents as an alternative way to address homelessness, according to polling conducted by The Dallas Express.