Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson is one of several Texans who’ve spoken at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. He got five minutes on the convention’s second night, themed “Make America Safe Again,” and the former Democrat took the opportunity to criticize his former colleagues for being soft on crime.
“With their words and their actions, and sometimes with their silence and their inaction, Democrats in power demonstrate they don’t care about stopping the killers or the thieves who terrorize Black and brown communities,” Johnson said.
Johnson has only been a Republican since September (although Dallas’ mayorship is officially non-partisan). He served several terms as a Democrat in the Texas House of Representatives and was elected to his first term as Dallas mayor as a Democrat before switching parties.
Johnson’s speech this week was his first big opportunity to introduce himself to his new team. Alexandra Samuels, senior politics editor for Texas Monthly, spoke to the Texas Standard about his message.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: You recently got a chance to sit down with Mayor Johnson and ask, among other things, why he switched parties. What was his main reason?
Alexandra Samuels: Right. So in that op-ed in the Wall Street Journal late last year, he announced that he was switching. To be clear, though, he does serve in a nonpartisan position as Dallas’ mayor.
But in that op-ed and subsequent interviews, including the one he did with Texas Monthly, Johnson said that a big catalyst for the change was the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd in 2020. So he shared with me that he dealt with protesters who came to his house and wanted to defund the police, and that was an idea he couldn’t get behind.
He also said that public safety, which, as you said, was a big theme of the convention on the night he spoke, is his top priority and that the Republican Party today is more in line with his views on that topic.
Now, to be clear, it’s not like a mainline Democratic idea to “defund the police.” But that was something that really struck him.
Yes. To be clear, there are many Democratic politicians and voters alike who are pro-law enforcement. But his criticism has more been on the party at large.
And he said that they ticked more to the left while he personally has moved further right. And he’s adopted views on crime and public safety now that he feels are more in line with where the Republican Party at large is.
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So we talked about this theme of safety that he spoke on. Did he talk more about what his ideas are in his speech at the RNC?
So he really touted, you know, how Dallas is doing in terms of dealing with issues of crime and public safety. So he’s touted Dallas as I think it’s been three or four consecutive years of violent crime reduction. This was something he told me as well, how Dallas is viewed as one of America’s safest largest city.
And he credits that with the work that he’s done with the Dallas police chief and some of the violent crime initiatives that he’s put in place since he’s been mayor. So those are really the things that he spoke about when it came to public safety.
