Soon the Reign of Dwaine will end. My life will change. But the city will not.
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Dwaine Caraway will be missed by columnists. And probably dog-torturers.
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Next month, by law, a new mayor of Dallas must be sworn in, and the curtain must fall on this brief, unlikely and delightful chapter in the history of City Hall. Acting Mayor Dwaine Caraway—he of controversial keys to the city and embarrassing domestic incidents—will return to being a regular city council member, and reporters like me will have to get back to work. The going-back-to-work part makes me sad—sadder, perhaps, than you could know.
But the important thing is this: Mayor Dwaine Caraway has not been fundamentally unlike previous Dallas mayors. He has just been a lot more obvious, which is why I will miss him. I will have to get back to grubbing and groveling for tidbits with my pickax and dust mask, trying to excavate something interesting from the mayor's office.
Since his swearing in on February 26, my life has been a lotus-eater's Nirvana. I loll in bed until early afternoon, eating grapes. Then, in a voice dripping with lazy self-indulgence, I call out, "I suppose it's time for someone to come and tell me what Mayor Dwaine has done this day."
It's always something.
Right before he was to become acting mayor, for instance, Caraway gave an honorary key to the city to Michael Vick, the football player and convicted dog-torturer. Do you have any idea what that's worth to me?
In my normal existence I could wait 20 years for a Dallas mayor to give a key to the city to a convicted dog-torturer. Stuff like that never happens in this town.
In other towns, sure. Buddy Cianci, the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, wouldn't step down until the feds convicted him of being a racketeer. Anybody could write a column in Providence. Think about me. I wind up doing columns about how the mayor of Dallas may be listening to the wrong people on curb-repair policy. Maybe.
You don't know how I suffer. You've never seen me on my knees with clasped hands at my bedside at night, whispering, "...and if just once, in your great wisdom, you could allow the mayor to give the keys to the city to a convicted dog-torturer..."
Early in his tenure, Caraway launched a series of kerfuffles, brouhahas, imbroglios and contretemps involving two characters whom he named "Archie and Arthur." It was about a police incident at his home, which was the result of a dispute between him and his wife, State Rep. Barbara Mallory Caraway. Caraway tried to cover it up by saying the disturbance that night was between two gentlemen attending a football-watching party. He named them Arthur and Archie.
If Tom Leppert, the previous mayor, had tried to cover up a domestic set-to at his house, he would have invented two guys who sounded like a shopping center. "Preston and Forest were speaking to each other in decidedly raised tones over a disputed point in their tennis game, so I dialed 911."
But Arthur and Archie! I would never even think to ask for something that good. Kneeling by my bed at night, I would never say, "...and when the police report does leak, and the mayor tries to blame it on some guys at a party, is there any possible way you could have him give them cartoon names?"
During the reign of Dwaine, these things came to me unbidden, like the gentle rain from heaven. Two years ago, at the urging of Leppert, the city council elected Caraway "mayor pro tem." Normally it's an empty title, but it took on meaning in February, when Leppert announced he was resigning to run for the U.S. Senate, leaving Caraway at the helm.
Since then, Caraway has been warming the chair while the city waits for the new elected mayor to be seated on June 27. Tragically for me, in spite of my prayers, Caraway did not enter that race himself.
You may remember: When it became obvious Leppert was going to bolt and Caraway would succeed him, there was a short-lived movement on the council to strip him of the pro-tem title, to keep him from becoming mayor. But it didn't get far. I like to think that some of the resistance came from council members who thought having Caraway for mayor might be a little fun for a change.
There was plenty of reason to think so, based on his previous career on the council. One of my own favorite episodes from his career as a councilman was the poker house saga. Remember that one?
In May 2010, the city was trying to shut down a gambling house in South Dallas. Neighbors had complained about heavy traffic, day and night, at the house. The cops couldn't get inside undercover, so they started writing tickets on the parked cars that covered the lawn while code enforcement officers went after the homeowner.
Caraway, mayor pro tem at the time, complained about the enforcement activities to city manager Mary Suhm and top police officials. He offered two arguments as to why they should lay off.
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