Mike Rawlings Vowed to Clean Up Dallas, But the Feds Are Spilling Dirt Everywhere

Ever come home from vacation and find spoiled milk in the fridge? When new Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings gets home, he's going to find the whole cow.

Mark Graham

Mike Rawlings' promises are already looking harder to keep.

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• Dallas (Texas)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• John Wiley Price
• Politics
• Local Politics

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It's not just the FBI raids on his campaign supporters. Last week, while Rawlings and his wife vacationed in Paris, Allynmedia, the local political ad agency that ran his campaign, was already meeting with the head of procurement for the City of Dallas. Allynmedia claimed it was a fun lunch to talk about kids and movies. But a city spokesman said the topics were "the term or duration of both the water conservation contract and any electricity contracts with the City of Dallas."

This is exactly what Rawlings promised he would not allow.

During the campaign, Rawlings said he would support a ban on campaign staffers coming back to City Hall to lobby, for themselves or for clients, to land contracts with the city. And since he made that vow, the stakes have gone up considerably. The FBI has been showing up on the doorsteps of his campaign staff, and many of his key supporters have been named in federal documents associated with the probe of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price.

The current investigation is evoking the same themes we heard during the FBI's 2009 Dallas City Hall corruption probe, which sent former Dallas city council member Don Hill and his wife off to prison. It's all about trading political influence for lucrative public contracts.

With that 2009 case in mind, I asked Rawlings during his campaign about influence peddling at City Hall. I wanted to know whether he would support a ban on campaign consultants coming back to City Hall after elections to get contracts for themselves or other people, in effect trading on their new-found cachet.

"Yes, I would," he said without a moment's pause. "We have got a long way to go to restore the confidence of the voters and trust in our city government."

David Kunkle, his opponent, suggested it might be hard for Rawlings to stick to his vow. Mari Woodlief, Rawlings' campaign boss, is a major lobbyist at City Hall. Willis Johnson, a radio personality and key Rawlings consultant, holds subcontracts and contracts with public entities all over the region.

"I don't care," Rawlings said. "I really don't. The rules need to be tight and hard. This isn't about being nice to people."

Since then, FBI agents have made themselves comfortable in the homes and offices of several people associated with Rawlings and his campaign. They searched the home and office of Price, whose aggressive political support was crucial to Rawlings' victory. They did the same favor for Kathy Nealy, a key Rawlings campaign consultant. Federal documents show the FBI is looking for information about Demetris Sampson, a prominent lawyer and Rawlings campaign supporter with huge county contracts, and Royce West, a state Senator who was an important and early Rawlings supporter credited by some with convincing him to run. And then there's Willis Johnson.

Johnson is a good example of how campaign operatives convert political capital into cash. A radio personality a few short years ago, Johnson now has lucrative technology and construction contracts with almost every significant branch of local government.

In 2008, after the election of former Mayor Tom Leppert, I published emails in which the chair of Leppert's fundraising committee schooled him on how to treat Willis Johnson from there on out.

"Willis is the guy," she wrote. "He is the 'go to' person in all things southern sector and African-American. NO ONE AND I MEAN NO ONE should be going around and usurping his authority."

Since then, nobody has.

What's surprising about the recent FBI raids is that unlike prior federal corruption probes in Dallas, this one seems to look both south, toward the black side of town, and north, toward the white side. One search warrant went to Hillwood Development, owned by the quite wealthy and quite white Perot family. The FBI also visited Allynmedia, of which Woodlief is president.

The Rawlings campaign got important support from kingmakers on both sides of the racial equation. He ran a traditional white-business-establishment campaign, but for the last 15 years, such a strategy has included a hand-in-glove partnership between the business establishment and black leaders associated with Price.

It's all about public works projects, contracts and sub-contracts, and it's the way of the world in Dallas. As Southern Dallas pastor Freddie Haynes put it at an anti-FBI prayer vigil last week: "It's one thing to have civil rights. It's another thing to have your silver rights" — money.

The pattern of FBI search warrants and house calls in Dallas suggests investigators are looking into the Inland Port saga — one of the more notable silver-rights moments in recent history. In that situation, now almost four years old, Price politically sabotaged a jobs-rich, environmentally safe development in his own district after the developer refused to hand over $1.5 million and a 15-percent interest in his company to Price's friends.

Rawlings was still making CEO money when that deal went south. But some of the people who were involved in the Inland Port silver rights situation later became key Rawlings campaign supporters, notably Price, Nealy and Johnson. On the very day Rawlings was inaugurated as mayor, the FBI sent him a tough wake-up call by raiding Price's home and office and Nealy's home and office.