After the jump, Patrick "Buzz" Williams puts his stamp on some mayoral-candidate mailers that arrived this week. We just didn't want Max Wells, Tom Leppert, Darrell Jordan and Sam Coats to feel as though their money was going to waste.
Max Wells and some of his children. Hah, we kid! They're actually his housekeeper's children. Hah again! Seriously, we love a pol who exploits ethnic children in his campaign material, though perhaps Max should take a lesson from Preston Hollow Elementary School: If you want to sell North Dallas voters on anything, make sure you fill the photos with more white faces. We really love his promise of "tough love." Ooo, yeah, baby, bring it. Yeah, right there, just like that. Suggested safe words if things get out of hand: Trinity toll road.
Tom Leppert takes a more targeted approach to appealing to minority -- Latinos are still a minority in Dallas, right? -- voters. His pose at a library computer with what presumably is a Spanish-speaking boy (at least, the mailer is in both English and Spanish) hearkens to his theme of improved education in Dallas. Unfortunately for him, apparently no one ever told him that the mayor of Dallas has basically zilch to do with schools. That would be nada, Tom. It's a brilliant strategy: Build your campaign on a call to change things you have no responsibility to change, and when you fail, no one can blame you. And what, we wonder, is Tom saying to his young computer buddy? "Este positiono es llama 'el reverso cowgirlo.'"
Captain America is dead, gunned down on the streets of NYC. If the red, white and blue avenger can't survive in the safest big city in America, how long can an elderly mayoral candidate make it on the streets of Big D? (Answer: 37 seconds.) While Wells surrounds his smiling mug with the rainbow kids, Darrell Jordan takes another tried-and-true route to scare up votes: Scare the fucking fuck out of voters. The man knows his gut issues, and if fear-mongering can elect a president, why shouldn't work for a lowly Dallas mayoral candidate?
And lastly, we have the "jus' plain folks" approach of Sam Coats. Yesiree, ol' Sam puts his boots on one at a time, just like all you NASCAR fans, then he loads up his lunch pail with Twinkies and Spam-and-ketchup sandwiches and heads off to the CEO suite. And if a few workin' folk got canned as he did his turnaround magic at Continental and Schlotzky's, well, you can't make a sandwich without chopping some lettuce. Our biggest quibble with Coats' mailer comes from inside: "It's time for a Mayor who takes the challenges Dallas faces more seriously than they take themselves." WTF? Challenges take themselves seriously? (The correct words are "he" and "himself." Maybe Tom has a point.) Guess them plain ol' work-boot-wearing folk didn't have no time for no fancy grammar lessons. --Patrick Williams
