Editor's Note, 1/29/2025, 8:46 a.m.: This article has been updated to include new information based on comments Carolyn King Arnold gave during an NBC 5 interview after our original story was published as well as a correction regarding how often the city charter can be amended.
Filing to run for Dallas’ City Council is normally a straightforward affair: a potential candidate submits a campaign treasurer report, which allows them to begin fundraising. Facebook pages might be made, yard signs designed, and an official ballot application is submitted to the city secretary during a filing period several months before voters head to the polls.
The time to file for Dallas’ May election began earlier this month and will stay open until Feb. 14, but already one snag seems to have hit the District 4 ballot.
Dallas is governed by a charter document that can be amended every two years, and it used to be that council members were only limited to four consecutive terms at the horseshoe. If they took an election season off and waited two years, they would once again be eligible to serve their district. In November, voters approved the charter amendment Proposition E that ends the days of Dallas’ more lenient term limits for council members.
Now a person may not exceed eight years of service, whether consecutive or nonconsecutive, in their capacity as a council member. Current council members were not grandfathered into this new standard, which poses a problem for Arnold, who is finishing up her eighth year on the Dallas City Council after being elected in 2015, losing reelection in 2017, and winning the seat back in 2019, 2021 and 2023.
If not for Prop. E, the May election — assuming Arnold won her seat back — would have started the clock on a very much allowed fourth consecutive term for Arnold. Instead, it seems her eight years at Marilla Street are up. If Arnold wants to stay at the horseshoe, the only position she can run for would be that of mayor, Prop. E states.
Arnold’s office declined to comment on the city secretary’s decision to deny her reelection application. Representatives for Arnold would not say whether or not she intends to appeal the denial, but according to a Jan. 28 interview with NBC 5, Arnold plans on pushing for inclusion on the ballot.
“Is this the end? Well, it’s not,” Arnold told NBC 5.
Arnold spoke to The Dallas Morning News last week before she’d filed her reelection request, and said she planned to do so and did not feel Prop. E should apply to her. Arnold said she did not know Prop. E would affect her reelection eligibility prior to the November election, and she doesn’t think Dallas voters knew either.
“This is not a self-serving venture,” she said. “This is about the people and their belief in this city’s governance and that the charter that I was elected under in 2019 afforded me an opportunity to be eligible to ask the people for permission to represent them for four, two-year terms.”
Arnold said she only recently “heard through the grapevine” that the proposition would affect her, but in October her office told D Magazine they did know the proposition would render her ineligible for reelection.
Two other candidates have filed for the District 4 race: Maxie Johnson, a pastor who has served as a Dallas ISD board member since 2019, and Landers M. Isom III. The city secretary also ruled Isom ineligible for the ballot on Friday. Isom had not responded to a message left by the Observer about the ruling at time of publication.
As reported by D Magazine, several other D4 names have filed campaign treasure reports, indicating that Johnson will likely not be the lone name on the ballot.
At least three other council seats are open in the May election: Council members Tennell Atkins and Omar Narvaez are term limited, and Jaynie Schultz has announced she will not run for a third term.
