Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson is, again, absent as Pride begins

At the end of business Friday, only two of the three 84-foot-high conical flagpoles in front of Dallas City Hall flew colors.

The U.S. flag and the Lone Star sagged in what little breeze blew around 5 p.m. as the sun beamed overhead. At the base of the poles, residents, community groups, Dallas police officers, activists, representatives of the Dallas Wings and elected officials began gathering to celebrate the start of LGBTQ Pride Month.

Groups including Latino Pride and Abounding Prosperity distributed wellness materials and information on assets for community members under tents as part of a resource fair in City Hall Plaza. But the main draw of the event came around 6 p.m., when the official city of Dallas Pride Flag was hoisted on the center flagpole.

The flag, originally adopted in 2020 and the first dedicated municipal Pride flag in the U.S., was raised toward the sky as residents watched from below. Before the banner was raised, city council members, state representatives and prominent local officials gathered to give remarks.

“The city of Dallas works every day to ensure that the city remains a place that is safe, welcoming, and enjoyable for everyone,” Mayor Pro Tem Jesse Moreno said before reading a proclamation declaring the start of Pride Month in the city of Dallas. “That cannot happen silently. It must be a continuous and intentional effort. Every year, the representation of this effort happens with the raising of this flag.”

Along with Moreno, the ceremony was attended by Dallas City Council members Chad West, Laura Cadena, Paula Blackmon and Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Gay Donnell Willis. Newly elected Dallas County Justice of the Peace Omar Narvaez and Adam Medrano, two former Council members who were original signatories of the city’s first resolution adopting the banner in 2020, spoke at the ceremony, which was also attended by state Representatives Rafael Anchia, Jessica Gonzalez and Linda Garcia. Even MavsMan made an appearance.

But as the southernmost pole flew the flag it had lacked 20 minutes earlier, another absence was apparent. Amid a flurry of handheld Pride flags and folding rainbow fans, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson was, once again, elsewhere.

West declined to comment on the mayor’s absence but said Pride remains important in light of political attacks on LGBTQ rights and that he hopes Dallas can remain as welcoming as it was when he arrived.

“For me, coming here was a lifesaver in a lot of ways,” West said. “I want this to still be a city where we — young gays, old gays — can come here and feel embraced.”

‘Mayor of Somewhere Else’

Johnson isn’t especially known for his enthusiasm for certain city matters. The two-term mayor recently drew criticism for leading “by newsletter” after the city announced a $33 million budget gap, missed more than 130 hours of council meetings from 2019 to 2023, according to prior reporting by KERA, and has been given the moniker of “Mayor of Somewhere Else” by notable news outlets in Dallas.

But what makes this particular absence compelling is that — for the first few years of his term — Johnson regularly participated in or promoted Pride Month and LGBTQ-visibility initiatives in Dallas. He spoke at the Pride flag ceremony as recently as 2022, declared September LGBTQ business month in 2021 and issued proclamations declaring the start of Pride Month beginning in 2020.

All that seemed to abruptly change in 2023, the year he controversially announced he would change his party affiliation to Republican after winning a second term while running as a Democrat. Taking a Texas Rangers-style approach, proclamations and public statements from Johnson on Pride Month stopped, as did his attendance at Pride events. Johnson’s office and city spokespersons did not return requests for comment.

For the first time ever, the Dallas Pride parade will be held downtown, on Saturday. Unlike Johnson’s predecessor, Mike Rawlings, who attended the event several times and wore a rainbow sash when proclaiming the beginning of Pride Month in 2018, the current mayor has not yet attended. Lee Daugherty is a board member of Pride Dallas and an organizer for the parade. He said he had known Johnson to be an advocate for the community before 2023, but that he has not heard any plans for him to appear this weekend. 

“He made that decision, and if he, in making that decision, now backtracks all of his previous allyship, comments and work and support, that’s on him.” Daugherty said. “Again, it’s not on this community. We haven’t changed, and all those years he did support us, he didn’t change. So what changed now?”

While Johnson has retreated from public view at times during Pride Month, the mayors of the other three largest cities in Texas have remained active. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson and Houston Mayor John Whitmire attend Pride events and parades annually, with Whitmire recently speaking at a Pride in Business luncheon. The first openly LGBTQ Mayor of San Antonio, Gina Ortiz Jones, will lead the city’s Pride parade down the San Antonio River as grand marshal this year, according to an announcement.

“It’s really important that we see our elected officials not just come through when it’s voting time, and say, ‘Hey, I need you to vote for me,’ but to really celebrate with us and stand together with us in that solidarity that we’re going to get past these current administrations and their attacks into a better future,” Daugherty said.

Why does it matter this year?

Visibility is especially important right now, Daugherty said, at a time when rainbow crosswalks in Oak Lawn have been erased. In March, the city of Dallas began removing the crosswalks after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to withhold state and federal transportation funding if the city did not wipe “political messages” from roadways.

It’s also crucial, he said, at a time when LGBTQ rights are under increasing attack from Republicans at a legislative level. The American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking 530 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures around the country, with legislation targeting transgender Americans especially coming to the forefront as Republicans have made bathroom bills and athletic regulation a pillar of their platform.

“LGBTQ equality is not a partisan issue,” Javan Gonzalez, a Democratic precinct chair and executive board member of the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, said. “There are gay and lesbians, transgender people on every side of the aisle of every public or political affiliation, and so it’s about equality. It’s a human rights issue, and it just goes to show that he does not value LGBTQ people, as much as other residents, or he’s scared of losing his seat, or a future run for some other political office.”

“But based on his track record of showing up in other spaces, I’m not quite surprised that he doesn’t show up in Pride spaces,” he added. Johnson was in attendance on Monday when the World Cup International Broadcast Center was opened inside the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. Along with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Johnson delivered a prepared statement while hoisting the World Cup trophy, even though, he admitted from the stage, he probably wasn’t supposed to.

Actions by the Texas Legislature are not included in the ACLU report as the body is currently out of session until January. However, in the 89th Texas Legislative Session, over 200 anti-LGBTQ bills were filed, according to the ACLU of Texas, with over 100 targeting transgender individuals alone. Less than 10 were ultimately approved, but the new laws signed by Abbott create a state definition of gender, add a new section to official documents for gender at birth and forbid LGBTQ school clubs.

Corey Carrasco, president of the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, said Johnson’s absence isn’t especially damning in the context of his attendance record overall, but sends a message given the current climate.

“It’s really kind of indicative of himself, we don’t see him at council sometimes,” Carrasco said. “We don’t see him at other places in the community, so it’s no surprise to any of us at this point that he doesn’t care. But, in this moment when the community is under attack, when I think if I’m a politician in that role, if I’m elected by Democrats — really, the city — to serve the community as a whole, and then not to show up. What does that show to your neighbors?”

Carrasco said that if the mayor, who once authored an ultimately unsuccessful bill creating workplace discrimination protections for LGBTQ Texans during his time as a state representative, wanted to reopen dialogue with the community, he would be cautiously open to it.

“If there is a channel to him, I would be open to it,”  If he called and said, “OK, let me hear you out.’ [For us], ‘This is what’s going on in the community, and these are my concerns. Now, let me hear what your response to that is.’ I think we kind of can’t silo ourselves just because he’s a Republican now,” Carrasco said. “He’s still the mayor.”