Oh, no, wait a minute, please. You're telling me The Stonewall Democrats of Dallas are shocked and amazed because Delia Jasso, the City Council candidate they endorsed against Scott Griggs in North Oak Cliff, turns out to be a spineless flip-flopper?
They thought she was going to be what? Abraham Lincoln? To people paying attention, Jasso always looked like somebody walking around with a big Magic Marker legend on her forehead saying, "Please don't trust me."
She apparently intends to break her promise to support a gay marriage resolution. I have a call in to her, no response yet. Dallas Voice online reported two days ago that Jasso, who lost to Griggs in the recent election, is now using her lame-duck days on the council to flip on the earlier commitment, possibly killing the resolution by costing a vote needed to get it on the council's agenda.
Stonewall Democrats of Dallas is an LGBT group with a history of forehead-slappingly perplexing endorsements in City Council races. In 2011 in the East Dallas District 14 race they endorsed James Nowlin against Angela Hunt. Hunt is one of the biggest friends the LGBT community has ever had at City Hall. She wound up beating Nowlin 2-to-1, probably with a lot of support from LGBT voters who were slapping their foreheads over the endorsement.
This time around the Stonewallers endorsed Jasso over Griggs, who has been another stout champion of diversity at City Hall. Jasso lost 40/60 to Griggs, probably with a lot of LGBT support. This almost certainly is not a question of the LGBT community not having its act together politically, much more likely a case of the Stonewall Democrats not having their act together LGBT-ally.
By all accounts her defeat put Jasso into the kind of vindictive rage her peers on the council have come to know all too well. For sheer meanness of spirit when the current council gets down and dirty behind closed doors, Jasso is topped only by Vonciel Hill.
But it's not like her defects of character were a big secret. One of the more absurd chapters in the recent campaign occurred when she lied to the entire editorial board of The Dallas Morning News about a memo she said she had signed demanding that a big fracking/zoning issue be put on the council agenda. Her opponent, Griggs, was sitting at the same table for the same Star Chamber session with the editorial board.
Strangely, I was not invited. Therefore I must rely on the accounts of others whose word I trust. I was told that when Jasso swore to the board that she had signed the fracking thing. Griggs, sitting right next to her, kept saying, "No, Delia, that's not true."
So they have this big duel of, "True," "Not true, "True, "Not true." Then the board says, "Scott, you can go, but Delia, we need you to stay after school." With Griggs out of the room, they start in on her, like, "Now, Delia ... Delia ... now, Delia," bringing to mind the Kristen Wiig SNL character Gilly, who always says, "Sorry."
But instead of saying sorry, Jasso runs her ass back to City Hall and tries to retroactively sign the memo. Griggs, a lawyer and no fool, has been there ahead of her and drawn some kind of line across the bottom of the memo with a notation to the effect that only he and Hunt had signed it as of such and such a time and date.
Then ... hey, do you mind if I do not tell the rest of this story? It just gets stupider and stupider the deeper you go. You get the point, right? Magic Marker on the forehead.
Here's what I think. I think the Stonewall Democrats have a tendency to make endorsements on what turn out to be flimsy criteria at best and at worst really bad information. They just need to work harder at this.
Or they could change the name of the group to the Mario Mendoza Democrats. An infielder who played for the Pirates, Mariners and Rangers between 1974 and 1982, Mendoza achieved one of the worst batting averages in baseball history, still referred to as "The Mendoza Line," a benchmark for failure at the plate.
Hey, it's a Latino name. That way they could even add a motto: "Just because we're diverse doesn't mean we're actually paying attention."
