Price has almost too many accolades to count. He was the first African American elected to the Dallas County Commissioner’s Court in 1985 and has served on the court for more than 38 years. He is the longest-serving member of the commissioners court, with the next most senior commissioner having been elected in 2010. In that time, Price has served as chairman of the Dallas County Civil Service Commission, vice president of the Dallas County Juvenile Board, chairman of the Jail Population Committee and many other positions with the county.
To Price’s District 3 constituents, he’s simply known as “Our man downtown.” Over the years, he’s proven himself a political force to be reckoned with to say the least. Even in the face of a federal corruption trial over allegations of bribery and conspiracy, Price was able to cruise by his 2016 opponents for the District 3 seat. After being re-elected, Price was found not guilty of the charges against him. He also flew by his opponents in the 2020 race for the seat.
But Avery thinks he can beat him in an election.
Avery, a Houston native, has lived in the district for nearly a decade. He was hesitant to throw any specific criticisms at Price, often saying only that the District 3 position isn’t Price's to keep. However, he did cite homelessness, jail capacity issues and housing as a few things that need work, blaming county leadership.
“One thing I always want to mention is the seat is not his seat,” Avery said, referring to Price, even though it has been his seat for nearly four decades. “It does not belong to any particular person. The seat is for the people. I think that Commissioner Price has done some great things in his career. He’s really fought for some equity with Black and Brown people. I think there comes a time when the torch needs to be passed,” he said. He thinks that time is now. Price couldn’t be reached for comment.
Avery might not call Price out with any cutting criticism, but he does make some serious claims against the county officials as a whole, alleging that people are dying in his district because they are unhoused. “We are seeing people die daily from some of the decisions that are being made at the county, and I think that’s something we need to take very seriously.”
He also said people are languishing and even dying in the county jail because of poor conditions. According to NBCDFW, the county has reported nine inmate deaths to the state this year. “That falls upon county leadership,” Avery said.
Housing and homelessness, transportation and economic development are among the issues Derek Avery hopes to tackle if elected to represent Dallas County's District 3.
Courtesy Derek Avery
Avery wasn’t sure about running at first. “Then I realized that if I’m asking and looking for other people to do things to bring in a new brand of leadership, it sometimes has to be you that steps out there and does it first,” he said.
“It’s not about anyone else that’s in a seat,” he said. “It’s not about anything like that. It’s more about stepping up and putting the power back into the hands of the people because every seat belongs to the people. It belongs to the community and I think sometimes we get away from that.”
In the middle of his career, he said it’s actually inconvenient for him to run at this point, but that's not the point. “I couldn’t not do it, no matter what’s going on, no matter how uncomfortable it may be and how crazy people may think I am.”
By announcing his candidacy now, he’s hoping to inspire other people who have sound leadership abilities to run for office and to let others know that there aren’t any safe seats in the county.
“Leadership is more than just following the same blueprint that everyone follows,” Avery said. “Leadership is about taking a risk and putting actual policies together to make sure that people in the community actually have the power and to show that whoever’s in the seat is accountable to the people. That’s why I’m running.”
He said one of his biggest obstacles to winning the seat will be name recognition. When facing a titan such as Price, that's a significant hurdle.
”People vote for who they’re familiar with," he said. "Some people are familiar with me, but the vast majority are not. So, the biggest obstacle is allowing people to get to know who Derek Avery is.”
If elected, he said he wants to focus on housing, economic development and transportation. He said these things are inextricably linked. “A lot of times what I’ve seen in local government is we work on one without working on the other, without collaborating,” he said. “With housing, you can’t have affordable housing without having economic development."
One of his overall goals is to increase home ownership in each zip code in the district to at least 50%. He also wants to focus on fighting homelessness. He said there are people who choose not to be housed, but he wants to make sure that those who want a home can have one.
As far as economic development goes, he said the county could do more in partnering with other cities to increase grants that go to small businesses. “If you have an entity that is really focused on investing in those small businesses, we can change the landscape of this particular county and we can hire people from the county,” Avery said.
On transportation, he wants people to be able to get across the county in less than an hour.
He said Sandbranch, a small unincorporated town that doesn’t have running water, sewer or trash collection, is a major issue and sticking point for him because it’s a freedman’s town that has been around for over 140 years. This shouldn’t be a problem in 2023, Avery said, and he thinks it’s the county’s responsibility to come up with a solution.
“The fix [for Sandbranch] is not very expensive in the grand scheme of fixes,” he said. “In a freedman’s town to have Black and Brown people who do not have water is ridiculous when we have access to the capital to be able to do it.”
He said one thing he’ll do in office or out of office is make sure that Sandbranch is protected. “Once it’s developed and water is provided and sewer is provided and trash collection is provided, we don’t want it to become a bastion for gentrification,” he said. “We want to make sure that we protect those legacy residents.” He said he wants to help create a fund that would pay for Sandbranch water bills for at least 10 years so residents won’t be burdened by costs they didn’t always have to account for.
“For me, justice and equity go hand in hand in this case because these people have been done wrong,” he said. “We need to rectify that but we also need to make it easier for them going down the road.”
Beating Price in an election isn't going to be easy, if it's possible at all. Avery may not want to take big shots at the commissioner, but he knows if he isn't bringing something new to the court, voters will see little point in supporting an unknown candidate.
”Right now, unfortunately there have been some leadership gaps that have happened from that particular seat and I think that now is the time to look to new leadership to take us further,” Avery said. “We always appreciate everything that someone has done before us, but right now we don’t have time for what has not worked. We have to move forward with what works. That’s where we are right now. That’s why this is great timing and why it’s so urgent that we have new leadership at the county commissioners court.”
