DALLAS — The petition to recall Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson failed, a memo from the City Secretary’s Office confirmed Wednesday.
Davante Peters, a local activist who runs a health food store in Oak Cliff, started circulating the petition in January. Per the city charter, the petition had to be signed by 15% of all eligible voters in the district in the most recent election, which amounts to 105,595 signatures. Johnson ran unopposed and was re-elected last May.
“Please be advised that because Mr. Peters failed to submit the ‘Recall Dallas Mayor Eric L. Johnson’ petition within the required deadline, I am not able to confirm if the required number of valid signatures were secured. Therefore, Mr. Peters’ petition has been deemed unsuccessful,” the memo from the city secretary concluded.
When he began circulating the petition, Peters cited a report of city council meetings Johnson missed in recent years and Johnson’s switch to the Republican party.
Johnson, though, in a press release Wednesday, called the recall effort a “nothing-burger” and defended his record.
“This was a big, fat nothing-burger cooked up by self-promoting partisan opportunists and served up by some click-hungry members of our local media whose breathless ‘reporting’ on the subject too often resembled an endorsement of this ridiculous recall effort,” Johnson said in the press release. “My attendance was never truly the issue, and my publicly available attendance record proves it. My Administration’s policies and vision for this city have remained unchanged and unwavering. This never even resembled a legitimate effort, and it was a clear waste of time, energy, and ink. This was a nakedly partisan game played by leftists spinning a phony narrative. In the end, far more words were written about this abject failure than there were lawful signatures gathered.”
Peters, an activist among the self-proclaimed “Dallas 9” who were arrested and spent three days in jail for protesting the Botham Jean shooting by blocking an AT&T Stadium parking lot entrance on a game day, says he’s undeterred, though.
“We were only able to accumulate roughly 13,000 signatures – not nearly enough,” Peters told WFAA. “We are resubmitting and expect to get more signatures this go around.”
“We wish the mayor would’ve used his press release to speak to the hearts and concerns of the voters who are confused by his decision [as] opposed to gloating and taunting,” Peters added.
There were reportedly attempts to recall former Mayor Laura Miller in the early 2000s, Dallas City Secretary Bilirae Johnson said there's never been a successful attempt to recall a Dallas mayor in the city's history.
Other headlines: