How Democrats Abandoned Black & Hispanic Communities: One-on-One with Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson

Summary

The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

Episode: How Democrats Abandoned Black & Hispanic Communities: One-on-One with Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson
Release Date: February 26, 2024

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The 47 Morning Update, host Ben Ferguson engages in a profound conversation with Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, moderated by Senator Ted Cruz. The discussion centers on Mayor Johnson's recent party switch from Democrat to Republican and examines the broader implications of Democratic policies on Black and Hispanic communities in the United States.

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Guest Background and Party Switch

Senator Ted Cruz opens the conversation by highlighting Mayor Eric Johnson's impressive credentials, including his education from Harvard College, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a master’s from Princeton. Elected as a Democrat to both the Texas state legislature and the mayoralty of Dallas, Johnson garnered 93% of the vote in his recent reelection, later revealing his transition to the Republican Party.

Notable Quote:

“I was born in West Dallas, a very poor community, to working-class parents who never went to college... I have always believed that how things turn out for you are largely determined by your own efforts.”
[05:00] – Eric Johnson

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Motivations Behind the Party Switch

Mayor Johnson elaborates on his disenchantment with the Democratic Party's philosophy, emphasizing a clash between his personal beliefs in individual responsibility and meritocracy versus the party's focus on systemic factors influencing success and failure.

Key Points:

• Cultural Inheritance: Johnson discusses the cultural expectation within the African American community to align with the Democratic Party, which he feels has been a misalignment with their true needs and aspirations.
• Policy Misalignment: He criticizes the Democratic stance that attributes personal outcomes to societal factors, arguing it undermines personal accountability and merit.

Notable Quote:

“The Democratic Party wants you to believe they do [support you], they want you to believe you can't get there without them.”
[08:07] – Eric Johnson

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Impact of Democratic Policies on Communities

The conversation delves into specific Democratic policies, such as the "defund the police" movement and high taxation, which Johnson argues have detrimental effects on public safety and economic stability, particularly in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Key Points:

• Defunding the Police: Johnson recounts his resistance against the Democratic push to significantly reduce police funding in Dallas, highlighting the resulting increase in crime and the disconnect between party rhetoric and community needs.
• Tax Burden: He points out that high local taxes disproportionately affect low-income residents, impeding their economic mobility and quality of life.

Notable Quotes:

“Defund the police... was a construct of frankly, white liberals who don't live in those communities at all.”
[34:13] – Eric Johnson

“High property taxes are a horrible thing for poor folks. You come in and you tell them, we're going to deal with these tax burdens that you're facing.”
[49:40] – Eric Johnson

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Republican Principles and Community Support

Mayor Johnson advocates for Republican principles such as law and order, fiscal responsibility, and individual merit as solutions to the challenges faced by minority communities. He emphasizes the importance of Republicans actively engaging with and addressing the specific needs of Black and Hispanic voters.

Key Points:

• Law and Order: Johnson asserts that Republican support for law enforcement enhances community safety, which is crucial for the well-being of minority neighborhoods.
• Economic Policies: He highlights the need for lower taxes and prudent infrastructure spending to foster economic growth and stability within these communities.

Notable Quote:

“Republican policies are about taking responsibility for yourself and not believing that the Democratic Party or any party is there to save you.”
[10:05] – Eric Johnson

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Strategies for Republican Engagement in Minority Communities

The discussion shifts to strategies for increasing Republican support among African American and Hispanic voters. Johnson argues that building trust through tangible policy outcomes—such as improved public safety and reduced tax burdens—is essential.

Key Points:

• Demonstrating Care: Republicans must show genuine concern for the communities they aim to serve, moving beyond mere rhetoric to implement effective policies.
• Policy Alternatives: Providing clear, actionable alternatives to Democratic policies can persuade voters to reconsider their longstanding party affiliations.

Notable Quote:

“We need Republicans running our major cities because 80% of Americans live in cities. By 2050, that number is going to be 90%. So the country actually needs the leadership that Republicans provide at the local level.”
[54:38] – Eric Johnson

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Future Outlook and Conclusion

Mayor Johnson envisions a revitalized Republican presence in major urban centers, arguing that effective governance grounded in conservative principles can lead to safer, more prosperous communities. He underscores the importance of running competent Republican candidates who resonate with the lived experiences of minority voters.

Key Points:

• Republican Mayors Association: Johnson discusses his role in founding a national organization aimed at increasing Republican leadership in cities.
• Electoral Viability: He expresses confidence in his electability as a Republican, citing overwhelming support in his current mayoral race.

Notable Quote:

“Everything I just described to you is right dead center of the fairway. Republican policy.”
[50:42] – Eric Johnson

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Closing Remarks

Senator Ted Cruz commends Mayor Johnson for his leadership and commitment to his community. The episode concludes with a call to action for Republicans to engage more deeply with urban centers and minority communities to foster meaningful political change.

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This episode offers an insightful exploration of the intersection between race, politics, and community leadership, presenting Mayor Eric Johnson's perspective on the necessity of Republican principles in addressing the specific challenges faced by Black and Hispanic Americans.

Transcript

[Ben Ferguson]

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[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, I am incredibly proud to welcome onto the Verdict podcast a good friend of Mine, the 60th mayor of the City of Dallas, the current sitting Mayor, Eric Johnson. And I want to Eric, welcome.

[Eric Johnson]

Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here, Senator. Thanks for having me.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Now I want to tell our podcast listeners some of Eric's background because many of you may know him but some of you may not. Eric is the current Mayor of Dallas. Eric was. He went to Harvard College.

[Eric Johnson]

I did.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

He went to University of Pennsylvania law school. He got a master's from my alma mater, Princeton.

[Eric Johnson]

That's true.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

He was elected to the Texas state legislature and he was an elected Democrat in the state legislature. And Eric is African American.

[Eric Johnson]

I am.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

It's an audio show. So I saw.

[Eric Johnson]

So one has to be paint the picture.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

And then Eric was elected mayor of the City of Dallas again as a Democrat. And then he was just recently reelected Mayor of the City of Dallas. He was reelected with 93% of the vote in the city of Dallas.

[Eric Johnson]

Technically, 98.7, but I'll take 93. We'll take 93.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

And then after his reelection, Eric announced to the city of Dallas and the world that he was switching parties and he left the Democrat Party and he became a Republican. And it was. It was a decision that those of us who knew him and had worked with him, I have to say, I was not shocked or surprised, but it did shock and surprise a lot of people. And so Eric is, I think, a very important leader in Texas and a very important leader in the country. And so, Eric, I appreciate your coming and joining us this evening and being a guest on Verdict.

[Eric Johnson]

I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Thank you so much. This is a real honor to be here. Thank you for the invitation. It's great to see all of you.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

All right, so you go to the Texas state legislature, you get elected mayor of Dallas, you get reelected mayor of Dallas. Now, this entire time, you've been an elected Democrat. And as an elected Democrat, there's a ecosphere around you. You've got donors, you've got volunteers, you've got supporters. Walk us through your decision making, because switching parties a big deal. And I know you didn't make that decision lightly. So what led you to change parties?

[Eric Johnson]

Yeah. And, you know, I don't know how deep we can dive into this because.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

I would the joy of a podcast. We could go as deep as you want. And that's actually what's fun, that we're not on TV with a six minute sound bite. We can actually talk about what's really going on.

[Eric Johnson]

That's exactly what I wanted to know. Because unfortunately, because of the structure of the traditional media, you really have to sort of hit that question quick and then get out of it. And you don't really get to give a full answer to that because it's way more complicated than, you know. There was this one thing that happened and I just said, I'm out of here. It's an evolution for me in just kind of coming to accept who I have always been and why I've struggled as a Democrat the whole time.

[Ben Ferguson]

Was it the issues that made you think about becoming a Republican?

[Eric Johnson]

The issues were a manifestation, a policy manifestation, of problems I had been having with the Democratic Party because of who I am as a person for a long time. So I'll give you some idea what I'm talking about. I was born in West Dallas, very poor community, to working class parents who never went to college, but, you know, got married right out of high school, still married. To this day. Raised four of us. And I was raised in a community that was very. And in a family that was very, very faith oriented. The church was hugely important to us. I mean, I grew up, I spent more time in church than really anyplace else. We'd go to church Sunday morning, stay almost all day, go home for just a couple hours and come back for Sunday evening. We. We'd go to Bible class on Wednesday. We'd have, you know, I wasn't in the choir. I couldn't sing. But, you know, we had song practice and things like that. So I spent a lot of time in the church. I spent a lot of time with grandparents who were very, very, very about the Church of Christ. And that's how. That's the tradition I was raised in. And so we were sort of taught and it was separate and apart from anything political. My family wasn't political at all. No politicians in the family. I'm not even sure we had a real awareness of what was going on around us politically, but a very strong sense of just right, wrong. You know, this is how you treat people. This is how you behave. You follow the law, you obey the law, you work hard. You know, an honest day's work, honest day's pay. That just sort of. That was just always in the background. And so I think I was always politically in a weird posture with the Democratic Party because at its core. And I didn't understand this at the very beginning because. And I hope we can actually get to this and talk about this. There are. So you sort of inherit the Democratic Party as a cultural heirloom when you're African American in this country, sort of gets handed to you as part of who you are. I probably had more phone call. I know I had. I had more phone calls with people distraught about this party switch than I ever would have gotten if I had told people that I was actually leaving the church. There's no question about it.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Wow.

[Eric Johnson]

There's no doubt about it. I will say that loudly and on the record. I had more panicked phone calls from people genuinely concerned about what I was doing and why I could. How I could do this. Then I would have gotten. If I'd said, I just don't think I'm into this Jesus thing anymore. I just don't think. I'm not a Baptist or I'm not a Church of Christ, or I'm not. I don't think I would have had anywhere near the same reaction. It's that cultural.

[Ben Ferguson]

How intense was that? Was it family? Was it Friends. It was just colleague.

[Eric Johnson]

It was, it was a lot of consternation. The family and friends was well meaning, but I think a lot of other folks, it was just, you know, we have to, we have to take this guy down now. And it got, it was, it got to be pretty quickly. This the traditional standard partisan warfare stuff, but kind of going back to what I was. And I said, I want to know how deep we could go, because this is actually pretty. I haven't had a chance to talk about this with anybody. The fit was almost in some ways inevitable. It was going to. There was gonna be a problem. Because at the Democratic Party's core, what I was saying is a belief that how things turn out for you in this country are largely determined by things that are outside of your control. The race you're born, the neighborhood you're born in, it just kind of. It excuses away your failures and it excuses away your successes to something that's out of your control. If you're successful in your white and males, because of course you were. And if you're unsuccessful as an African American, it's. Well, the deck was stacked against you. And I just wasn't a person who ever believed that. And that wasn't how I was raised, and it's not what I was taught, but it was the overarching political philosophy of my, of my party. And there was always just that tension between wanting to tell people, hey, this actually is a country where anything you want to do, you can do. And I'm living proof of it. Because at every turn, if I put the work in, I was told repeatedly over and over by people who didn't look like me, who didn't come from my community, we're proud of you, and we'd like to give you more opportunity. I wasn't having doors slammed in my face the harder I pushed. I was having more of them given to me. So the story of my life and then the rhetoric that my party wanted me to put out there as the justification for what we were doing politically just never really matched.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

I've always thought one of the most important differences between the parties is that the Republican Party believes in individual responsibility and believes in merit and a meritocracy. Now, that's not to say that there aren't things that are unfair, but in. The reason people come from all over the world to America is there's no country on earth where people can achieve their dreams the way you can here. And you know, and I do think a lot of the, A lot of the Democrat Party is their. The ideology in today's Democrat Party is about eliminating individual responsibility and eliminating merit. And I think about, you're a black man, I'm an Hispanic man. I think about what my father said to me when I was a kid about racism. And my dad, you know, as you know, he came from Cuba as an immigrant. And my dad said when he came out of University of Texas in 1961, and my father said, look, I'm obviously an immigrant. My father had, had and still has a very heavy Spanish accent, you know, my dad. And he said, listen, if I'm applying for a job and I'm applying against an American, and we're equally qualified, my dad said, you know what? They'll hire the American. Now, my father wasn't particularly outraged at that. He said, you know what? In Cuba, they'd hire me. That's just kind of human nature. That's the way way people often behave. And my father's answer to that, he said, I'm just going to be three times as good as the other guy. I'll make it so. You'd have to be a blithering idiot to hire the other guy. And. And when you, when you take individual responsibility and it's not to say racism doesn't exist, racism absolutely exists, but how you respond in the face of adversity and I think the principle of work harder, be better, be more excellent, I think that is a path that every one of us think about what you teach your kids.

[Eric Johnson]

That's. If you don't mind, please, I'll jump in here and say this because there's so much that I could say about this. And again, this is the slow burn over a career. But there's the specific policy, things that came about as the mayor that made this decision, something that needed to happen and something that became much more urgent for me. But while we're talking about sort of the underpinnings of this, and you talk about what you teach your children, that's really kind of the point in terms of the problem that I have with the Democratic Party's philosophy on this particular issue, is you have to decide one way or the other what you're going to tell a generation of African American kids or kids who are growing up in tough circumstances. Are you going to tell them that your country doesn't work for you, doesn't really matter what you do, it doesn't work for you, it's not built for you, it's not designed for you, the system stacked against you, and just hope that they don't, you know, turn to crime or turn to other things because you've told them that essentially that's fine, that's okay. Because there's no way you could do the things you'd like to do legitimately. You can't get to where you want to go legitimately anyway, the deck stacked against you. Or do you want to tell them the truth, which is the system that we have is the best on earth for translating people's hard work and effort into tangible increases and improvements in their life's circumstances? It just is. And I've told my liberal friends for many years, even before I switched parties, I said, for the ones who go around sort of bashing the country, I say, guys, if there was a place on earth where they did it better, where they really did convert your effort and your work into benefits better, why don't you live and raise your, don't you owe it to your children to raise them there if you really believe there's a place that's doing it better? And they don't believe that. It's rhetoric, but it's rhetoric with a purpose. And this is kind of where being a part of the party for so long and understanding sort of the, you know, the thought behind the strategy, really, it's strategy. How do you convince large swaths of people, large groups that are just really holding themselves together by identity politics, race, or how do you convince them to give their loyalty so completely to a political party if you can't convince them first that they really need this political party to help them overcome these horrible flaws in the system?

[Senator Ted Cruz]

So basically there's, well, the Democrat party, I think, is very invested in selling dependency.

[Eric Johnson]

Correct.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

And there's no question I've used also in my family, you know, when my dad, in 1957, when he showed up in Austin, Texas, he couldn't speak English and so the first job he had was washing dishes and he made 50 cents an hour. And, and I've said a lot of times, thank God some well meaning liberal didn't come along and put his arm around him and say, raphael, let me take care of care of you. Let me give you a government check. Let me make you dependent on the government. You don't need to work anymore. You don't need to be responsible for your life. I'm going to take care of you. That would have been utterly destructive. It would have been the worst thing you could have done to them.

[Eric Johnson]

Yep.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

And, and it's, you know, we're talking about what you teach your kids. You Know, you think about it, if you, if you have a kid in kindergarten or first grade who's struggling with math, how many of us will do your kids homework? None of us will. Because doing your kids homework is not helping the kid. Now, you may, you, you may work with the kid, you may get a tutor with the kid, you may walk through and say you're having problems with. But you understand, you know, you and I are both fathers. Ben, you're a father. You understand when you're, when you're raising your kids, they need to learn those skills. And if someone else does it for them, it doesn't help our children. That same thing is true for all of us.

[Eric Johnson]

It's absolutely true. I had a conversation with one of your colleagues, Senator Scott, when he stopped through Dallas a few months ago, and we had a private lunch. And one of the things that we talked about, and I said to him that resonate with him because he also, you know, believes this is absolutely the case, and it's right on.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Tim's a great guy.

[Eric Johnson]

It's right in line with what we're talking about right now. I said, tim, do you agree that there's really nobody in our community who's achieved a high degree of success who actually did it using anything other than conservative principles as applied to their life? I go, but why do so many of us, when we get to that level of success with these principles, pretend like it's something else that got us there? It was working hard, staying out of trouble, persevering when other people had given up, and basically playing by the rules we called it, that got you there. But you get there and then you pretend like, you know those aren't essential values of success. And I told him, I said, here's why I think that happens, because there's a price to pay socially and in terms of being accepted. If you don't pretend like you don't know what you know and you don't sort of excuse the things that we were talking about. In other words, long story short is every successful African American in this country basically got to be successful by working hard and doing what they were supposed to do, but they don't want to be once they've achieved that level of success, not accepted by the community at large and appealing to be out of touch. And so they pretend like they don't know the formula, they don't know the winning formula. I just think we need to be more honest about what the winning formula is. And the winning formula ends up being exactly what the conservative Ideology would tell you it has to do with taking upon yourself the responsibility for yourself and not believing that the Democratic Party or any party is there to save you. And the Democratic Party wants you to believe they do. They want you to believe you can't get there without them.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

There's an old saying that every time I see luck, it looks amazingly like hard work.

[Eric Johnson]

Yep, it's very true. It's very true. So now to the policy things. So this is, you know, so I'm bumping if anybody who's. And I presume that anyone in this room has followed my, you know, my relatively insignificant legislative career, but it was marked with just fighting with the Democratic party about various issues. We're just bumping heads the whole way.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, as mayor, you showed enormous courage. So there were Democrats on the city council pushing with the radical left movement to defund or to abolish the police. And you were a fellow Democrat at the time and you stood up and fought them. And that's when you and I first got to know each other, is when you were newly elected and I came by your office. I wanted to meet you and we worked together closely. But the courage you showed for fighting for the people of Dallas really stood out early on in your town.

[Eric Johnson]

Well, I appreciate you saying that and I was going to get to that eventually about how we met and about what the, you know, what we've been doing for the past five years. I've been mayor, but in the legislature, even when I was part of a partisan caucus, I was a terrible. By the Democratic Party's own. Like once I left the party, they were honest. Their statements are very interesting. If you read the statements with the state party, they all say some pretty interesting things like he was always a terrible Democrat. Good riddance. We're glad he's gone. It's like I'm not sure they understood what they were admitting to, but they acknowledged that it was always a bad fit. But what they're really talking about is when I would be honest about voter fraud. The voter fraud that happens in our large cities in Texas, that I'm aware of, that I've seen, seen it happening to me in my own races. I'm like these. There are people who are outright stealing the votes of the elderly as a period.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Elaborate on that a little bit.

[Eric Johnson]

I came out very vocally and upset the party by saying that there is a systematic. In the large urban cities like Dallas, absentee or ballot harvesting operation where people are going to old folks homes and taking ballots out of their mailboxes. And voting these ballots for these people or going and collecting ballots from these folks. And if they don't like the way the vote was already cast, it goes in the garbage. And I said, that kind of thing is wrong. And it upset people. It upset people in the party when I spoke out against corruption in the party. So I started off in a posture with the party that was already a little bit antagonistic, and this got worse and worse. So this is the slow burn. Well, now I become the mayor and my whole job changes. I'm not a part of some legislative caucus where I'm just sort of, you know, having to be a good team player. I'm responsible for people's lives. Like, I'm responsible for making the call to keep people alive and make sure that my city is, you know, people are safe there. And so it. It. It's supposed to. It should. Once you've been given that kind of responsibility, it should change you like you should. You should look at things differently. And sure enough, I get tested pretty early on with this defund the police thing.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Yep.

[Eric Johnson]

And I'm just going to break it down for everybody with the choice. The choice became very simple.

[Ben Ferguson]

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[Eric Johnson]

Seen since they didn't even live in. I don't even know where the. They don't even show.

[Ben Ferguson]

It was a national campaign.

[Eric Johnson]

It was a national campaign with people who were, you know, rent a protester types, I guess. But here's my point. It's absolutely true. There was a national movement, but the choice was pretty clear. If you were a mayor of a major American city and more than likely you were a Democrat then, because I think the number is roughly 75% of the top 100 cities in America are run by Democrats. And every mayor in the top 10 before me was Democrat. You really had two choices. Go along with the defund the police idea. Because that's where the left was, that's where the activists were, that's where the pressure was, was to defend defund. And defund meant anything from like what they did here in Austin for a 40% across the board cut to your police department for no reason, not based on any facts, just because some activists decided that sounded like a good number. The proposal in Dallas was 60. That's what they wanted in Dallas, 60%. You can either do that and be a good Democrat and people leave you alone, or you could be a sellout and a bad Democrat and not do it and incur the ire. You're looking at the one Democratic mayor that I'm aware of in the United States who said I'm not doing that. And the result, and this is, like I said, when we start to get close, closer, I mean the result was protests for weeks on end at night against Dallas city ordinances with amplification and bullhorns and all stuff against Dallas city ordinances, standing on my private property, not on the street in an acceptable protest perimeter, but like, on the grass, looking in the windows, with two little children and a wife, like, intentionally trying to intimidate me into changing my position to defund the police. And I never caved, even though it was horrible, horrible, horrible for my family. And that is when I really started to understand this isn't the fringe anymore of the Democratic Party. This is the Democratic Party.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

It's who they are.

[Eric Johnson]

Like, this is where we are on public safety as the Democratic Party now. And if you actually believe in law and order and making sure that people are safe, then there is no more part of the Democratic Party that is with you on that. Because I'm looking for those people. I'm waiting for the phone calls from just one, for just one Democratic congressperson or one Democratic officeholder to say, we're with you. You know, you're doing the right thing. And here's the truth. And I've never said this publicly, but I'll say it now. The only calls I got during that entire time saying, hold the line, keep your people safe. You're doing a good job, were from Republicans, and I was a Democrat as far as they knew. And there was no, you know, there's no. There was no reason other than it's the right thing to do what you're doing, and we won't let you know that. There was nothing to be gained politically from you standing with me publicly and saying, this is the right thing to do. Greg Abbott did it. You did it. Dan Patrick did it. A lot of people just said that mayor's doing the right thing. And so Democrats I saw at that point were pretty lost on the public safety issue. But then on top of that, I started to see. And I didn't have this responsibility as a legislator, and I got it as the mayor. I have to protect people's incomes and make sure people can actually afford to live in this city because we are bleeding residents to lower tax jurisdictions. So I started to really dig into our tax policy and seeing, you know, what are we doing to help our residents be able to live here, have businesses here, and be competitive with our local, you know, our competitors. And it turns out that we were doing a pretty bad job of actually even making an attempt to protect our taxpayers. We had the highest tax rate in Dallas of any of the cities in the area, and we have the second highest of any major city in the state. And so I really wanted to change that. The resistance that I got from the left leaning members of our council was incredible.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Yep.

[Eric Johnson]

And the way the argument was couched in the way that the strategy is to couch any effort to rein in spending at all, even to hold it steady from year to year, is being heartless and not caring about people. That resonated with me because I realized, no, that's actually been what the Democratic Party has been about all along. And what I've sort of been an unwitting accessory to, which is painting people who just want to leave people alone or leave people with more of their income to be able to do what they want to do for their families, as opposed to taking it from them and spending it on things they never asked for in the first place, primarily so that politicians can have something to campaign on. They perfected the art of making anyone who was opposed to that seem like they were against the people they were trying to help.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

They demonize you. They attack you personally.

[Eric Johnson]

And so I became heartless. I became someone who didn't care about people. I'll give you an example from just last week. I'm in the minority. I'm in a 12 to 3 minority vote that I lost on my city council last week because I voted against us appropriating almost three quarters of a million dollars to make sure that anybody in Dallas who needs tampons or other feminine hygiene products could have them from the city of Dallas. I said, I don't know why on earth we think that is something that we ought to be doing as a city with people's tax dollars. Well, there's 300 more programs just like that, and we add them all together. That's how you end up with a budget that grows year after year after year. We've gotten into more and more things that we don't need to be into. And so I said, I'm in the wrong part of public safety, for sure. But I'm also not really into this whole just tax people to death so you can do all this liberal experimentation and so on the issues that were most important as a mayor and that were most important to my family, the Democratic Party was batting, you know, a goose egg on those issues. And I started to think there, there really is very little reason why a person who is a common sense, fiscally responsible person ought to be voting Democratic, particularly at the local level, unless there's some sort of social reason that you just can't give up where you need to be accepted by your friends or family. And I just don't have that. I don't have that need well, let's.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Talk about that a little more. But I will say one of the greatest ironies is the rhetoric that the left uses in support of their policies. I think is 180 degrees opposite reality. So, for example, the effort to defund the police is advanced by movements and activists and billionaire donors who are embracing the slogan Black Lives Matter. Now as a statement, Black Lives Matter is unequivocally absolutely true. But the undeniable fact is that when you defund the police, inevitably more African Americans are murdered, more black lives are lost. Because for a great many of our African American citizens and our Hispanic citizens, they live in more low income neighborhoods that are more subject to crime. And when you pull law enforcement out, you know, we're at a dinner right now, I guarantee you, anyone here, if we told you, hey, we're going to pull the cops out of your neighborhood, everyone here would say, no, no, no, that's a terrible idea. But yet we see these left wing activists in the name of a slogan, black Lives Matter, removing police protections from vulnerable black families, and the result is far more African American murders. And yet they continue to embrace that same rhetoric.

[Eric Johnson]

So I don't have to guess about it because not only do I have the knowledge of being the mayor and knowing the crime statistics for my city, but I also have the, the experience, the lived experience of growing up African American in Dallas, in the very communities that we're talking about. So I am familiar with this issue as intimately as you can possibly be, both from sort of the policy making standpoint and just the life experience. And I can tell you I'm going to end the suspense for folks. It's not, I'm not guessing about it. I can speak on it with authority. And that's why people on the left don't even, they don't even challenge me on this because, because they know that I'm not only am I right, but that I have the credibility on that. I got the street credit to speak on this. The Black Lives Matter thing in the defund the police thing are kind of issues that have been conflated. But the truth of the matter is defund the police for sure was a construct of frankly, white liberals who, who don't live in those communities at all and was never asked for, irrespective of their party affiliation by African Americans who lived in crime ridden neighborhoods. Never. African Americans never at any point said we want the police out of our communities. They said we want more police in our communities. We want them to be well trained, we want them to Resp. You know, we want, we want to live in a safe community and we believe the police are part of that. So it was never true to begin with. It was a political right thing to begin with.

[Ben Ferguson]

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[Eric Johnson]

Well, I'll just, I'll answer that one really quickly. Everybody I believe in law enforcement could not believe and was so relieved that they had the one person who in this role everywhere else in the country was caving, who was standing up. They were very grateful and it's what earned me the just enduring support of law enforcement for my entire, for my entire mayoralty because I stood by them. But I wasn't standing by them just to send a message. I was standing because it was absolutely what the city needed. Law enforcement hadn't done anything wrong where they deserved for that rhetoric to be thrown out around them. And having cutting 60% from a police department, that's not trimming around the edges. That's salary and benefits. That's recruitment. That's a recruitment real. That's putting them in more danger, doing already a dangerous job. And so they really appreciated that. But I want to put a fine point on this issue with African American community as it relates to public safety, because it relates to what I believe is part of why I think that this party switch of mind is not important because I switched parties. That's almost insignificant, but what it represents for the potentiality for this group of people who I honestly believe just have not had anybody come to them in a spirit of love and concern, who's operating from within the community. Not saying I didn't sort of exist outside of it. And let me lecture you about what you should a acknowledged and accepted and proud member of it saying, let me explain to you why we've been duped a little bit here and why what was once maybe a good idea or sounded like one has now actually been categorically proven to be a failed strategy.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, let me drill down on that a little bit. And this is something that I feel.

[Eric Johnson]

Pretty strongly about this one. This is, this is bigger, way bigger than one guy switching. This ought to be about people going, why am I still a Democrat if this is what I care about? You know?

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, and this is a theme you've referenced several times that I think is really important. I emphatically believe, and I think you do as well, that the policies of the left, the policies of liberal Democrats have been deeply harmful to the African American community, to the Hispanic community, that they exacerbate poverty, they exacerbate crime, they throttle educational excellence and opportunity. And yet we still have in Texas and across the country, an overwhelming majority of African Americans voting Democrat. And so I guess I want to ask two things. One, you made reference to it before about how kind of culturally you're essentially told you're a Democrat, that's what it means to be black. I'd like you to kind of explain a little bit why you think that is. And then the second part of it is, look, we're seeing, especially in Texas, but other parts of the country we're seeing the Hispanic community is getting more and more Republican every day, and we're seeing the African American community. I think there's some movement, but we got a lot further to go in the African American community. What do you think, what do you think think is. Is persuasive? What should Republicans do to earn more support in the African American community going forward?

[Eric Johnson]

I think it's a amazingly important question and I appreciate you asking it. And it's complicated.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Yep.

[Eric Johnson]

But I think if we're going to start that conversation tonight a little bit and I, I really appreciate you having this conversation with me. I've not ever had an opportunity to talk about. This is stuff that I've been thinking about my whole life and not had really any opportunity to really do anything about it. I feel like I'm at this point in my life now where maybe we can actually see the numbers of African Americans change who support the Republican Party. I think this, I think it's perfectly understandable in a limited resource environment, which is what any political campaign is or any political party is like. Resources aren't infinite. To say to any group that at any point in time is only throwing you 10% of their support, I. E. They're against you 90% of the time, that that's not where we ought to be investing. I think that's a perfectly rational decision. That the perfectly rational decision in a lot of ways to not play the game at all because that's not. It's not perceived to be a particularly fruitful game, plays very easily into a narrative that. And therefore that party doesn't care at all.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Right.

[Eric Johnson]

So you got one party that may be able to be criticized for being inefficient and ineffective, but they're telling you they care. And you got another party that might not be telling you they hate you, but they're just sort of focused on groups that produce more efficiently support. I mean, it's a tough slog when you're talking about 9010. And so it's understandable, but it's come at a cost. What I'm saying and what I'm feeling instinctively politically right now is that there's a. There's been a maturation that was inevitable in African Americans position in this country. We are better off than we've ever been. Are we as well off as we'd like to be be? No, but we are better off. We're better educated. We're better everything. Anybody who says we're not better off today than we were in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War or during the civil rights era is just playing a game. They're playing a rhetorical game. Yes, we are. We're not where we'd like to be, but we are better than. We're further than we've ever been. What that means, though, is that people maybe have more of an opportunity now to sit back and look at things and ask that question of how has this approach of making everything about the community in terms of everything I do is written off to societal factors. Right. We can't hold. We can't even hold a criminal accountable because it's society's fault. Everything in. In the Democratic Party, my experience, experience was anything you tried to actually pin on an individual was written off to society. So as a mayor, for example, I am really deeply concerned about the victims of crime because they did nothing wrong. The law enforcement folks who are out there risking their lives to prevent crime and to address crime, and then the would be victims of crime that we're trying to protect. Right? That's what I care about. Victims would be victims, cops. The Democratic Party really seems, I mean, legitimately seems to care more about the perpetrators of crimes than the victims of crimes or the would be victims or the police. And I tell you what my evidence of that is, is whenever somebody does anything, the finger gets pointed at the rest of us. And we get told how we just had built another recreation center or, you know, if we had put more money into the schools, this person may not have murdered that person, or this person may not have raped that person. I grew up as poor and as black as you can grow up. And I can tell you, in every poor black community in this country, 80% of the people, like in any other group, are making the decision every single day to follow the law and do it by the rule rules. It's 20% like in any group.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, look, the whole country saw the image just a couple of weeks ago of the six illegal immigrants in New York City who beat up two New York cops. They get arrested and within hours they get released, no bail, and they walk out and with both hands, they're flipping the bird at everyone. And that, that, to me, that image of those angry illegal immigrants flipping the bird, I think sums up the absolute depravity of the view of the left. And we're seeing, look, we're seeing great American cities being destroyed. As you know, Heidi, my wife, is a native Californian. You look at California, look at a city like San Francisco. San Francisco is an iconic American city. In the last couple of years, 22 major retailers have shut down downtown because the crime has gotten so bad. And, and I remember Heidi's family lives in California called, they just said on the phone to her, said, well, gosh, you know, what can we do? People just go into stores and, and, you know, just take stuff. There's nothing we can do about it. I remember, I'm listening to that. And I said, yes, there is. You throw their ass in jail, like put them in handcuffs or arrest them.

[Eric Johnson]

It's worse than. But it's worse than that, Senator. This is what I'm getting at, too. It's worse than that. It's. It's quite predictable when you, when you literally change the policies in the prosecutor's office and you say, we won't prosecute theft of any amount underneath $1,000. And then you don't just make that some sort of. And it would still be bad internal memorandum. You go on the news, you publicize.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

It, you let every criminal know, steal $990.

[Eric Johnson]

Is it really a surprise that you have an uptick? Not even an uptick. A sharp increase in smash and grab jobs and shoplifting again, in an effort to do some of these things that sound good on paper because, you know, society is at fault, not individuals. We do crazy things. We, these DAs and things, stop prosecuting crimes because it's not. It's not fair. You know what? Back to the 80, 20 split, which is just sort of the metaphorical split in any group of people who are doing the right thing, people who aren't. That 20% just needs to be held accountable for making an individual choice to break the law and kill someone or rape someone or terrorize a community. Community. And we need to stop pretending like everything can be attributed to some societal factor. It's just not the way it actually is.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

All right, we need to wrap up soon, but I want to ask two questions to close one. In your view, part of what you answered in terms of how Republicans can do a better job in the African American community is just showing up and demonstrating that they give a damn. And I think that. Absolutely.

[Eric Johnson]

I didn't really say all I needed to say on that, because it's not just about. It's not about emoting and showing up and just saying we care. It's, I think, having an alternative to the liberal approach.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, and that's where my question was going to go, which is, what issues do you think resonate most powerfully in the African American community? That by focusing on those issues, have a potential to earn their support by saying, look, this is an issue that is going to make a difference in your life and your family. I am deeply passionate on school choice. I think school choice is the Most fundamental civil rights issue in the entire country. But I'm interested in your thoughts of what issues actually will resonate and cause voters who have voted Democrat their whole life to reconsider. Gosh, maybe that. Maybe the policies that they're, they're foisting upon me are not working.

[Eric Johnson]

I think if a Republican candidate for president, candidate for governor, candidate for mayor, candidate of anybody who's actually in. Perceived to be running for an executive type position was in charge, went to an African American community. I'm talking of people who, who are members of the community who are going to vote and participate in the process. You know, people who are invested in their community and said, I'm the person who's going to come in here and I'm going to make this a safe community for you. Because no one before me has done that. No one either side. This community is. You deserve a safer neighborhood than you're living in. I want you to be able to walk from your house to the end of the block and back home without being worried about being mugged or robbed or killed. And you don't feel safe doing that right now. I want your grandson to feel safe walking from the school bus home and he doesn't feel safe doing that right now. I want to restore a genuine sense of safety to this community. That's number one. Number two, I understand that the burden of high taxes falls disproportionately on you. I have polling from my mayoral campaigns that shows in Dallas, Texas, the groups of voters who most want their taxes lowered are African Americans, followed by Latinos. Whites are in third place because they're paying a higher percentage of their income in the taxes. It hits them the hardest. They are the most worked up about their property tax bill would most likely see. I'm going to take it.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

It's a barrier to entry. If you're climbing the economic ladder, it hits you the hardest on the earliest.

[Eric Johnson]

This is supported by polling data. It will show you that poor folks actually are most crippled by reckless tax policy at the local level in particular, because there's no play, there's no game. There's no playing a game around that. There's no tax credit this and you know, figure that out. Like the tax bill is just due or they foreclose on the house and you just gotta find a way to pay it and that's just all there is to that. So high property taxes is a horrible thing for poor folks. You come in and you tell them, we're going to deal with these tax burdens. That you're facing. We're going to deal with the safety in these communities and we're going to give your kids viable choices for schooling. We're going to make sure that you actually have a shot at a decent education. I think at that point people are like, I don't care. I don't know what party you said you're with, but I'm ready to sign, I'm ready to sign up for that. And you say, well, actually everything I just described to you is right dead down the center of the fairway. Republican policy.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Yep.

[Eric Johnson]

Everything I just told that's Republican policy. I think, I think people will literally say, then I don't know why I've been voting Democrat this whole time.

[Ben Ferguson]

All right, there's going to be a lot of people that are listening and they're going to want to ask this question, so I'm going to ask it. If you were up for re election right now, running as a Republican for mayor.

[Eric Johnson]

Yes.

[Ben Ferguson]

Your policies haven't changed. The only thing that's changed is a D. Went to an R. Correct. Could you win?

[Eric Johnson]

I'd win overwhelmingly. I don't have any doubt about it. No doubt about it. I'll tell you why I believe that. I'll tell you why I'm glad someone finally asked me that on the record. That's sort of the chatter as well.

[Ben Ferguson]

That's why I asked. Are going to say, oh, well, this guy could never win. That's why. Why he waited till the end of his term to then switch parties.

[Eric Johnson]

So here's the reality that people have to ignore to even make that argument. But I understand why people need to make it. I mean, I told someone, I said, you know, you don't switch parties in a two part system, one or the other, and think the other party's going to say, well, you know, we wish him the best, he was great and it's our loss. You know, they got to come up with something. And this is kind of, these are the kinds of arguments they've come up with. But here's the reality I won my last election with, it wasn't 93%. Dallas City, you know, has ordinances about how write in candidates get on the ballot and if you write in a name other than the actual write in candidate's name, that's there. You just essentially didn't vote. You threw your vote, your, your ballot in the trash. Of the cast votes, which were canvassed by the city and are the official records of the city, 98.7% of the vote That's Democrats and Republicans in that group. That's a pretty hearty endorsement of the incumbent mayor. And I didn't run with a D or an R behind my name. I ran just with, you know, as Eric Johnson. Because you don't run in Texas, in any city with a D or for folks who aren't from Texas. We don't actually have partisan elections in Texas for mayor. You just run and you don't run with a party support. Now, what do I think would have actually happened if I had just come out and said six months before the election, I'm actually a Republican? Here's what would have happened. Some Democrats would have gotten together and said, well, this is an opportunity for us to run an ostensibly just overtly partisan candidate. We're going to do something that's never been done in Dallas before, which is just make it partisan, like to say, okay, we got an R running and now we're going to run a D against them. The problem is that the R you're talking about for four years, well enough to clear the field and win with 98.7% of the vote. But that didn't happen yet. So let's just go back and say a Republican who's been that effective, who happens to also be African American and supported by the African American community, we think that that person would lose simply by saying, I've become a Republican. I think what happens is I won the first race in a contested nine person field, that it went to a runoff with 12% of the vote. I won, you know, 56, 44. I think that goes down to the normal, you know, pretty solid win of a, you know, 54, 53% win. But I still win. There's no question. I still win that race because I'm the incumbent at that point. No incumbent mayor, if we've had Republican and Democrat mayors. But for, by the way, no incumbent mayor seeking reelection in Dallas has ever lost. Ever.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

All right, so let me ask a final question, which is you have started now a national organization, the Republican Mayors association, and you have been out articulating that Republicans need to have an agenda for the cities that we can't just write off big cities where an awful lot of Americans live. And I think that's a very important, important message. It's something. And I want to ask you, what's your vision for the message Republicans should have in the cities and how do we end up with a lot more Republican mayors, the big cities? What's the path forward there?

[Eric Johnson]

I said this in the wall Street Journal and I meant it. It's a two way benefit for America and for our party. America needs the leadership that Republicans provide at the local level because of the things we talked about just a few minutes ago. A Republican mayor is going to, is going to, because it's part of the DNA of the party, is going to be right on law and order issues, going to be right on public safety. People who've asked me about that, I've said, let me just quiz you very quickly. Every bad idea you can think of about public safety came from one side of the aisle. There's not even a mixed bag on this issue. If it's a bad idea when it comes to public safety, you know, defund the police, don't prosecute, shoplift, whatever. Republicans don't propose ideas that undermine law and order. They not every Democrat believes them, but they only emanate from the Democrats. Yep, that's just a factual statement. So a Republican is going to be right on law and order and public safety. A Republican mayor is going to be right on taxes. A Republican mayor ought to be right on infrastructure spending and investing prudently. And there's studies that show that, I mean been have proven that you actually have lower debt levels and you issue less debt when you have a Republican mayor versus a Democrat. MIT professor actually studied this and concluded that it is a statistically significant difference level of debt associated with a city when there's a Republican in charge and a Democrat in charge. So we actually need Republicans running our major cities because 80% of Americans live in cities. By 2050 that number is going to be 90%. So the country actually needs the leadership. But I'm actually telling you as a group of partisans, we actually have to pay attention to this and I think we have to pay attention to it because I in my heart of hearts believe that by being competitive in the cities, by basically re engaging because we were once engaged. There was a Republican Mayors association at one time. It had a similar name. It was like the Republican Conference. It was during the Ford administration. And at some point we just lost interest in competing at that level and it sort of just faded away. But it was very active at one time and we were more competitive in our cities at one time. We need to get more competitive there again because the margin of victory at the state level in states like Wisconsin, in states like Michigan, states like Pennsylvania is the difference between performing at the city level in you ready? Madison, Green Bay and in Detroit and then build off in Pittsburgh by just 5 or 10 percentage points better. So in other words, engaging in the cities in a more significant way and having the GOP brand associated with the things we're talking about at the local level. It doesn't take that many votes. And now all of a sudden the whole state is no longer lock, stock and barrel going one direction because the of the advantage that's been run up in the cities, you've cut into the advantage that the cities have.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

You know, Eric, I'll tell you on that point. So Heidi and I met 25 years ago when we were both working on the George W. Bush campaign in 2000, the presidential campaign. And actually in that campaign, you know, I was a young 29 year old staffer, but I wrote a memo urging that the campaign be consider at the time, Condoleezza Rice as a VP nominee. And in the course of the memo, I laid out all sorts of reasons why I thought this was worth considering carefully. But one of the things I did is I did an electoral analysis. I looked at the three preceding presidential elections and I posited a series of hypotheticals. I said what would have happened if Republicans had gotten 5% more, 10% more or 15% more of the African American and Hispanic vote. So I didn't posit what if we get 50% more. I did 5, 10, or 15. So goals that were achievable, I believe. And I ran through the numbers and the one that was most, that stood out the most was if Republicans had gotten an adv. Additional 15% of the African American and Hispanic vote in 1996, Republicans would have won an additional 96 electoral votes. I mean, it lifts the election dramatically. But to do that, we've got to compete.

[Eric Johnson]

It's a whole different national conversation about the competitiveness of this party. If we are a factor at the city level. Yep, because it's just where so many people are concentrated. It's getting harder and harder to figure out how to win elections where we're just not even playing there. I mean, we, we just, it's just not even. It's just we ought to be competing in every major city where we're currently just sort of saying, you know, a Democrat hasn't won, I mean, Republican won there in a long time, so let's not try. We just flipped. Just in this last cycle, the mayor, the current mayor of, I believe it's Charleston, South Carolina is now Republican. They hadn't elected a Republican mayor in Charleston in like 175 years. So it can happen. It can be done. You have to run the right candidate. He was A former legislator like I was, and he ran a great campaign. Now they got a Republican. So what's going to happen next is he's going to do a good job. And when he does a good job, these people who've been voting for Democrat Mayors for 175 years are going to say, you know what? Republicans are in charge. The city just seems to be, it's safer. We hire more cops and crime goes down. And you know what, the taxes go down. You know, things are just better. The brand means something to them at the local level. And not just the brand will always have a federal aspect to it. It'll always have a state aspect to it. But right now in this party, we're missing a brand at the local level. It doesn't mean anything right now at the local level. And we get to decide what it means. And I'm saying we should be running solid conservatives at the local level, winning elections, running cities well. And then that makes people at the local level go, yeah, I'm actually a Republican. I love my Republican mayor. And so I'm a Republican. And that has benefits for people running for U.S. senate, running for president, running for governor. But we are, right now just aren't doing anything. I mean, I was shocked to find that there was no one even in this lane. I wasn't even stepping on anybody's toes by doing this.

[Senator Ted Cruz]

Well, let me say, Eric, I appreciate you. I appreciate your friendship, I appreciate your leadership, and I appreciate your joining us on the Verdict podcast.

[Eric Johnson]

Appreciate that, man.

[Ben Ferguson]

Give a big round of applause from the mayor of Dallas. Thank you for coming on Verdict. Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. Make sure you hit that download, subscribe, auto download button. Share it on social media, wherever you are in social media and the center, and I will see you back here in a couple of days.