Don Hill’s decision to run for mayor, which brings the candidate total to 10 or 700 or whatever it is, makes very little sense. Hill almost certainly can’t win, and not just because the U.S. attorney keeps threatening to indict him. He has no base outside of African-American south Dallas and he won’t be able to raise money the way the various Anglo establishment candidates have already been raising money. So why is he running?
My old Times Herald colleague Jim Schutze has a very sensible explanation of what a Hill candidacy means. But it still doesn’t explain it. The only thing I can think of is that Hill looked at what Craig Watkins did in November, and figured that if Watkins — whose personal troubles are myriad, if not as bad as Hill’s — can get elected DA, then the Red Sea has parted and manna is falling from heaven. Hill apparently has bought into the idea that the demographics in Dallas County have finally changed, and that there are hundreds of thousands of black, brown and progressive white voters ready to do for him what they did for Watkins.
Which has not happened yet, no matter how much the county Democratic Party insists it has. Watkins won because white North Dallas — which will vote for Hill about the same time they stop watering their lawns and buying SUVs — stayed home in November. Will they stay home in May? Don’t bet on it.
