Last night, the Dallas Express hosted an event at Community Beer Co. titled “What Is Dallas HERO and Why Should You Care?” The apparent purpose of the event was to promote the three city charter amendments—S, T, and U—that were placed on the ballot due to the efforts of the Dallas HERO Initiative, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that asserts it is nonpartisan. It is primarily led and funded by people who don’t live within Dallas city limits.
The publisher and main funder of the Dallas Express, hotelier Monty Bennett, has said he has contributed money and office space to the Dallas HERO initiative and is a personal friend of the group’s executive director, Pete Marocco. But 501(c)(4) nonprofits are not required to publicize their funders, and Marocco has declined to name other financial supporters.
A few dozen people attended the event at Community Beer. Chris Putnam, the CEO of the Dallas Express and recent chair of the Tarrant County GOP campaign finance committee, began with a brief introduction, then brought forward Art Martinez de Vara, a conservative lawyer who has served as the chief of staff for multiple Republican state lawmakers. Martinez de Vara is the legal counsel for the Dallas HERO Initiative and was involved in the drafting of the proposed charter amendments. In an interview last week with CBS Texas, Marocco said that a group of lawyers helped write the language in the amendments, but he declined to identify them all on air.
The city charter amendments proposed by Dallas HERO are a controversial lot. The initiative has received support from the Dallas County GOP and conservative donors such as Doug Deason and Bennett, as well as a network of advocacy organizations linked to Bennett. They’ve drawn opposition from the Dallas County Democratic Party, every living elected mayor of Dallas, all 14 Dallas City Council members, two former police chiefs, the Dallas Police Association, the Dallas Fire Fighters Association, the Dallas Citizens Council, the Dallas Regional Chamber, and a slew of other officials and civic organizations. This latest event provided the Express an opportunity to distance the amendments from the perception of conservative influence.
Martinez de Vara explained the logic behind the propositions. (If you’re unfamiliar with their language, here are a few links to our past coverage.) He argued that Proposition S, the one that allows residents to sue the city, was designed “for efficiency” and included “safety valves” like a 60-day notice to the city before potential litigants can file a lawsuit. Local conservative activist Chris Carter asked Martinez de Vara whether Proposition S would make it easier for litigants to get legal standing before the court. Carter tried and failed to stop the removal of a Confederate Monument in Dallas, which was shot down by a judge for lack of standing.
“This actually waives that immunity,” Martinez de Vara said.
Due to the event’s tardy start, Martinez de Vara was cut short to allow former Mayor Tom Leppert to take the stage as a representative of the opposition to the Dallas HERO propositions. Leppert, a Republican, once again argued forcefully against the propositions. He said he understands the motivations behind the amendments and believes some sound good in theory, but he doesn’t support them in practice. Leppert appears to be the opposition’s spokesperson in these public events; he was also the voice against the amendments during the Dallas Regional Chamber’s recent debate. His messaging was similar to what he’s already shared publicly.
“The unintended consequences could be disastrous for our city,” Leppert said. “These are just not thought out very well.”
In response, Putnam pushed back with a critical question: “What’s the answer if it’s not this? Because the City Council has proven they’re not going to do anything about staffing our police department adequately. So how do we trust them to do the right thing?”
“What you’ve got to do is get rid of those people, you know, real hard, every single one that you don’t agree with, and that’s what it comes down to,” Leppert responded.
The final speaker of the evening was Marocco, the executive director of Dallas HERO. He launched into a tirade against Leppert and those opposed to the charter amendments. “Not anybody in the opposition has proposed anything that is constructive at all for the people,” Marocco said. “I want to get back to some constructive discussion and dialogue on this. But I just find it just unbelievable that somebody can sit here and question the qualifications of a Harvard-trained attorney, and somebody that worked in government protected is doing exactly this, tell them they don’t know how to construct this? I think it’s frankly despicable.”
(According to his bio, Martinez de Vara has a Doctorate in Law from St. Mary’s University, not Harvard. Ed. Note: “Marocco clarified in an email that he was referring to former state Rep. Stefani Carter, a Harvard Law graduate and former state representative who serves as board chair of Dallas HERO and also sits on on the board of one of Bennett’s companies.”)
Marocco argued that the media are biased against their campaign, that the “sham” opposition has misled the public about the support they’ve gathered, and that all the arguments against the propositions are lies.
“Look, we know it’s David versus Goliath,” Marocco said. “And I’m fine with those odds, because the bottom line is the people of Dallas are the ones who bought this, and I have heard all kinds of shenanigans, ridiculousness… I gotta tell you, this is just an extremely disappointing path that we’ve had.”
Marocco and Dallas HERO have worked hard to present their campaign as a nonpartisan group of invested residents coming together to hold City Hall to account. Toward the end of the conversation with Leppert, Putnam provided a sort of transparency disclaimer.
“We’re all about transparency,” Putnam said. “Our publisher of the Dallas Express is a supporter of the Dallas HERO project both financially and publicly, and so I think that’s important for everybody to understand. I don’t want to mischaracterize that in any way. But the paper itself takes no editorial position.”
The Dallas Express has published dozens of articles about the Dallas HERO Initiative without disclosing their publisher’s support. Putnam himself wrote an editorial on October 18 titled “The HERO Dallas Deserves.” The editorial made no mention of Bennett’s support and concluded with a clear endorsement to vote for the Dallas HERO propositions.
Many of Putnam’s comments on Tuesday night sought to present the publication as ideologically independent, which contradicts how he has described his work in the past. “We were founded in part to lend a different kind of voice to local news and we are not an ideological publication in any way,” he said. “It’s fair to say that we have a different editorial perspective than our friends at the Dallas Morning News, but that’s reflecting the kind of stories we cover and the voices we feature.”
In January, Putnam posted on Facebook that the Dallas Express is “the conservative alternative” to the Dallas Morning News” and “the right-leaning, digital daily news alternative to the liberal Dallas Morning News.” Earlier this month, he described the Dallas Express in a Facebook post as the “center-right alternative to the radical left The Dallas Morning News.”
After the speakers concluded their remarks, I asked Putnam whether there was any contradiction between his two statements. He declined to comment and asked me to leave. “I’m not going to answer your question, you’re not even supposed to be here,” Putnam said as he escorted me to the exit. “This is a private event…Please go.”
Before I was ejected, I noticed a box used to bring in T-shirts was labeled “Trump-Cruz stakes,” indicating it could have been repurposed from partisan activities. Fliers promoting the propositions clearly featured a picture of a Dallas Police officer, in defiance of a cease-and-desist issued by the city of Dallas to stop using the image and likeness of sworn officers in campaign material. In an emailed statement after the event, Marocco said the box of shirts was brought by a supporter, alleged (incorrectly) that I wrote the words on that box, said Leppert was “lying about the propositions,” and called former Mayor Mike Rawlings, who also opposes the propositions, a “cop-hater.”
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