2025 Election Results Analysis

 *All opinions stated are those only of the author, Adam Lamont, and don't represent Dallas Neighbors for Housing or YIMBYAction as a whole*

First, a brief introduction. I'm Adam, one of tbe founders of Dallas Neighbors for Housing. I teach 7th grade math in DISD, so if at any point while reading this you think it was written by a boring math teacher, you would be correct. When not reminding 12 year olds what the Pythagorean Theorem is, I like to watch City Council meetings and think about how to make housing in Dallas more affordable. I'm an unapologetic, all of the above YIMBY, meaning I think that the city (along with the state and federal government) should do everything they can to make housing more affordable. That means legalizing housing in more places, allowing more of it, providing more funding for it, and enacting stronger protections for tenants. The following analysis comes from that perspective, and I focus heavily on the housing positions of the candidates. 

This Dallas city council election was marked by increased partisanship as the Dallas County Republicans created a new PAC to send money to their preferred candidates and the Dallas County Democrats released "Grades" for each candidate. That activity didn't do much to drive voters to the polls. We don't have City of Dallas specific numbers yet, but Dallas County turnout overall was 8.33%, lower than in 2021. The table below compares the 2023 and 2025 turnout. And yes, I did go to the Denton and Collin County websites to fish out the data for District 12. Overall, turnout was down 4.66%, which you certainly hate to see given how low voter turnout already is in Dallas. The biggest swings came in District 10 (2023 it was a contest open seat while this time Kathy Stewart had no real competition for re-election), District 12 (Cara Mendelsohn was unopposed in 2023 but faced an opponent this time), and District 14 (Paul Ridley had an opponent in 2023 but was unopposed this cycle). 

These are raw vote totals, and they don't take any change in population or registered voters. While the overall turnout was down, 6 of the 14 races did see increases, so it's not like this was some kind of universal decline. The caveat too is that 2023 did have a Mayoral election at the top of the ticket. Then the caveat to that caveat is that of course the Mayors race in 2023 was uncontested. Without having the official turnout numbers, I would put turnout in the 8-10% range. The good news is that this could be our last May election as there is a currently a bill at the State Legislature that would trigger the amendment that Dallas approved in 2024 to have local elections in November of odd years instead. Based off of other cities, that should drive higher turnout in 2027. 

From a YIMBY perspective, the election was overall a positive one, with one major exception (District 11). At Dallas Neighbors for Housing, our members endorsed six candidates. Four of them were incumbents, Chad West in District 1, Jaime Resendez in District 5, Adam Bazaldua in District 7, and Gay Donnell Willis in District 13. All four of those incumbents won, with all of them facing anti-housing candidates. We also endorsed Maxie Johnson in the race to replace Carolyn King Arnold in District 4, and he won the election comfortably. The only candidate we endorsed who didn't win was Marc Rossouw. Roussouw was going up against 3-term incumbent Cara Mendelsohn, and it is very rare in Dallas to oust an incumbent who has served more than one term. 

The run-up to the election included rhetoric from the likes of Damien LeVeck (the paid Executive Director of Dallas Hero, billionaire Monty Bennett's organization that is trying to turn Dallas more conservative) about how the Pepper Square rezoning would be some kind of watershed moment in Dallas politics. That simply didn't happen, as this election looks a heck of a lot like last elections, again with District 11 being the big exception. Let's go district by district and look at the results.

District 1: Chad West wins with 59% of the vote 

Chad West won re-election for his final two year term with about 59% of the vote. This was a better performance for West than in years past, as he snuck by with just 52% of the vote in 2023. The improvement is notable, as West drew the ire of many of the city's most fervent single-family neighborhood advocates for his pro-Missing Middle Housing stances. 

West's main opponent this cycle, Katrina Whatley, was a fervent opponent of Forward Dallas and of development in the district. She got into the race in large part because the duplex she owns sits right next to a new five-story apartment complex at the corner of Zang and Beckley. The race was in large part a referendum on the development that North Oak Cliff has seen in recent years. 

The map for this race looked very different than the results from 2023, where West faced a strong challenge from Albert Mata. In that race against Mata, West's 518 vote margin of victory could be attributed almost to one precinct, the wealthy Kessler Park. This time around, only about 300 of West's 800 vote margin was from Kessler Park. Whatley did better than Mata in places like Kessler Park, but she did worse in the more western, heavily Latino parts of the district. Some of this was probably a familiarity thing, as Whatley is more of an unknown in those neighborhoods than Mata, a community activist who grew up there. Some is also because of the work West has done in places like Jimtown which was really a downzoning from some out of place multi-family zoning. Whatley did outperform her overall performance in the neighborhoods around Hampton and Clarendon which has a current city-initiated zoning change that has faced pushback. I won't get into into the details of that zoning case here, but it didn't move the needle much in this election. Ultimately, West comfortably won a final term.

District 2: Jesse Moreno wins easily 

As expected, Jesse Moreno easily won re-election over Sukhbir Kaur. Moreno of course has deep roots in the district, and Kaur is a relative unknown who tried to run as a staunch conservative and Trump supporter in a liberal district. We endorsed Moreno in 2023 but he did not win our endorsement this time around. The reasoning for that is that while Moreno has been supportive of new multi-family development, a solid amount of which is Affordable, he has also not been a champion for housing. In the 2024 bond process, he ended up voting for a proposal that gave less money to housing. He also voted against the Pepper Square rezoning and has advocated against a state-level ADU legalization bill. Moreno is the chair of the Housing and Homelessness Solutions Committee, so here is to hoping that he is more pro-housing in the next two years.

District 3: Zarin Gracey Squeaks By for Re-Election

Zarin Gracey won re-election over two challengers, though it wasn't exactly a resounding win for the one-term incumbent. He won with 55% of the vote, which to be fair is an improvement over last election when he had to go to a runoff to win. I didn't follow this race very closely. His two challengers both received a significant share of votes, so it seems like Gracey still has some D3 residents who aren't sold on him. I think that Gracey has been a solid all-around councilmember in his first term. He asks good questions, and he clearly has gotten more comfortable in the role over his first term. From a housing perspective, he has been more pro-housing than against it. However, he also has fought against the city converting a hospital into Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). I can understand his position on this since he is asking for staff to firm up funding for another proposed PSH site in his district. The hospital to PSH proposal also echoes a lot of historical decisions to concentrate deeply Affordable Housing in southern Dallas. As a housing advocate, I would of course prefer him to still support the project, but I understand that his opposition isn't reflexive NIMBYism. 

District 4: Maxie Johnson Wins Resoundingly

Johnson winning comfortably was the first somewhat surprising, in a good way, result for housing. We endorsed Maxie Johnson, but I was expecting a closer race, even given Maxie being the current DISD trustee for a large overlapping part of District 4. His opponent, Kebran Alexander, had the endorsement of the incumbent Carolyn King Arnold. Alexander also won the endorsement of groups like Stonewall Democrats of Dallas and the Dallas AFL-CIO. Alexander did fill out our questionnaire, and he gave thoughtful answers to our questions. In the end, Johnson won going away with 75%, a margin almost unheard of in an open seat.

We endorsed Johnson because he was more open to pro-housing reforms while Alexander had views more similar to Arnold. Over the past few years, Arnold has voted against housing at practically every turn. Now, it is more understandable for Arnold to have this standing given District 4 faces real displacement pressures. However, Arnold took her anti-development stance to extremes, including killing a proposed Mixed-Income, Transit-Oriented Development at the Corinth and 8th DART station. I am hoping that Johnson is able to better balance the need to protect existing residents with an understanding that, when done right, new development can actually help reduce displacement while bringing new amenities and stability to District 4 neighborhoods.

 

District 5: Jaime Resendez Sails to Re-Election

No big surprise here as Resendez didn't face much of a challenge from his one opponent. Resendez at this point is approaching institutional-status in District 5 given how long he has served on DISD and now City Council. Resendez is known for being tight-lipped, choosing his moments for when he makes his voice heard. He also in my opinion is the coolest Councilmember in the sense that he probably would be a good hang no matter the situation.

And on housing, Resendez has been on the right side pretty much every time. District 5 and Pleasant Grove is a somewhat unique district in that it has a lot of highly stable neighborhoods but hasn't seen much new investment in recent years. Resendez fought for more housing money in the 2024 bond, and he has been a champion for the Mixed-Income development at Buckner Station.

District 6: Laura Cadena Gets to 50%

Cadena was the chief of staff for outgoing Councilmember Omar Narvaez, and the main question going into election night was whether she could clear the 50% hurdle to win outright and avoid a runoff in a crowded field of eight. She just got there, capturing 50.45%. Here's how close her margin was... if just 10 voters had gone with someone else, she would have slipped below 50% and had to go to a runoff. In local elections, it is true that Every. Vote. Matters. Monica Alonzo, an ex-councilmember who has run every election since she lost to get back the seat, was next closest at 25%. Alonzo received a boatload of outside money from an Airbnb PAC. If you don't know, the city passed a very strict anti-Airbnb in single family neighborhoods ordinance in 2023, but the issue has been in the courts for two years now. Whatever your stance on Airbnb, it's not a good thing to have outside money pouring in on one single issue. I don't hate Airbnbs on principle, though they do of course lower the housing supply. The one paper I have found on this found a 0.018% increase in rents for every 1% increase in Airbnb listings. So hypothetically if Airbnb listings double, rent would go up 1.8%. I know the math doesn't quite work that way... I'm getting off track here.

We didn't endorse Cadena, but she was by far the closest of any of the candidates to receiving our endorsement, falling just a few votes shy of our vote requirement. District 6 includes West Dallas, an area of Dallas that has seen by design an explosion of density south of Singleton while keeping single-family zoning north of it. This screenshot from Zillow of current homes for sale is almost like a Rorschach test for how you see housing. "Look, all of the townhomes south of Singleton are $500k or more!" vs. "Look, the old single-family homes are being torn down and replaced by huge $700k and up McMansions!" Anyway, Cadena winning is a great result for District 6 and Dallas. Even though we didn't endorse her, she is way better than her opponents.

District 7: Adam Bazaldua Sends a Message

Adam Bazaldua has been one of the most vocal champions for housing in the past two years, and he faced down what was thought to be a formidable challenge from both Jose Rivas and Cydney Walker. Instead, Bazaldua had his most convincing win as a candidate, winning with 56.6% of the vote. Rivas and Walker finished with about 15% each. While the heart of District 7 is South Dallas, most of the votes fell in the other parts of the district. Rivas' support was concentrated to a few precincts outside of South Dallas. Walker and O'neil Hesson did better in South Dallas but got wiped out in much of the rest of the district. Where Bazaldua cleaned up was the two precincts that make up Buckner Terrace south of I-30. More than 33% of Bazaldua's votes came from that neighborhood, and he won both precincts with more than 67% of the vote. 

Bazaldua now gets to finish his mission to bring consistency to District 7 and complete his final two years as a councilmember. While recognizing that much of his district isn't the right place for new Affordable Housing because of the existing concentration of poverty, he has fought for increased funding for Affordable Housing in the 2024 bond, including devoting all $5 million of his discretionary funds to it. He also recognizes the historical inequity of a lot of residential zoning in Dallas and fought hard throughout ForwardDallas to create a more equitable system. 

District 8: Runoff Between Lorie Blair and Erik Wilson

Lorie Blair and Erik Wilson both have strong resumes and won their fair share of endorsements, so it wasn't a big surprise that they ended up with about 40% each and are headed to a runoff. I thought Blair might do a little better given her close relationship as the CPC rep for outgoing Councilmember Tennell Atkins. There are big geographic differences at a precinct level in the support for Blair and Wilson. District 8 stretches across the southern edge of Dallas from Kleberg in the far southeast to the intersection of 67 and 20 in the southwest. Blair's support is clustered in the western part of the district as she got 56% of her votes from just five precincts. Wilson had 43% of his votes from those same precincts. But Wilson won the majority of the lower turnout precincts spread out across the district. Only 73 votes separated the two in the first round, so expect it to be tight and have a low turnout in the runoff.

District 9: Paula Blackmon Wins Comfortably

While the headline is that Blackmon won without a problem with 78% of the vote, in some ways this is a disappointing result for her considering that Ernest Banda, her one opponent, didn't really have a campaign. Maybe it's just that her predecessor Mark Clayton has set the bar high for margins in this district, as in 2017 he won his election with a Putin-esque 94% of the vote. Blackmon has been a really good councilmember on a lot of issues, housing included. Blackmon will often invoke how her own children can't afford to buy a house in Dallas in the same way that she and her husband did back in the day. She is actively trying to find a way for the city to build the kind of starter homes that used to be plentiful back in the day by doing things like lowering the minimum lot size. 

District 10: Kathy Stewart, more like Kathy Stalwart

Hey, it's District 10, the district that I live in! There wasn't any suspense in this election as Stewart got 93% of the vote. Her only opponent, Sirrano Keith Baldeo, got 6%, and that was honestly 6% too much. That isn't because Stewart is the most amazing councilmember ever (more on her in a second), but because Baldeo is not a good person and seems to have nothing better to do than put his name on the ballot every two years. Back to Stewart - She, like Gracey, has gotten more comfortable on council as her term as gone on. She isn't any kind of rockstar on housing, but she hasn't necessarily been oppositional either. Something to watch for is how Stewart votes on the upcoming parking reform. Her CPC representative, Tip Housewright, was an advocate for strong reform, but she could be more reluctant to push the envelope as far. 

District 11: Roth, Kitner, Runoff

District 11, probably hotly contested race this cycle because of the Pepper Square Rezoning. Yet, despite all of the attention around that, the number of voters fell by about 400 from 2023. Bill Roth nearly won the race outright with 48.3% of the vote. Jeff Kitner was seen as the favorite entering the race, but he ended up in second with 45%. Early voting was much better for Roth, with him having a 213 vote margin there, but Kitner ended up with ten more votes from those who voted on election day. Geographically, District 11 straddles 635, and Kitner did better overall south of 635 while Roth did better north of it. Pepper Square, for those who don't know, lies north of 635. Roth was very vocal about his opposition of Pepper Square, and while I don't like to say this, I think it's clear that he did better in the northern area of the district because of it. Of course, the low voter turnout in City Council elections looms large. Are the majority of people really against Pepper Square, or is it just that those who really care are those that oppose it? 

We didn't endorse in D11, but I want to be clear that anyone who cares about housing being at all affordable or equitable should NOT vote for Bill Roth. Besides his clear Pepper Square opposition, before running for council, Roth sued the city to block an Affordable Housing project close to some of his businesses at Forest and 75 in District 10. Roth, completely disingenuously tried to say that the city shouldn't approve housing there because the location would harm "those families who'll be forced to live in this undesirable, isolated project." Of course, Roth also opposes Pepper Square because it is close to single family neighborhoods. And he lists protecting single family neighborhoods as one of his primary goals. So, where does Bill Roth think housing should be built? The answer is nowhere because Bill Roth is a pure, unadulterated NIMBY. 

District 12: Cara Mendelsohn won, sigh.

If there is one person on council that I actively dislike because of her policy and rhetoric, it's Mendelsohn. And apparently I'm not alone since a good amount of council endorsed her opponent, Marc Roussouw. Roussouw was the only one of our endorsed candidates to not win, which is understandable when you consider Mendelsohn is a 3-term incumbent. Roussouw put up a fight, and hopefully he runs again in two years when Mendelsohn is termed out. I prefer not to talk about this race anymore, so that's it for D12.

District 13: Gay Donnell Willis and VARC

Our final endorsed candidate is Gay Donnell Willis, who enjoyed a comfortable 65% win. I got to say, District 13 votes. In a not particularly heated race, it had more than 1,000 more votes than any other district. Willis just barely won in a runoff in her first race in 2021, but at this point she is comfortably ensconced as the councilmember. This election, District 11 had 7,457 votes. In the 2021 election, 9,641 people voted in the general election, and somehow for that runoff the turnout went UP to 9,808 votes. Anyway, Willis didn't have any trouble winning her district, which includes many of the wealthiest in Dallas and stretches from Vickery Meadow all the way to northwest Dallas. 

I do think that Willis might have the highest VARC of any councimember. What is VARC, why thank you for asking. VARC is a fake stat I made up. It stands for Votes Above Replacement Councilmember. If you are a baseball nerd, you know where it comes from. Basically, Willis is miles better in her votes, for housing and otherwise, than what I would expect from her alternative in District 13. Jaynie Schultz also had a really high VARC, and Bill Roth's near election cements that status. Anyway, there is a ton of variance in Dallas between districts, and it's always important to think about whether that person is good, or if they are just good because their district is like that. 

District 14: Paul Ridley Wins Unopposed

The only unopposed district was District 14, which is odd considering that it has had some of the most spirited elections in the not so distant past. Ridley ran unopposed while being an unapologetic champion of the single family neighborhoods in East Dallas. He weakened ForwardDallas in a lot of ways, and he even voted against Pepper Square, a notable break from his CPC representative Melissa Kingston, who voted for it. Ridley considers himself, and I believe is, a progressive. But he is reactionary on housing issues. Him running unopposed was disappointing for me. Here is to hoping that in two years someone runs who actually has an interest in representing the entire district, including the tens of thousands of people who live in Downtown and Uptown. 

Closing Thought

I will close with this thought, which I want to make clear is my PERSONAL opinion. Zoning and land-use have come to dominate much of the discourse around Dallas politics in the past few years. At times, the rhetoric can get quite heated. And I have said some things that I look back and think maybe I was a little over the top. So for that, I am sorry. 

At the same time, I want to be clear that I love Dallas and advocate for pro-housing policies because I think they will make our city a better place. I am fundamentally an optimist, and I do have a mindset that a city is like a party, it's better with more people. Do you have to plan that party and make sure you have everything necessary to keep it from becoming an out of control rager? Absolutely. That doesn't mean you shut the door and say no one else can come in. I hope that as we move into a new council, we as Dallas residents have a city that is forward looking and optimistic, protecting neighborhoods but also recognizing that the best neighborhoods don't stand still. Change, though scary, can be good. Current and future residents will benefit from a Dallas with more affordable and abundant housing.