The Choir Boy Mayor

On the ground, Leppert carved a new approach toward campaigning in southern Dallas. He was never going to beat top-shelf council members like Oakley or Hill in their backyard, but he made it close enough to give him a clear advantage heading into the runoff. How he did that is one of the more remarkable things to come out of this campaign.

Like Leppert, Max Wells was another avowed Republican candidate from North Dallas. He also had the backing of a good chunk of the establishment and $800,000 of his own money to play with. A former mayor pro tem, Wells enlisted the support of the vaunted old guard of the southern sector, people like Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, former city council member Don Hicks and political consultant Kathy Neely. In contrast, Leppert went with a fresher generation of leaders, from political consultant Johnson, who had never worked on a citywide campaign before, to pastors Frederick Haynes and Ricky Rush, who, unlike some of their fellow clergy, were unsullied by any real battles with outgoing Mayor Laura Miller. That new team helped Leppert batter Wells and his old guard south of the Trinity and put Oakley on notice that he couldn't take southern Dallas for granted. Unlike nearly all of his North Dallas competitors, Leppert actually talked and listened to individual voters south of the Trinity.

"At the NAACP function the other night, Tom was there without handlers," says Ken Carter, who worked on the Don Hill campaign. "He will speak with everyone and will meet with everyone."

Leppert, of course, didn't win any southern Dallas council districts. No one expected him to. Oakley is well-liked in his Oak Cliff district and beyond, where politically active neighborhood groups admired his attention to real-life stuff like parks, roads and libraries. But Leppert ran surprisingly well in the southern sector, winning a number of precincts, even in Oakley's District 3. That showing, on top of his dominant performance in North and East Dallas, gave us the Leppert landslide.

In fact, Leppert didn't need southern Dallas to win. Given how reliably voters in North and East Dallas turn out, pundits, politicians and consultants probably place too much emphasis on the political power of council districts in West Dallas, Oak Cliff, South Dallas and Pleasant Grove. But that only makes Leppert's engagement of the city's oft-neglected neighborhoods all the more noteworthy. It says that he's likely to be more inclusive and curious than anyone could have expected when they first saw him in public.

There was much about Leppert's campaign that was frustrating. He showed a thorough lack of interest in the mechanics of local government, and his defense of the proposed Trinity River toll road was often disingenuous. He didn't exactly run on the power of his ideas either. While other candidates, such as Darrell Jordan and Wells, offered specific proposals on how to reduce crime, Leppert merely talked about hiring hundreds of new cops without giving details on how the city would pay for it. Now that he's elected, no one can say what exactly he's going to do because he never really told us.

But we're starting to know more about Leppert's engaged and personable style, which may prove to be a good fit in our weak-mayor form of government. A few Sundays ago, Leppert paid a visit to Concord Baptist Missionary Church in Oak Cliff. At the end of the service, the pastor, Brian Carter, looked at the congregation and was surprised to see Leppert was still there. Carter didn't endorse Leppert but thanked him for coming anyway.

"Tom did that at every service he went to," Johnson says. "He didn't shake the preacher's hand, kiss the baby and leave. He stayed for the entire service, and people noticed that."