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Recent Articles By Matt Pulle

National Features

After all these years, Carol Reed can still own a room. Election night in Dallas comes on a warm Tuesday in November and Reed avidly mingles with businessmen, City Hall leaders and political insiders in a side hall of a music club a few blocks south of a glittering skyline. Tonight, the 60-year-old woman who keeps her hair bright and blond is wearing a black and white tweed Armani short skirt and a matching V-neck sweater. Reed always dresses stylishly when she knows she'll end up on television.

If only she could find a moment alone to even think about such things. Reed has just helped lead her side to another electoral triumph, blunting a furious grassroots campaign that threatened to upend the plans her powerful friends had for a toll road along the Trinity River. Now they were coming to show their gratitude. A city council member talks to Reed while she's on the phone and offers to buy her a glass of wine. The mayor pulls her in for a private conversation not long after an ex-mayor tells her a joke. A wealthy executive ambles over and gives Reed a long hug as she gives an interview to a reporter.

Wearing a blue blazer and no tie, Mayor Tom Leppert stands at the lectern. He gives a ho-hum victory speech and appears more relieved than joyous. To many of the people in the room, the new mayor, selected just five months earlier, is still a stranger. That's hardly true of Reed, who stands 10 or so feet away from Leppert and claps heartily. Though Reed is happy with the results, the truth is that she was never really worried. She knew all along she'd win.

For more than 20 years, Reed has been a vaunted campaign manager if not a veritable celebrity in local political circles. Although she may be unfamiliar to most people in Dallas, Reed is the behind-the-scenes architect of the establishment, and her designs have sketched out the most important electoral triumphs in the city's recent history. She has helped elect three mayors, served as the chief fund-raiser for a fourth and successfully pushed public financing for the American Airlines Center and the original Trinity River project before voters in the '90s. She's also helped pass billion-dollar-plus bond packages for the city and the school district.

While her career is not short of triumphs, 2007 may have been her best year yet. In addition to helping elect Leppert mayor—while taking home $30,000 a month for her services—Reed warded off city council member Angela Hunt's initiative to kill the Trinity River toll road. Reed was also tapped this year to be the chief Texas fund-raiser for GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. That's a rather prominent post considering how heavily Republicans rely on Texas money.

Today, nearly 40 years after she stumbled into the fringes of a statewide election on a whim, Reed can choose just about any job in politics she wants. For the solidly entrenched business community, which has long enjoyed the final say in how Dallas is run, Reed is their go-to consultant. While some may wonder if Reed merely happened into a fortuitous relationship with the most lavish check writers in town, owing her success more to their bank accounts than her talents, the flip side of that argument is more accurate: The businessmen of Dallas enlist Reed because they know she's the best chance they have to stay in control.

"She has the respect and the ear of every major political leader in this city and every business leader in this city," says former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk. "And she did that on her own."

People like to think of political consultants as a slippery lot who whisper brilliant strategies in a candidate's ear, leading the way to a magical election. The realities are far more mundane and rigorous, especially in a campaign run by Reed. She has a corporate approach, which is appropriate considering her business-minded constituency.

"I'm the CEO," is how Reed describes her role in a campaign. "The candidate is the product."

The first thing Reed will do is test that product through targeted and sophisticated polling and come up with a winning message. Let's say, for example, Reed's candidate says that his priorities are reducing crime, fostering economic development in southern Dallas and building a landing pad for alien spaceships in downtown. Reed's Washington-based pollster will see how that plays in different parts of the city.

Then Reed will look at which parts of the candidate's platform resonate with voters and which ones don't. For the themes that flounder, Reed will try to find a way to cast them in a vaguer light like, say, pitching the candidate's alien pad idea as a creative way to boost tourism.

Perhaps the most important information gleaned from the poll is whether the candidate's themes, if not the candidate himself, are received well by likely voters. If they're not, the campaign works on its candidate's message.

In the message phase, Reed often partners with Allyn & Co., the political consulting firm that has never been on the losing side of a Dallas mayor's race. When you put Reed and Allyn on the same side, they're virtually unstoppable. (And very high-priced. During the Leppert campaign, Reed and Allyn & Co. charged $30,000 and $20,000 a month respectively for their services.)

Allyn & Co. are often heavily involved in the polling, typically writing a good chunk of the script. Their staff will also get to know the candidate. In the most recent mayor's race, Mari Woodlief, the firm's chief executive officer, spent hours with Leppert just listening to his life story. From there, her company decided to introduce Leppert in a television commercial as a self-made man who worked as a janitor when he was a teenager to help his single mom.

Write Your Comment show comments (9)

  1. Hey Matt - Does the Dallas Observer verify the ages of the girls in the adult services sections ? If so can we see the verification?

    Comment by wick olson — December 12, 2007 @ 07:01PM

  2. Once again Matt, your pen will be missed so much here in the Big D. Your articles cover so much ground and are very informative. Wish you would stay but I know you will do very well at the Scene!

    Comment by Gehrig Saldaña — December 12, 2007 @ 07:12PM

  3. I don't really care about this story, but rather, who's fine back-side is that on the cover?

    Comment by Johnny — December 14, 2007 @ 01:11PM

  4. Well, I guess all that money sometimes dulls one's brain. Rob Allyn has apparently forgotten when his candidate for Mayor was Jim Buerger. Does anyone remember a Mayor Buerger.... didn't think so.

    Hey wait -- and that race is the one that Carol didn't win either -- afraid to take the race because it would ruin her Republican credentials since Fred Meyer was in the race.

    Oh, yeah, I won that one.

    Comment by Lorlee — December 14, 2007 @ 01:15PM

  5. Well, you've gone and done it.

    I don't even like Carol Reed, and here I am venturing dangerously close to being on her side. I do not take exception to the article, but to the cover shot. Here you are discussing a woman, who in your own words, is a powerful political pundit. Yet, you diminish her achievements and her (and why not throw in all women while we are at) by using a graphic of a cheerleader's ass. Let's see what do you think of when you hear cheerleader — empty-headed women cheering on her man with no power or control over the game's outcome. That's not the Carol Reed you describe, but it's ignorable and some could even say apt given her profession. Maybe. But why make this about sex and, hence, about gender, by framing the picture so that we are all forced to unnecessarily inch closer to being an up-skirt voyeur? It's demeaning, and its wrong. Mark this up to feminist ratings it you want, but I believe you story could have been that much more powerful without the sexist stink that picture gives it.

    Comment by Pixel — December 14, 2007 @ 01:41PM

  6. The picture of the cheerleader is Carol Reed during her younger years. It is how she got into politics.
    Does anyone think that Carol wouldn't have had influence on how her article looked?

    Comment by wick olson — December 14, 2007 @ 07:39PM

  7. Good god, Angela Hunt has grown tiresome. "Cabal" is the best the Bitter High Priestess of the Self-Marginalized could come up with?? Shut up and make something positive happen, Angela. Your angry little coalition of disaffected grumps and conspiracy crabs is not a foundation upon which the majority of Dallas' voters want to build the city's future. You're just another Dallas whiner - of which we have an overabundance - who does not actually know how to win OR how to play well with winners. Ms. Reed has you completely slam-dunked until you learn how to work with others to make something positive happen in Dallas. We're waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting.

    Comment by Dave — December 17, 2007 @ 09:27AM

  8. Dear Pixel,

    Before I venture out and suggest that you invest in a ten-inch, 3-speed dildo from your local Condoms to Go™ franchise, I would like to politely comment that you are entirely missing the point of Matt Pulle's brilliant "Bring It On" article.

    As the great Quentin Tarantino once alluded to in the film "Sleep With Me," life, like the movies, is all about subterfuge on a massive level. Just as "Top Gun" was really about a man's struggle with his own homosexuality (we're led to believe it's just a story about a bunch of fighter pilots), Carol Reed's career is far more epic and above us all than just being a "powerful political pundit" in the Dallas arena.

    You see, what the cheerleader's beautiful ass shot (with perfectly placed GOP tat) so bluntly gives away in an act that almost entirely blows the article's genius subversive cover is that politics in Dallas is all about money and butt sex. If you're not on the winning side (Carol's side, Leppert's side, Hunt, Crow, Hicks, et. al.) or giving money to the winning side, then you're taking it in the ass from the winning side. This is dirty, sexy, money at its highest of apexes. And nothing represents Carol's political career better than a hot-ass cheerleader with a secret tat for the GOP.

    The point is: get on the winning side; unless you enjoy taking it in the ass. Carol learned a long time ago that she doesn't like taking it in the ass. Therefore, she is brilliant about jumping into a race at the most opportunistic time - after the cash fountain is determined. Follow the money. Always follow the money.

    Your feministic, joystick envious comment tells me that you would much rather be an insertor than an insertee. My advice is to follow Carol's lead and jump on board when you see her poms-poms rise. Believe you me, I learned this lesson the hard way after the Trinity tollroad campaign. My butt is still sore and I wish we could have hired her first.

    Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Go Dallas!

    Comment by Justin — December 20, 2007 @ 03:11PM

  9. In the United States, the cheerleader is a cultural icon, on one hand, symbolizing "youthful prestige, wholesome attractiveness, peer leadership and popularity," while simultaneously representing "mindless enthusiasm, shallow booster-ism, objectified sexuality, and promiscuous availability" (Hanson 1995,2).A staple of
    American life and popular culture, the cheerleader has received little scholarly attention. When discussed at all in academic research, as illustrated in the following quote, cheerleading is typically presented as an activity that exploits and demeans girls: "The function of the cheerleader is to encourage the worship of Men -the prettiest, nicest and most lively are selected to show and encourage adoration" (Weis 1997, 83).
    Lemish's (1998, 155) study stated, "A girl could be anyone-as long as she was pretty." (Inness 1998). Douglas (1997,21) described the fragile landscape of contemporary girlhood in this way: "Girls today are being urged, simultaneously, to be independent, assertive, and achievement oriented, yet also demure, attractive, fifteen pounds underweight, and deferential to men."

    McRobbie (1993) and Budgeon (1998) have argued that new subject positions are being made available to girls that provide a counter discourse to the girl as victim. This is most notable in the shift of discourse on adolescent femininity away from romance to a new theme of independence and assertiveness. Passivity, quietness, acquiescence, and docility no longer represent the primary markers for signifying normative girlhood. Budgeon pointed out that girls are being taught that self-determination, individualism, self-efficacy, independence, sexual subjectivity, and assertiveness are all desirable traits of the new ideal girl.

    Originally, cheerleading was an exclusively male activity representing normative masculinity. During the mid- to late 1800s and the early 1900s, cheerleading was an idealized activity for privileged males and was seen as both an athletic and an aesthetic endeavor, as reported by the editors of The Nation (Organized cheering 1911,6), who argued that organized cheering was a noble activity for undergraduates (i.e., males), and the reputation of having been a valiant "cheer-leader" is one of the most valuable things a boy can take away from college. As a title to promotion in professional or public life, it ranks hardly second to that of having been a quarterback.

    Girls began entering collegiate organized cheering in small numbers in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but as late as the 1930s, cheerleading was still considered to be a male activity, associated with masculine characteristics of athleticism and leadership (Hanson 1995).

    By the 1940s, more than 30,000 American high schools and colleges had cheerleaders, many of whom were girls. The trend to include girls in this previously masculine activity was precipitated in part by World War 11. As young men fought in the war, girls were offered entrance into spaces once relegated solely for males.
    Cheerleading was one of those spaces (Hanson 1995). However, as men returned from the war, they sought to reclaim their place in the public spheres, including cheerleading squads. Thus, by the 1950s, several colleges (e.g., the University of Tennessee) and high schools began to ban girls from the cheering squad (Gonzales
    1956).

    Despite the ban on women cheerleaders in some squads and the number of men still participating in cheerleading at the collegiate level, by the 1950s, cheerleading was becoming more and more feminized, as illuminated in a 1955 published list of desirable traits for high school cheerleaders. Gymnastics ability was not included; rather, the important traits were manners, cheerfulness, and good disposition traits traditionally associated with women and girls (Kutz 1955, 310). Noting the transformation of cheerleading by the 1960s from a masculine activity to a highly feminized activity, McElroy (1999, 15) asserted,
    Cheerleading in the sixties consisted of pom-poms, cutesy chants, big smiles and revealing uniforms. There were no gymnastic tumbling runs; No complicated stunting.

    Never any injuries; about the most athletic thing sixties cheerleaders did was a cartwheel followed by the splits. However, in the aftermath of the second wave of feminist activism and theorizing in the 1960s, and the passage of title IX in 1972, the cultural scripts for ideal femininity began to change. The new ideal woman was one who did not relegate her needs to the needs of men.

    She sought to enter spheres once reserved only for men
    (e.g., occupations, sports). As the signifier of normative femininity began to change, so too did notions of the ideal girl, who, of course, had to be prepared for taking on a new role in adult society.

    I believe that YouTube has embellished on this ideology and the Republican party endorses it as we can clearly see on the curvy buttocks of a well known Dallas cross dresser.... hahahahaha (breath) AAHHH (breath) hahahahaha

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVHtYfB8hwA

    Comment by captureasmile — December 28, 2007 @ 01:43AM

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