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The Dwaine Caraway Show

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That he doesn't. Before his council win last summer, Caraway was in danger of becoming a perennial also-ran. He was elected at age 55, his fourth attempt in a decade. But even a seat on the council has not convinced everyone to take him seriously.

Not so with Mayor Tom Leppert, who is here at the former crack house, as are Dallas police chief David Kunkle and city attorney Tom Perkins. They all make speeches for the cameras, but it's Caraway who sums up, and as always, he offers special plaudits for the mayor.

"Let me just say that, even though it's raining and cold, this is a great day in Dallas, not just in District 4. As the mayor has stated, we had laws on the books, but we didn't follow through with the laws to the fullest.

"It has been the mayor's commitment to make sure that we address all of these things, because these things have been plaguing our community and holding us back."

He winds up with the Dwaine Caraway mantra: "Zero tolerance when it comes to drugs and illicit activity. The motels and drug houses must go."

If there is a single aspect of Caraway's public persona that causes skepticism—from people such as Peter Johnson, fellow council members speaking off the record, bloggers and even black business people—it is the very chummy relationship Caraway maintains with Leppert.

Leppert, after all, is the traditional white champion of the Dallas Citizens Council, the private business group directly descended from the old mid-century oligarchy. After Leppert's election last year, Citizens Council President John Scovell told the group's annual meeting, "We're changing back to the good old days," according to the December 3 issue of the Dallas Business Journal.

So why is the new grassroots champion of District 4 going all over town arm-in-arm with Mr. Good Old Oligarchy Days? Caraway suggests the relationship is somehow conditional.

"Well, he's OK," he says of the mayor. "Right now. He really is. Right now."

Since the March 10 murder-suicide of Rufus and Lynn Flint Shaw, I have written about the mayor's "inner circle." It's a group of southern Dallas power brokers that included Lynn Flint Shaw—a coterie of minority activists who helped Leppert get elected mayor, then worked to help him defeat the Trinity River referendum.

A series of private e-mails provided to the Dallas Observer by an anonymous source revealed that Shaw put strong pressure on Leppert to funnel public works contracting for minorities through her group. She stated a clear tit-for-tat exchange: Her group helped him get elected.

Caraway was even more central to Leppert's southern strategy than Shaw, in both his mayoral race and in the toll road election. But Caraway, significantly, does not show up in any of Shaw's tit-for-tat e-mails about contracts.

I asked him why and he said, "I'm not in this for any of that." But he's in it for something. And Leppert clearly is in it with him.

Caraway is not Leppert's only friend on the council from southern Dallas. If anything, the bond between southern Dallas, Leppert and the Citizens Council is stronger now than ever before. People in the southern half of the city are beginning to believe economic development is possible and may see Leppert as their best chance for help in making it happen.

But not everybody on the council from southern Dallas wants from Leppert what Caraway wants. Under the terms of the current peace prevailing on the city council, southern Dallas council members do not make invidious comparisons of themselves with other council members for the record. A number of council members, asked to comment on Caraway's style, demurred, saying only that their own approaches tend to be more systematic and broad-brush.

Pauline Medrano, who represents District 2 in downtown and West Dallas, explained that she has been developing an overlay map of economic generators and large investments, public and private, in her district—everything from mega-churches to libraries. She wants to see if the city is investing its capital improvement budget in areas where there is a potential for critical mass.

Tennell Atkins, who represents District 8 in far southeast Dallas, also has a large map on his wall. He spent part of one afternoon showing me the links he hopes to help forge between big-box retail, the new University of North Texas campus, warehousing operations and other employment centers, all of which may feed new residential and mixed-use commercial development in the area.

The dean of the southern sector caucus on the council is Mayor Pro Tem Elba Garcia, who has represented District 1 in North Oak Cliff since 2001. Garcia's take on southern sector politics and the job of council members falls somewhere between big picture and small animal. She has a broad, long-range view of what southern Dallas needs, but she also knows that Caraway is on to something when he screws down the focus to something like animal control.

"Dogs, dead or alive, are the No. 1 complaint from constituents," she told me when I called about Caraway.

Today while I ride around with Caraway and Davis in the possible pursuit of crack houses, they have especially sharp eyes out for dogs.

"Pit bulls, D," Davis calls out at one point. "We got pit bulls!"

The dogs are chained in a back yard, but there are hints of other things going on. Caraway spots an empty metal chair at the end of a grass alley. He says these are signs of outdoor drug sales.

"You see the chair? They sit there. They'll be out here. It's just cold for them now."

We have left the boring media event at the boarded-up crack house and are now on to another challenge, which has yet to be divulged to me.

What I can't believe is that Mayor Leppert is still following us. A Dallas police officer is driving him in an SUV, and somewhere behind Leppert are a couple of squad cars and a car carrying the city attorney. I don't know if Leppert knows where we are going either.

Caraway is talking to some lady on one of his cells:

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