Leppert and City Council Loyalists Retreat on Convention Center Hotel Plan

This has been a rush deal from the beginning, which has been Leppert's style from the beginning. Brand-new to politics, from an inner-sanctum background as a CEO, Leppert's approach since taking office last July has been to build momentum and urgency, almost as if debate itself were the enemy.

It's an approach that probably made sense in the construction business, where he was last employed. But politics can be stickier than that.

At the April 23 council meeting where Leppert had to back down on the convention hotel deal, he also found himself contemplating embarrassment in the matter of replacing the late Lynn Flint Shaw, former chair of Dallas Area Rapid Transit. Shaw, whom Leppert had helped become chair of DART, was found dead March 10, apparently shot by her husband who then killed himself.

Shaw had resigned from the DART board January 30 under a cloud of criminal and ethical charges. She was also chair of Leppert's political fund-raising committee.

For three months Leppert and the city council have been dead-locked over an appointment to take Shaw's place. Half the council want to replace her with Joyce Foreman, whom Leppert helped remove from the board last August. Leppert believed he had thwarted that effort by backing another candidate, who was to be nominated April 23.

But it all went boom. Several different versions of what went wrong are floating around. One is that Leppert's candidate, Dr. Beverly Mitchell-Brooks, who is head of a nonprofit, got cold feet at the last minute. Dr. Brooks did not return my call seeking comment.

Leppert said the council needed to delay its vote on the appointment because the city attorney was investigating allegations of conflict of interest involving contracts between Brooks' agency, the Greater Dallas Urban League, and the city. But that version didn't fly for some council members, because those allegations had been around for weeks. The city attorney had never even wrinkled his nose, let alone expressed concern, until the morning of the vote.

The version believed by council members who spoke to me off the record is this: On the day of the vote, Leppert came to the council horseshoe and learned that a key vote had flipped and he was going to lose. City Attorney Tom Perkins was pressed into service to come up with a pretext. And Leppert pushed through a quick vote to delay without discussion.

His problem was that some members wanted to discuss it anyway and did so after the vote. Council member Carolyn R. Davis, first-term representative from District 7 in near southeast Dallas, called for an executive session so that the city attorney could explain his issues. But Leppert refused.

Davis blew up. "We've got to stop this behind-the-closed-door stuff here at City Hall and put this stuff out there," she said to a burst of applause from the audience. "This behind-the-closed-door stuff is going to stop."

Leppert wheedled: "Miss Davis, I appreciate it. Miss Davis, we have voted on it. It was voted on."

But she stayed on him: "It is wrong, Mayor. You know I will support you any way I can. I am for you. But right is right, and wrong is wrong at the end of the day."

Leppert said, "Miss Davis, I don't think it has anything to do with support or anything else."

And there you have it. Inadvertently, I'm sure, the mayor sort of put his finger on it. He doesn't think it's about support. So what does he think it is about? What does he think anything is about in politics?

Thus far he has been carried by the enthusiasm of his backers and the happy tromping of boots at the Morning News. He has been able to suffuse the air around him with the scent of money, especially the lucrative public contracts that the late Ms. Shaw was so eager to help him hand out.

But now it's about more. It's about politics—the means by which we govern our affairs in this democratic land. And it is all about support.

Leppert needs to go out and get some. He's going to have to start talking to some of the people at whom he has turned up his nose so far. He's going to have to do deals. The only way he can pull out of his stall will be by building support among some of the people who don't especially like him.

Can he do that? Does he have those skills? Can he become a politician? Or will it be crow, crow and more crow on his dinner plate?

I can't even begin to tell you how interested I am to watch and find out. He may do it. I know that he will have lots of support. I can hear the boots now. For my part, just in case he is in for another serving, I'm still here standing by with the butter.