Dallas

Dallas Councilman Faces Recall Campaign After Less Than Three Months in Office

Political Consultant takes responsibility

After less than 3 months in office, Dallas City Councilman Kevin Felder is already facing a recall campaign to remove him from office.

The website RecallKevin.com claims Felder has failed to keep promises, turned his back on loyalists and is not capable of building the necessary team.

“I am not a part of the establishment. That’s what this is about,” Felder said. “This is about change. So, I represent a different frame of reference.”

On his fifth campaign for City Council, Felder beat first term incumbent Tiffinni Young in a June run-off for District 7 which includes Fair Park, South Dallas, Buckner Terrace and portions of Oak Cliff.

“I’m less than 90 days into the job,” Felder said. “The majority of the constituents I have dealt with are pleased with me. Of course you’re going to have some that are not pleased because we have decades of benign neglect from the City of Dallas.”

Political Consultant Bruce Carter confirmed Thursday that he is behind the recall website but he declined to name his clients.

“Some of them are South Dallas folks,” he said. “They feel that he’s not responsive.”

Carter said he would forward a request for an interview to those people but no one called back.

Carter’s firm Ground Strategies has a website which shows past work for Dallas City Council Members Tennell Atkins and Dwaine Caraway. Carter said he was Caraway’s campaign manager at the end of Caraway’s 2017 campaign.

Reached by phone Thursday, Atkins said he is “not involved” in the Felder recall and had no knowledge of it prior to the call from NBC 5. Atkins said Carter did only “in kind” website work for Atkins 2017 campaign and was never an Atkins campaign consultant.

Caraway did not return phone and text messages from NBC 5 Thursday, but he told The Dallas Morning News that he had no involvement with the Felder recall effort.

The RecallKevin.com website shows logos and photographs of several District 7 neighborhoods suggesting those places support the campaign, including Joppa.

Joppa Community leader Claudia Fowler said her neighbors feel disrespected for being mentioned on the website they do not support.

“We believe in giving people a chance to see what they’re going to do,” Fowler said. “He’s only been in there for 90 days. In the real world, he’d still be on probation.”

Fowler said Joppa residents do expect Felder to support their concerns about industrial business expansion that is planned adjacent to their neighborhood. She said Felder did recently hold a community meeting in Joppa to hear the concerns.

“The jury is still out,” Fowler said. “Neighborhoods need to be on one accord. Kevin has not given us any indication that he is going to do what the community wants him to do.”

A logo for the Buckner Terrace neighborhood in East Dallas is also shown on the recall website.

Buckner Terrace Homeowners Association President Kory Mack said his neighborhood was not consulted and does not support a recall.

“This website, I think it’s not going to be successful because I’m doing the job that I was elected to do,” Felder said.

A successful recall petition would require thousands of signatures from registered voters in Felder’s district.

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