Carol Reed, Field Marshall of the “Vote No” forces is the only person I know on her side (besides me) who was excited about Tuesday’s exercise in Dallas Democracy. Perhaps that is because she was the only one cashing campaign checks and not writing them.

Former councilman and candidate for Mayor Ed Oakley was quoted in ‘Dallas’ only daily’ today as saying “these (Vote Yes) people have done a disservice to the community.” Ed sounds like a man who recently lost an election. Hunt did well for two reasons: First, letting the people have a say is a good thing; so long as they say the right thing. Second, the only way we could ever put the Trinity behind us and move on was to have this election. Happily, 53% of the people said the right thing.

Personally my hat is off to Councilwoman Angela Hunt and her Birkenstock legions. They did the city of Dallas a favor and did a good job at something the city sees too little of: grass roots efforts. On this issue Hunt was wrong but she has been right before and will be again and having people like her who are unafraid to take a stand is encouraging. It is also nice to know that at least one henhouse guard won’t be a fox (actually she kind of is).

But how exactly did an effort that cajoled at least 52,000 Dallas voters into signing a petition to force the election manage to garner only 37,000 votes on Election Day? Carol Reed is a smart cookie but frankly the yes campaign had reason to expect better than they got.

Actually I answered this in a DallasBlog column two weeks ago: the vast majority of voters in north Dallas believed Angela Hunt when she said you couldn’t have a toll road and park. They voted for the toll road because they have never believed you could create Dallas own Central Park in the Trinity River bottoms. They (we) wouldn’t be unhappy if Tom Leppert and his successors can pull it off, we just don’t think they can. They (we) know you can build a toll way to take traffic off Stemmons.

Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze, the Vote Yes movement’s chief ideologist and propagandist, paid me a great compliment by pointing to that column as a rare example of a “Vote No” backer speaking openly and truthfully. Schutze summed my sentiments as “parks suck.” Jim did allow that there were more than a few in “late middle age” (Jim – I prefer ‘late youth’) with “a mildly sedentary lifestyle” (Jim – nothing mildly about it) who probably shared my view.

After Jim’s piece appeared in the Observer I got lots of email and phone calls asking if I was serious. Apparently DallasBlog reporter Sam Merten had attracted many ‘save the park’ readers (glad to have you) who thought surely I was joking. Could there really be, they asked, real voters who opposed a park because they expected it to be a haven for drug dealers and a shelter less homeless shelter?

In fact, I could have literally introduced them to dozens of north Dallas voters who claim to have voted “no” the first time around in 1998 because Ron Kirk kept telling them about this wonderful park and shoving brochures at them with Schutze’s famous Monet painting of the Great Trinity Park. These folks didn’t buy the brochure for a minute and considered the whole thing a waste of money. They voted Tuesday to see that the one thing that made sense to them got built – the toll road.

The vote yes folks were horrified when I explained that I meant every word I wrote and there was a huge vote out there that indeed thought their park sucked that would carry the Vote No forces to victory. They didn’t believe it. Now they know.

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