The Democratic Party has come under fire from Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson for trying to “defund the police” and for being apathetic toward violent crime.
Johnson, who gained notoriety last month for his switch to the Republican party, stated that he chose to “do things differently” than other Democrats who advocated for taking money away from the police despite the nation’s ongoing and rising rate of violent crime. Democrats, he claimed, tend to attribute violent crime to the economy, the educational system, and society as a whole since these factors “have always been present.”
Johnson also dismissed criticism from a Democratic member of the city council, who asserted that Dallas’s Democratic-controlled city council is the reason it has turned into one of the safest major cities in the nation. The mayor stated that although the city council had made changes to defund the police department, they had done so “primarily symbolically” and for no sound policy reason. Johnson claims that the plans included funding for environmental concerns and solar panels, two things that “had nothing to do” with a city’s safety during a “crime rise.”
Johnson officially became a Republican in September, even though his office is supposedly middle-of-the-road. He claimed that Dallas has “thrived” under his direction, whereas Democrat policies in other major cities have made homelessness and crime worse.
The survival of the country’s major cities, according to him, hinges on the mayors’ commitment to upholding law and order and practicing fiscal discipline.
Johnson told Bream that the Left’s policies, such as calls to “defund the police” and not prosecute specific offenses, “embolden the criminal element” in cities and that the Democratic Party “doesn’t represent” his principles about “law and order.”
Johnson’s announcement places him among the few Republican mayors of large cities in the country and makes him the only one to govern one of the ten biggest cities.
There is a fierce internal battle inside the party over where it should go, with the most conservative members accusing the more moderate ones of being just Republicans in name only- (RINO.)
It was unclear if Johnson’s objective as a Republican was to win over primary voters with the mayor’s record to seek higher office. On Friday, however, many Republicans declared that they would be happy to welcome the mayor.
