Angela Hunt, left, and James Nowlin
Late Saturday we put in calls to both Angela Hunt and James Nowlin, after it was clear Hunt had easily defeated Nowlin on her way to a fourth and final term representing District 14 on the Dallas City Council.
In a race that sharply divided the LGBT community over the last few months, Hunt captured 67 percent of the vote to Nowlin’s 28 percent. Hunt is a staunch LGBT ally who was endorsed by the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance. Nowlin is openly gay and was endorsed by Stonewall Democrats of Dallas.
Neither Hunt nor Nowlin called us back right away — or if they did we were already gone and they didn’t leave messages. However, we noticed that both have now posted thank-you notes to supporters on their websites.
Interestingly, Hunt indicates in her note that she didn’t receive a phone call from Nowlin congratulating her. In fact, she doesn’t even mention Nowlin.
“Lastly, I received messages of congratulations from two of my opponents — Brian Oley and Vernon Franko — and I thank you for your gracious words,” Hunt writes. “You both ran positive, issue-driven campaigns, and it was a pleasure getting to know you.”
Nowlin doesn’t congratulate Hunt in his thank-you to supporters, either.
“Although we did not achieve a victory on Election Night, we put the 14th District on notice that one in three voters expects more,” Nowlin writes. “We have made a difference. This is just the beginning.”
It’s a shame the bad blood apparently continues between these two. Let’s hope the LGBT community can bury the hatchet, even if certain candidates can’t.
Nowlin ran a bad campaign and shows a lack of class by not congratulating Angela. Maybe the Stonewall Democrats and Steven Graves can send her best regards instead of Nowlin.
Angela Hunt is a class act, and James Nowlin lacks any semblance thereof. That is not bad blood.
“If the President passes the most important piece of environmental legislation in history, and does it despite our negative endorsement, our political weight in the future will rank somewhere below the Save the Spotted Owl Society.” – Leo Solomon, head of environmental lobbying group in The American President.
Welcome to the Spotted Owl Society, Dallas Stonewall Democrats.
After the way Hunt and her supporters trashed Nowlin and his supporters, she doesn’t deserve a call… to the contrary, the lies and smear initiated by Hunt’s supporters were pathetic, yet consistent with her reputation of calling council members “pathetic” and “egotistical”. It’s unfortunate that the gay community followed her lead and treated Nowlin and his supporters with such venom.
Dallas Stonewall Democrats? Whooo
? Whoooo?
A bit classless but whatever. I am just glad there will be no runoff. Things would have only gotten worse.
In looking to past political opponents for lessons, I have two words to say to James Nowlin.
Clayton Williams.
James Nowlin ran a horrible attack campaign that lost him this election. And clearly, if you look at the election results in Oak Lawn, Uptown and M Streets(areas of high gay populations), Angela thrashed Nowlin. That can only mean that the gay community never supported Nowlin in the first place. Stonewall Democrats need a wake up call if they want to be relevent in Dallas politics any longer. And quite frankly, Steven Graves needs to learn a lesson too. Poeple have the right to say what they want, but they also have to suffer the consequences. And people need to leave Steven Graves insurance as he ran one of the worst negative attacks on a friend to our community that I have ever seen.
To Andrew above, which news have you been looking at? I’m sorry, but it was STEVEN GRAVES and JAMES NOWLIN that ran a smear campaign against Angela Hunt. NOT the other way around. All you have to do is look at the ad’s in Dallas voice, heck just look at each of their websites. Hunt ran a positive campaign talking about issues that matter to us and Nowlin + his crazy’s ran a smear attack campaign that turned away voters(myself included).
Who does James Nowlin think he is? What a a$$. If he was smart, he would have ran a positive campaign, probably would have lost, but 2 years from now, would have been set up as a shoe in for the election. Now he has ticked off so many people that they will never support him in any fashion. I agree with what somoone said above too, Stonewall needs to wake up, their days in Dallas have ended and they need to do some soul searching if they want to be a part of Dallas politics.
I, like so many of my friends, was initially going to vote for Nowlin. But from the moment I saw the Steven graves ad in the voice I knew I had to support Angela Hunt. I don’t like the nasty negative campaigning and nowlins campaign turned me off. I was so pissed off, I don’t think I would ever vote for that guy even if it was for dog catcher. The funny thing is, my insurance was coming up to renew and I had planned to go to graves insurance, not anymore. I’m staying away from that $&;?.
There was nothing about this race that divided that gay community. Nowlin had Steven Graves, the Dallas Voice and the Stonewall Democrats. Hunt had a very large segment of the the GLBTQ community supporting her as she has us for many years. If anything, it brought us together. We don’t pay our friends back by throwing them under the bus.
@Jack: Dallas Voice doesn’t endorse political candidates.
I thought that by way of your support for Stonewall Dems you were supporting Nowlin..
My bad. You are Wright.
@Jack. Yes I am. And right. But we don’t support Stonewall Dems or DGLA or any other group. We merely cover them.
Oh. I did not know that. I can be such a jerk. If we have a deeply divided community over this race, I hope we can all put it behind us and move forward accordingly and support Ms Hunt in whatever way we can and promote equality for all. I think you will find we are both Wright/right on that.
I am so glad this horrid election is over! I am even more glad that I no longer will be receiving trash in the mail from Nowlin and his campaign. I am most excited that the last thing I got to do as a citizen of Dallas before I am completely moved away from this city is to vote for Ms. Hunt! She deserved to win in my opinion having had the pleasure of working with numerous members of City Council over the past seven years closely!
Looks like Nowlin got a shellacking!
As a volunteer who served on James Nowlin’s campaign and worked side by side with James and other volunteers, I am ashamed by some, if not most of the comments I have read! I feel betrayed by a majority of my fellow so called Democrats and extremely dirty as if I was raped by the entire Republican Party!
How dare any of you insult the Nowlin campaign! If you attack and portray him as a dastardly scoundrel then you attack and portray every hard working volunteer that poured countless hours of blood, sweat and tears into his campaign as the same. His volunteer base was composed of everyday hard working individuals with everyday jobs! Some making minimum wage. I was one of them. I had no “special Interest” or clandestine agenda, and neither did Mr. Nowlin.
I walked door to door with him and watched how enthusiastically people would listen to what he had to say regarding his platform. Voters were extremely concerned about EVERY issue that was mentioned in the Nowlin campaign materials that were being mailed out. The record is the record and the voters were not ignorant of that as much as some of you would like to think that they were. There was a consensus amongst the voters that we spoke to that they haven’t heard from Mrs. Hunt or seen her in person since the first time she ran for city council six years ago!!! A majority of them were extremely frustrated!
Ask yourselves this:
How are you supposed to point out to a voter the fundamentals of what needs to be changed if you don’t present them the RECORD of the contentious issues to begin with? The very issues which constitute the CHANGE to begin with?
I can’t help but laugh at the obtuse, obscure and delusional mindsets that some of you have. How on this God’s green earth is someone supposed to point out the errors of the incumbent without hurting anyone’s feelings?
Should Mr. Nowlin have just said, “Hi! I’m James Nowlin, please vote for me because I’m running for city council! I have some ideas but I can’t tell you how my ideas contrast from the incumbent’s policies because that would be a smear campaign. I also cannot point out the errors of the incumbent because that would be considered a smear campaign too, but please vote me for anyway!?”
Does that make sense? No! It doesn’t and any of you who think that you can run a political campaign without pointing out the incumbents failures are idiots and would lose horribly.
I am also appalled by anyone who suggests that a candidate, who portrays themselves as a “friend” or “friendly” to the “community” meaning the LGBT community, merits my vote on that sole basis especially if that candidate is NOT LGBT is up surd! If I am going to vote on that basis and there is a LGBT candidate running, then I am going to vote for the actual LGBT member of the community to be my VOICE on the city council!!! PERIOD!!!
I am sorry my LGBT friends, but the division that this community has shown during this election and continues to show by writing derogatory comments as most of you have is catastrophic. One day we will pay the price because those who oppose our very existence see this blatant division in the Dallas LGBT community and they will USE IT AGAINST US!!!
We could not even come together to support one of our own running for political office. For that I am mortified and ashamed! It is my understanding that 60,000 people are registered to vote in District 14 alone, and only 8,281 people voted out of 60,000. If y’all are going to attack something, then attack the lack of interest and civic duty from the other 52,000 registered voters in District 14 who failed to preserve their right to vote and ability to voice their opinions! That’s the real travesty during this election and NOT the James Nowlin campaign!
Please stop attacking the Nowlin campaign because you are attacking me, my values and my ideologies, and the very core of the gay community because I have been in the heart of the gay community working and volunteering and I know firsthand the good things “we” can do, and these attacks are not representative of any of it.
@Ryan: “so called Democrats”, “as if I were raped”, “delusional mindsets”, “idiots…” ??
Way to elevate the conversation! Just lovely…
@ Ryan W. Evans:
Mary!
@ Ryan W. Evans: Such hysterics are exactly why the Nowlin campaign flopped. The voters in District 14, including the GLBT coomunity, saw through all the mud James Nowlin tried to throw into the race and we voted against it. Get over yourselves. The only “dastardly scoundrels” were the people that thought running a negative, dishonest campaign against a friend of our community might actually succeed. Please don’t let the door hit you on the way out…
I am new to Dallas and new to this district, but the reason I voted for hunt over nowlin was how negative and nasty bowline campaign was. I don’t know either of the candidates, but I will never vote for anyone who ran as dirty of a campaign as that nowlin guy. Oh and Ryan w Evans, honey, you must be very young, because you should NEVER vote for a candidate just because they are gay. We have had some very bad elected officials where I come from who got elected simply because they are gay. Point is, always vote for the better candidate. And clearly the gay community in dallas felt that hunt is the better candidate and I have to agree.
Classy, James, just classy!
A bit of advice: Concentrate your future efforts on non-political work. Your campaign was an embarrassment of epic proportions, and I doubt anyone of substance will support you in any future political endeavors.
in the meantime, please just go away.
Nowlin does not have one ounce of class, and apparently lacks any moral core. He was a staunch supporter of Angela, and so alligned with her that he got her to appoint him to a ciy board. He told her he was interested in running for Dist. 14 AFTER she was through serving there. She supoorted him by placing him on the Police Review Board. Then, he stabbed her in the back and ran against her. And, he’s a liar because he used to tell Angela she was a good coucilperson, then when he decided to run against her, his entire campaign focused on trashing Angela and painting her out to be a horrible council person. She is a great council person, and Nowlin knows it! He did not run because the distict needed to replace a bad council member, he ran because he wants to hold office. And, he doesn’t want to be on the council, he wants a hihgher office. That is why he wanted to run for Terri Hodges seat, but had to settle with trying to start with being on the council. Every time he talked about how bad Angela was, he was either lying or being a hypocrite or both. Bad council members don’t get reelected with 67% of the vote even though they were out-spent by a nasty campaign ran against her…GREAT council members get re-elected with that kind of margin in such a situation. Nowlin has so little respect in our community, although he and a handful of supporters think otherwise. Many people could not stand Nowlin even before he ran for office becuase he is so phony. Now, many people have great disdain for him because of all the factors surrounding him running aginast Angela and the mean and nasty campaign he ran.