NYT/Reuters: Gay Candidate Loses Dallas Mayoral Election
By REUTERS
Published: June 16, 2007
DALLAS (Reuters) - An openly gay candidate lost his bid on Saturday to become mayor of Dallas in a race that attracted wide attention because of his sexual orientation.
Councilman Ed Oakley lost to businessman Tom Leppert, who took 58 percent of the vote to Oakley's 42 percent, according to official returns. Oakley had the endorsement of the Democratic Party, while Leppert ran a nonpartisan campaign.
A victory by Oakley would have made him the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a Washington-based gay rights group....
One conservative group mounted a phone campaign against Oakley, mostly on the grounds of his sexual orientation, while gay rights groups cheered his candidacy.
His candidacy in the runoff election helped dispel the image of Dallas as an archconservative oil city in the heart of the U.S. Bible belt. The ninth-most populous U.S. city has about 1.2 million residents....
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-dallas-mayor-election.html