Photo/Getty Images; Michael Hogue/Staff Artist
In 1965, former Dallas Mayor J. Erik Jonsson gathered hundreds of residents to confront an existential question: What kind of city should Dallas become?
The effort was called “Goals for Dallas,” and it was born at a moment of genuine civic crisis. The city was still reeling from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, still absorbing the judgment of a nation that wondered what kind of place Dallas had become. Jonsson understood that Dallas needed a clearer civic conscience, and a future large enough to summon people beyond grievance, faction and fear. “Goals for Dallas,” he said, was about helping the city “create and shape the future instead of being run over by it.”
That challenge feels urgent again today. As Dallas approaches the final year of Mayor Eric L. Johnson’s tenure, the city is once again debating its future. Some civic leaders frustrated with our current situation have called for a new governance model instilling more power in the office of the mayor, colloquially known as a “strong mayor system.”
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These are legitimate conversations. Every generation should examine whether its institutions are equipped to meet the demands ahead. But before Dallas debates whether the city needs a stronger mayoral system, it should consider something more fundamental: whether it can find a strong mayor.
Those are not the same thing. A debate about governmental structure is ultimately a debate about power. A debate about a strong mayor is a debate about leadership. Determining how much authority the office should possess is important, but we must first define the qualities it expects from the person who holds it.
That distinction matters because Dallas finds itself at a pivotal moment. While North Texas continues to grow and attract new residents and businesses, the city of Dallas itself faces a more complicated set of challenges than it did a generation ago. Housing affordability has emerged as one of the defining challenges facing urban America.
Questions about public safety, infrastructure, economic competitiveness, downtown revitalization and quality of life are becoming increasingly urgent. The infrastructure of opportunity our city once provided requires serious repair. At the same time, trust in institutions has eroded, and finding common ground often feels more difficult than it once did.
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The next mayor will inherit not a city in decline, but a city at a crossroads. The task will be not simply to manage Dallas but to help shape what it becomes over the next generation. History suggests that the most successful mayors often emerge during precisely these kinds of moments.
The following are not the only examples worth studying, and they are not offered as a ranking. They are drawn from different eras, different regions and different forms of municipal government, chosen because each illustrates something specific about what effective mayoral leadership can produce.
In Atlanta, Maynard Jackson transformed the relationship between government, business and historically excluded communities by opening city contracts to minority-owned firms and leveraging Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s expansion to create an entirely new class of Black business owners.
In Chicago, Harold Washington reformed a patronage-driven machine, ensured that city contracts and leadership appointments reflected the full diversity of Chicago’s residents, and helped a generation of Chicagoans see City Hall as belonging to them. Both were their cities’ first Black mayors, and that fact was not incidental to their leadership. They didn’t simply open doors that had been closed; they governed from the conviction that the city itself belonged to everyone in it.
In Houston, Annise Parker closed a $100 million budget deficit without raising taxes, restructured city pension obligations that threatened long-term fiscal stability, and coordinated responses to a historic drought, all while presiding over continued population growth.
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In New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu helped a city still recovering from Katrina rebuild public institutions, cut the murder rate by nearly half in six years, and led a reckoning over Confederate monuments that required both courage and civic skill.
In South Bend, Pete Buttigieg used data systems to eliminate thousands of abandoned properties and catalyze downtown reinvestment in a city many had written off.
In Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti united business, labor and public agencies behind a transit ballot measure that passed by 71 percent, then secured the 2028 Olympics. Both illustrated how effective mayors help communities see possibilities that others have stopped looking for.
In San Antonio, Henry Cisneros repositioned a city long seen as a regional backwater through downtown redevelopment and public-private partnerships that placed San Antonio on the national economic stage. A generation later, Julian Castro built on that legacy through SA2020, a citywide initiative that aligned dozens of institutions around measurable goals and secured Pre-K 4 SA, an early childhood education program now serving thousands of children. Both demonstrated that leadership is not defined by the powers granted to an office, but by the ability to mobilize a community around common aspirations.
These leaders governed under different charters and different constraints, represented different political parties and confronted different challenges. Yet they shared something important: They understood that the role of a mayor extends beyond managing government. The best mayors are civic entrepreneurs. They help cities imagine a future worth pursuing and then build the coalitions necessary to achieve it.
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What does that kind of leadership actually look like in practice? Across cities and eras, effective mayors tend to share six recognizable qualities: presence, relationship-building, administrative alignment, clear communication, a commitment to measurable outcomes and a willingness to innovate.
They are present. Cory Booker held community office hours in Newark neighborhoods that City Hall had long ignored. That kind of proximity is not merely symbolic. It signals to residents that their concerns register, and it gives a mayor firsthand knowledge that no briefing book can provide.
They invest in relationships before they need them. Effective mayors do not wait for a crisis to introduce themselves to council members, department heads, neighborhood associations and business leaders. They build those relationships systematically, often through regular one-on-one meetings designed not to transact business but to understand what each partner cares about, what they fear and what they are willing to fight for. A mayor who understands a council member’s aspirations for their district before a difficult vote is in a fundamentally different position than one who doesn’t. Dallas’ Ron Kirk was a master at this.
They align their administration around a shared agenda. The relationship between a mayor and a city manager is one of the most consequential in local government, particularly in council-manager cities like Dallas. The most effective mayors treat that relationship as a partnership, not a hierarchy, working consistently with the city manager to identify shared priorities, anticipate friction points and ensure that the machinery of city government is pulling in the same direction as the mayor’s civic agenda.
They communicate with clarity and consistency. Whether through regular public addresses, neighborhood town halls, or direct engagement with the press, effective mayors help residents understand not just what the city is doing, but why. That clarity builds trust, and trust is what allows a mayor to ask a community to accept difficult tradeoffs or pursue ambitious goals that won’t pay off for years. Former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings was particularly skilled in this area during some of the most trying times in recent Dallas history.
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Effective mayors measure what matters, treating data as a governing tool rather than a reporting one, setting clear goals and holding themselves accountable to outcomes rather than activity. They are also willing to innovate. They do not simply manage inherited systems; they ask whether those systems are adequate to the moment.
Martin O’Malley embodied both qualities in Baltimore. He introduced CitiStat, a data-driven performance management system that tracked city services in real time, held department heads accountable for results in regular public meetings, and reduced overtime costs while improving response times across agencies. What began as a local experiment became a national model, adopted by dozens of cities looking for a more rigorous way to connect government activity to measurable outcomes. O’Malley didn’t invent the idea that government should work better. He built a system that made it impossible to pretend it already did.
Dallas’ history reflects these same principles. For nearly a century, the city has operated under a council-manager system. Yet some of its most important accomplishments occurred under that very structure. The creation of DFW International Airport required extraordinary cooperation among elected officials, business leaders and regional partners. The development of the Arts District emerged from decades of civic collaboration. Klyde Warren Park was made possible through partnerships among government, philanthropy, business and community leaders. The transformation of its education system relied in part on a mayor willing to leverage his bully pulpit to champion and support change alongside a superintendent and school board while holding no actual authority over the school district.
Dallas has historically succeeded not because one powerful individual exercised authority, but because leaders aligned diverse interests around shared goals. That is the deeper lesson of Jonsson’s challenge, and it remains as relevant today as it was in 1965.
This is why the current debate over governance reform, while important, risks missing the larger point. Structure, accountability and institutional design all matter.
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Reasonable people can disagree about whether Dallas would benefit from a stronger mayoral system or other changes to city government. But institutional power and leadership are not the same thing. A city can have a strong-mayor system and still suffer from weak leadership. A city can have a council-manager system and still be led by a transformational mayor.
As Dallas prepares to choose its next mayor, the most important question facing voters is not how much power the office should possess. It is what kind of leader this moment requires. Whatever form of government Dallas ultimately chooses, its future will depend on a mayor who governs with presence, builds relationships before they are needed, aligns the machinery of city government around a shared agenda, communicates with clarity and consistency, and brings the civic imagination to ask not just how Dallas is being managed, but what it could become.
As J. Erik Jonsson understood more than six decades ago, cities do not shape themselves. They are shaped by leaders capable of bringing people together to create a future larger than any one interest, institution or ideology.
That is the kind of mayor Dallas should be looking for now.
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