Sam Merten at Dallas Blog

Sam,
I just want to take this opportunity to say that you did a really good job covering the Trinity Project. You gave us the information that the Dallas Morning New and other bloggers would never have shared. What I really liked about your reporting is that you were at some of the debates and could give us firsthand knowledge.

I am also very greatful to Angela Hunt for being a public servant not a politician. She represented the concerns of the people against almost all of the elected officials in the southern sector and ended up with 47% of the vote and I think that is remarkable. One of the things that I most admire about her is she was truthful with the people, unlike Mayor Leppert who would look you in the face and lie.

I joined TrinityVote in September and my job was to help get out the African American vote in Dallas (not just the southern sector), and when you look at the numbers, we prevailed in traditional African American neighborhoods like Arlington Park, Hamilton Park, Lovefield,South Dallas and West Dallas. Some of the people that are reporting that I did such a bad job probably do not know how to get to these areas of town or their history . Some of these so called political consultants speak of the African American community only as Oak Cliff (the Red Bird Area). Now mind you in the Red Bird Area of town, I was told that, you had the preachers at Friendship West, Concord and IBOC who let Tom Leppert come and speak to their congregations and Leppert told them to vote no. Friendship West even had a flyer produced that said why you should vote no and also had vans carrying people to different polling places to push No cards on election day.

I think TrinityVote overall did an excellent job against the odds that were against us and my hope is that this coalition of people will somehow stay together so that we can change Dallas politics to politics of the people.

I do not know the aspirations of Angela Hunt, but I would vote for her as mayor because I trust her.