Dallas mayor leaves Democratic Party, switches to GOP: ‘American cities need Republicans’

The mayor of one of the largest cities in the U.S. announced in a Friday op-ed that he is leaving the Democratic Party and becoming a Republican. 

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed with the headline “America’s Cities Need Republicans, and I’m Becoming One,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson explains that he is leaving the Democratic Party because “the future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism.”

“Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP,” Johnson wrote. 

“In other words, American cities need Republicans — and Republicans need American cities,” he continued. “When my political hero Theodore Roosevelt was born, only 20% of Americans lived in urban areas. By the time he was elected president, that share had doubled to 40%. Today, it stands at 80%. As America’s cities go, so goes America.”

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Johnson has been a vocal supporter of police as other cities, including the Texas capitol of Austin, have moved to defund police departments in the wake of the George Floyd riots. 

In February, Johnson posted a Fox News Digital article on social media outlining how Austin police officers are retiring in droves due to low morale resulting from defunding and encouraged those officers to move to Dallas and work there.

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“When you have a mayor who supports the police not only in his words but his actions, you see what happens to crime in your city,” Austin Police Retired Officers Association Dennis Farris told Fox News Digital on Friday. 

“Mayor Johnson has led from the front and it showed when he was re-elected without one single challenger — that’s unheard of in a major U.S. city.”

Dallas saw a significant decrease in crime after Johnson took office in 2019. Johnson told Fox News Digital in 2021 he attributed that success to three things — a strong police chief, having “a budget that reflects public safety being your city’s top priority” and ensuring there’s “community buy-in” for crime reduction. 

Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.