By Marlissa Collier
Beyoncé, once again, stole all the shine and broke all of the world wide internet, when on Super Bowl Sunday, and on what was supposed to be the biggest day of Usher’s (who is certainly a superstar in his own right) life, she decided to drop two country singles and announce the “Renaissance Act II.” Like, Kansas City Chiefs who? The Texas Hold ‘Em and 16 Carriages singles quickly overshadowed other entertainment news, including the game itself, Andra Day’s incredible vocal decisions while performing the Black National Anthem, MAGA-America being mad about having to listen to the Black National Anthem, and arguably some of Usher’s much earned respect for curating what was a celebration of 90s and 2000s R&B (because, what a time that was), Black culture, and his power to unknowingly cause folks relationship issues. Anybody checked in on Keke Palmer’s boyfriend and Swizz Beatz this week?
Beyoncé’s two new tracks did exactly what we can imagine she wanted them to do – they got the people talking. And mere days after their release, they’ve already been at the center of countless think pieces and debates as to whether or not Queen Bey has jurisdiction in the genre. Did the world forget that she dropped Daddy Lessons on the Lemonade album and made the lot of the Country Music Awards audience (except for Matthew McConaughey, who was having an absolute blast!) upset when she performed it alongside the Dixie Chicks back in 2016? Leave it to Beyoncé, a descendant of the same enslaved Africans who created the blues and folk genres of which country is a derivative, to go away for a while and mastermind an epic return that says to the naysayers, “you could never”, “now play my song before I get mad.”
But while Beyoncé was ushering in a new era of her musical journey, more serious issues were afoot. Rafah was being bombarded and U.S. Senators were fresh off killing a bipartisan border and foreign aid deal that would’ve done all the things they said they wanted, but would’ve ultimately prevented them from running with border security as part of their platforms during a presidential election year. At the same time on the homefront, Dallas’s mayor was quietly engaged in divorce proceedings as the city prepped for a primary and a special election, just months apart.
Sadly, Eric Johnson has been no stranger to side-eyes recently. In September 2023, Mayor Johnson penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, claiming “America’s Cities Need Republicans”, while loosely drawing a line between Dallas and other cities that were apparently suffering under “exacerbated crime and homelessness”, apparently “caused by Democratic policies.” In this op-ed, the Mayor announced that he would be switching parties just months after being reelected (though he ran virtually unopposed save a write-in candidate) in a blue-leaning city that, one can certainly assume, he knew would vote for a blue-colored candidate.
Though to anyone paying any attention, this wasn’t much of a surprise. The mayor had begun to cozy up with Dallas’s wealthy business community. In 2022, according to the Dallas City Hall campaign finance archives, Johnson began locking down healthy donations from major players such as Ross Perot Jr., David McAtee, the Swelles, the Nashes and numerous PACs. But it wasn’t just Johnson who seemingly had a change of heart. In fact, his former 2019 campaign manager, turned Chief of Staff, turned external consultant as the now CEO of the fairly newly formed (May 2023) firm, Adept Strategies, seemed to have the same change of heart.
Mary Elbanna, who, according to her Linkedin, left team Johnson in 2022 to run her family’s business for a stint, now runs the the Adept Strategies consulting firm that boasts Johnson as a client while she also now sits on the Mayor’s Republican Mayors Association’s (RMA) advisory board. If “when I move, you move” was a professional relationship, right? According to their website, RMA’s mission is “promoting smaller, more efficient, more transparent, and more accountable municipal government and upholding the safety and security of our citizens by electing and retaining Republican mayors who share these values.”
Then there was the mayor’s leather jacket. The jacket became a talking point back in April 2023, when D Magazine’s Tim Rogers penned a paragraph-long piece, wittingly referring to Mayor Johnsons’s “Big Dallas Energy.” Interestingly enough though, this piece would end up following the Mayor right on over to divorce court. Because while Tim Rogers did write the mayor gave off “a hey-ladies-this-divorced-dad-is-back-on-the-market vibe”, he would also go on to clear up at the very end of the article that the Mayor was indeed still married, giving a call-to-action to the ladies to “stand down.”
What we wouldn’t find out until months and months later is that the jacket may have been a single-signal after all. Because, on Valentine’s Day 2024, two things would happen. First, Tim Rogers would drop another piece, making us aware that that single-paragraph article about the Mayor’s leather jacket back in 2023 had landed him a subpoena to testify in the Mayor’s divorce trial. Because the Mayor, apparently after finding out about the paragraph-long article, would go on to accuse his wife of 16 years of communicating with the press in an effort to tarnish his reputation, an intention that Nikita Johnson had previously denied. It’s worth noting that Tim Rogers was never actually called to testify about the jacket and, according to his February 14 article, was made to wait in the hall.
Just hours after Tim’s piece was published, D Magazine would drop another piece, this time by Matt Goodman, who was allowed in the courtroom on the same day Tim Rogers was made to wait outside. Goodman would go on to outline the day’s events, including describing allegations of the Mayor’s infidelity. And although the Mayor denied said allegations, Nikita Johnson’s legal team would enter into evidence video from the family home’s Ring doorbell camera, showing the woman arriving and leaving on February 5, 2021. Now, while the court has not divulged who the woman is, it is confirmed that she was a former city of Dallas staffer who would leave the city and become a consultant during his 2023 campaign. Interestingly enough, because of timing of both the mayor’s allegations of unfaithfulness and the recent switch in party, some critics are now drawing comparisons between Mayor Johnson and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose own recent alleged affair was at the center of his 2023 impeachment trial.
Even so, divorce or no, the Mayor still has work to do as the city and greater state is busy readying for the start of early primary voting that will allow voters to decide who will be on the general election ballot in November. Early voting, which will run from February 20 to March 1 will lead up to a March 5 primary Election Day. Then, following the state’s March 5 Primary Election Day is another special election, as the Dallas City Council voted on February 15 to finalize a 2024 bond package that would be taken to a special election in May. The final proposed bond, which had been widely debated by the council and peripheral parties with vested interests in the bill’s allocations, includes $521 million for street repairs and maintenance, $345 million for parks and recreation, $100 million for city hall renovations, $90 million for public safety, and just $20 million to address the city’s homelessness crisis. So you see Dallas, between nailing down these new Beyoncé line dances that we can only hope won’t have the culture in the same chokehold as Tamia’s “Can’t Get Enough”, keeping up with the Mayor’s personal life, figuring out who we want to allow on the 2024 general election ballot, and getting to the polls to take care of the bond issue, the city is, well, busy.