Last week, I told you about the spat between District 13 city council candidates Brint Ryan and Ann Margolin, which culminated in Ryan filing a defamation lawsuit against his opponent.
According to The Dallas Morning News, Ryan has agreed to drop the lawsuit in exchange for Margolin’s agreement to “immediately remove from the election any further advertisements, marketing, Web site references or media discussion, debate or comment, on the issue of Mr. Ryan’s taxes.”
This race has definitely been one for the ages in Dallas. Ryan has spent more than $1 million dollars in his attempt to replace term-limited Mitchell Rasansky. While Ryan may not have spent as much as Harlan Crow’s anti-convention center hotel campaign, it still is the first time a non-mayoral council candidate’s spending has gotten into seven digits.
If you’ve attended any of the candidate forums over the past weeks, you know most see fewer than 100 people at them. Even in the most expensive campaign in city history, voters still aren’t coming out to hear the candidates speak.
Maybe that’s Ryan’s plan. Maybe he banked on the low turnout, and the television and radio ads, along with mailers and billboards, were his way to reach out to voters.
Of course Margolin has her share of mailers and campaign materials, but her expenditures of $127,127 pales in comparison to that of Ryan’s. But Margolin is quick to point out her campaign has been funded on the small donations of hundreds of individuals, not personal loans to himself, as is the case with Ryan.
With early voting in full swing and election day on Saturday, only time will tell how this will play out.
