Douglas Athas, Mayor-Elect

If you're involved with neighborhood groups in North Texas for a while, you'll eventually meet Avi Adelman. He taught web site basics here at one of the annual neighborhood leadership summits and he usually attends the Dallas Homeowners League's Boot Camp that many neighborhood association members from Garland have also attended.
 
He has been a most outspoken advocate for his neighborhood in the Lower Greenville area of Dallas, including posting videos of people too drunk to properly control their actions after a few hours at one of the local bars known to many generations of Dallasites. An avid supporter of the police and enforcement of parking regulations, he puts it all out there on his website: BarkingDogs.org.
 
Word comes today:

 
Lowest Greenville's resident curgudgeon and neighborhood activist will formally announce that he is a candidate for the Dallas City Council.
 
The announcement will be made outside the Dallas SPCA center on Industrial / Riverfront Boulevard this afternoon.
 
Sources in his nascent campaign have reported he will legally change his name to "Barking Dog" in order to take advantage of his popularity and media attention when people go into the polling booth.
 
BD's campaign slogan will be "We need a BARKING DOG on Dallas City Council. He'll bite for us."
 
Here is a sample of the first bumper sticker -
 

 

 
I couldn't help but smile. I was very involved in student government at UT and remember stories of when Amy the Wonder Dog, a golden retriever, was elected student body president. I got there not long after the presidential duo of Arts and Sausages, who campaigned that if elected, they'd do nothing. They won. (Any coincidence that their names sounded like a dog food brand?) If memory serves, they stuck to their campaign promise.
 
This post is not an endorsement of Avi—I don't have any business getting involved in Dallas politics to any degree. I don't even know if he's serious. (It is April Fools Day, you know.) If he is, I hope he has fun. If not, he still brought a smile and some fond memories of less politically relevant times, when you could run a campaign for dog food and everyone was happy to receive a "good boy" as thanks for a job well done.