Biographies
Panelists
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Donna Halstead served on the first Dallas City Council elected under the current single-member district plan, from 1991 to 1996. She supported, however, the compromise plan that would have created fewer single-member districts and several larger ones that encompassed quadrants of the city. Halstead also served on the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) board, and has been president of the Dallas Citizens Council since 1998. |
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Shelley Kofler is news director at KERA and a former city hall reporter who covered the Dallas redistricting battle. She and KERA staff are following current efforts to require single-member election districts in suburban North Texas. |
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Rene Martinez is a longtime civic leader and officer in the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in Dallas. He was also a member of the Dallas Together task force that supported a compromise election plan that included some single-member districts and others that incorporated larger parts of the city. |
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Dr. Ruth Morgan is Provost Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Southern Methodist University. She chronicled Dallas’ single-member district battle in her book, Governance by Decree: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act in Dallas. |
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Diane Ragsdale was elected to the Dallas City Council in 1984 and served as Deputy Mayor Pro Tem from 1985 to 1991. She encouraged community activists Marvin Crenshaw and Roy Williams to file the voting rights lawsuit that led to Dallas’ current single-member district form of government. She is currently manager of the Inner-City Community Development Corporation. |
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Marvin Crenshaw and Roy Williams are longtime grassroots political activists and were co-plaintiffs in the 1988 voting rights lawsuit filed against the City of Dallas that led to 14 single-member districts. Since 1991, each has run numerous times for Dallas City Council posts and mayor, but neither has been elected. | |
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Donna Blumer served on the Dallas City council for eight years, from 1993-2001. She opposed the single-member district plan, favoring the compromise plan with single-member and larger districts instead. | |
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Betty Culbreath-Lister, a sociologist and political activist in Dallas for decades, campaigned for the 10-4-1 form of Dallas City government. She is retired as director of Dallas County Health and Human Services and has also twice served as chairperson of the Dallas City Plan Commission, as well as serving on other civic boards in North Texas. | |
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Larry Duncan served four terms on the Dallas City Council, from 1991 to 1999. He actively campaigned for single-member districts. He is now president of the board of trustees for Dallas County Schools. | |
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Domingo Garcia, a Dallas trial lawyer, was elected to Dallas’ first single-member district council. He served from 1991 to 1995, and was the first Hispanic chosen as Mayor Pro Tem. He supported Dallas’ single-member district battle and is now one of the lawyers representing Farmers Branch plaintiffs who want single-member districts in their community. | |
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Betsy Julian, a civil rights attorney, was co-counsel for the landmark Dallas City Council redistricting case, Williams, Crenshaw et al v. City of Dallas. She successfully argued in favor of Dallas’ current single-member district form of government which has expanded minority representation. Julian was co-counsel in the lawsuit that desegregated Dallas housing. She is currently president of the Inclusive Communities Project in Dallas | |
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Ron Kirk served as Mayor of Dallas from 1995 to 2001. He served as counsel to the 14-1 Campaign Committee which supported single-member districts. He is a partner with the law firm of Vinson & Elkins in Dallas. | |
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Bob Stimson supported single-member districts and served on the Dallas City Council from 1993 to 1997. His concern over lack of representation for all parts of the city let to his involvement in a movement calling for Oak Cliff to secede from Dallas. Stimson is now president of the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce. |
| Shelley Kofler, KERA News Director, is an award-winning broadcast journalist and television producer with expertise covering state government and politics. She covered the single-member district battle as the Dallas City Hall reporter with KXAS-TV/NBC-5. She later served as the Austin Bureau Chief and legislative reporter for Dallas-based WFAA-TV/ABC from 2000-2004. She also covered government issues for KXAS-TV/NBC, and worked with KERA on numerous public affairs projects including nationally broadcast programs addressing elections, education and public policy. |
| Rick Thompson is Director of Multimedia Content for KERA-TV. He is an award-winning producer with 30 years of production experience. Currently the executive producer of CEO and the television series Nowhere but Texas, Thompson’s previous executive producer credits include: Richard Avedon: In the American West – A Twentieth Anniversary Special; The Texas Debates, Texas and the Latino Vote and Finding Our Voice: The Dallas Gay & Lesbian Community. His national credits include KERA-TV’s HDTV special JFK: Breaking the News, Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry; and KERA’s 26-episode cooking series, New Tastes from Texas with Chef Stephan Pyles. |
| Sam Baker serves as Senior Editor of News and Public Affairs and local host for Morning Edition on KERA. The Beaumont, Texas, native edits and produces radio commentaries and has produced KERA versions of the NPR series This I Believe and StoryCorps. He also hosted KERA 13’s long-running weekly public affairs show On the Record, which addressed a wide range of issues from a North Texas perspective. Sam worked in commercial television for six years before moving to public broadcasting. He joined KERA in 1991. |
| Alexis Yancey is an independent producer and owner of Alexis Yancey Productions in Dallas. Yancey is an experienced network news producer who spent seven years with CBS News in New York where she contributed to the CBS Weekend News, Sunday Morning, Street Stories with Ed Bradley, Street Stories with Mike Wallace, America Tonight and CBS News This Morning. Prior to her network career, Yancey held management and producing positions at several affiliate stations including WFAA-TV in Dallas, WBZ-TV in Boston and WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee. |
