DALLAS TURNS BLUE

Absolutely astounding.

Dallas County still calls its historic courthouse Old Red, but on Tuesday it went "blue."

A national wave of Democratic voting and changing demographics swept Republicans out of power in the county as the GOP surrendered 42 judgeships, the district's attorney office and the county judge's seat.

This has to be a result of straight-Democratic ticket voting. The judges simply aren't that visible and do little or no advertising. I keep hearing, as I just did on CNN, pundits and journalists opining that the results of the midterm elections weren't a product of "voters voting for Democrats but against Republicans." Well, Texas cowpies. It's at the least a combination of both.

Appropos of nothing, I've been working closely with "Old Red" the past few months because it's being converted into the Dallas County Museum, to open April '07 (a six-year effort). One floor will be devoted to Trade & Commerce, and my company has been selected along with nine other Dallas companies to be included in a permanent exhibit titled "Entrepreneurs" -- 10 Dallas companies that have changed the face of America and the world (the others include Texas Instruments, EDS, Mary Kay, Nieman-Marcus, 7-Eleven, Mary Kay, Hunt Oil, Club Corp. of America, Frito-Lay). It's my responsibility to coordinate our exhibit, and today when I called the curator about some issues it was my pleasure to tell him that henceforth I shall refer to the project as "Old Blue."

Tags: Dallas elections