Former Dallas Mayor, broadcaster Wes Wise dies at 94

Wes Wise, who served as Dallas’ mayor for most of the 1970s and previously worked as a sports broadcaster, died Friday of natural causes. He was 94. Wise recently had been at a nursing home recovering from a fall at his home on Cedar Creek Lake in Eustace, according to his son, Westley Wise Jr. A political outsider who once told D Magazine he got into politics because he interviewed City Council candidates and didn’t think any of them were good, Wise was elected mayor three times from 1971 to 1976. He first joined the council two years earlier and resigned as mayor in 1976 to run for U.S. Congress. He lost the Democratic primary nomination later that year to then-state representative Jim Mattox. Wise was re-elected as a City Council member in 1981, but two years later lost out on his fourth attempt to become Dallas’ mayor to Starke Taylor.

Wise Jr. said his father often told him and his siblings stories of what it was like covering the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 while working as a reporter at a local TV station. He said he remembers his dad often having impromptu question-and-answer sessions with residents while he was mayor. Wise Jr. said in recent years he and his father bonded over a plate of homemade fried catfish or chicken fried steak. “He was just Dad to me,” Wise Jr. said. “He was funny, a great guy, always had an open ear for people, and we’re all going to miss him very much.” Funeral arrangements are still being finalized, Wise Jr said. While Wise was mayor, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was constructed, building of the current City Hall began and the first legal case challenging Dallas’ City Council election system, which called for all then-11 positions to be at-large seats with two reserved for people of color, was filed. A federal judge in 1975 later ruled that Dallas’ at-large system was unconstitutional because it diluted the votes of Black residents. Wise was listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, along with the city. The system was changed in 1976 to have the mayor and two council members elected citywide, with the remaining eight council seats elected via single-member districts. It wouldn’t be until 1991 that Dallas began using its current system, where the mayor is elected citywide and the 14 other seats on the City Council are elected by district. Wise was once in favor of having the city block promoters from putting on the musical Hair at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium, saying he believed the treatment of the American flag during the show was offensive and described the play as having an “anti-American tone”. The show went to Fort Worth instead.