Inside the Dallas Boom

Dallas is really becoming the center of the U.S. economy. When I was mayor, jobs, opportunities, etc., we made some pretty good progress, and I think you can claim that we're competitive now. That's what I owe to the people of Dallas that elected me, and that's the only way I felt that I could do a good job. This is really where the focus is now.

We're excited to welcome Tom Leppert to The Deal Table. With a distinguished career spanning the private and public sectors, Mr. Leppert has held leadership roles as CEO of the Turner Corporation and Kaplan Inc. and served as the mayor of Dallas from 2007 to 2011.

Tom's known for transforming city infrastructure, public safety, and education. Additionally, his service as a White House fellow and on numerous boards highlights his broad impact. A recognized leader, he's earned accolades like CEO of the Year and Texas Businessman of the Year. We look forward to his insights and expertise.

So Tom, I was joking with you earlier, like looking at the bio, it was just a thing after a thing after a thing. And, you know, I cheekily was just like, I'm a little jealous because I'm like, how does a human have this many lifetimes in one life? And you're still fairly young.

I was going to say I'm old.

Well, you know, I was being relative.

It's young to me.

What were you saying about the white hairs? Yeah. But it's just like when I was reviewing it, I'm just thinking jealous is not the right word, but it's kind of like, do I just live in this world of mediocrity versus someone like you that's just like CEO, mayor, etc., etc., etc.? So like, how does a human aspire to have that many accolades?

I've been very blessed in life is what it comes down to. I've been put in some positions that I probably didn't deserve, and I'm very, very fortunate the Lord put me in those positions. If you go back to when I was young and kind of the background that I grew up in, it's very different than what I've come to. As we find out a lot of times in life that we, there's a lot of doors open that we never expected.

When you're talking about doors opening, like, is that through connections? Because, you know, you always hear the whole, you are who you, you are who you know, your network is your net worth. Were you just lucky or?

I don't think it was that. There's a couple of distinct events that happen in your life that literally change everything. I grew up with a single mom. She was terrific but didn't have an education. So, at that time, women didn't have many opportunities, to be frank with you, especially ones that didn't have an education. And she was terrific. We didn't have a whole lot, but I had her and she was just phenomenal. And the high school that I went to was a public high school and it wasn't particularly good. It was a high school that was built for 2,000 students and they had 5,300 in the school. Started at 6 in the morning, ended at 7 at night type of thing. And it wasn't that there was bad people, it just, that's not kind of the circumstances that you want. And I had just never had any exposure to any schools at all that if they didn't play football on Saturday afternoons on television, I didn't know the schools existed. And kind of the de facto of the high school I went to were probably, my guess is 60, 70% of the people still live within 10 miles of that school all these years later. The default was Arizona State University. It was kind of on the northwest side of Phoenix, kind of the blue collar, not a ghetto, but kind of the blue collar area. And I had done a year at a junior college, didn't know what I wanted to do, although I knew given that environment, I didn't want to go to a large school. So the de facto was Arizona State. That was 50,000 students. That wasn't what I was interested in. And I'd done one year, was going to do another year. And I had some— a friend of a cousin who had gone to a small school in Southern California, and he had suggested that I ought to take a look at this school. And it was small, so it met kind of the criteria that they had at that point. And I had a group of friends that were going over to Southern California late July, and I kind of bummed a ride, and I called ahead and said, can I get a tour of the school? And they said yes. So I thought it was a good deal. Now, end of July, any warm body would be— they would be fortunate. And as it turned out, that day, the person who met me for the 15-minute tour or so was the Dean of Students. That 15 minutes turned into 3 hours. At the end of 3 hours, he said, "Why don't you come here next month?" So no transcript, no application, no test scores. As I kiddingly say, probably any of the 3 would've eliminated me from consideration. But that school, as it turns out, was one of the best in the nation. It's even gotten better since then. It was recently ranked number 5 in the nation ahead of Harvard and some other ones. By Wall Street Journal in their recent rankings. And that really changed the game for me. From that school, I was able to kind of think about a very different life. Never heard of business schools or anything like that. That's where I really enjoyed. I took economics courses, accounting courses, those sorts of things at a liberal arts school. So it was liberal arts, but it kind of had a business bent attached to it. And so I ended up applying to what I viewed as the two best business schools in the nation. Kind of, if I got in, terrific. If I didn't, I'd go work for a while. And much to the chagrin of the faculty, I got into both of them. One of them was on the West Coast. It was Stanford. And given family, mom, that was closer. So that's kind of the de facto where I was going to go. In fact, I tell the story, I sent the card into Stanford saying I was going to come, but the other school I was admitted to was Harvard.. And I was too much of a coward to send the card in. They found out and they're going to blacklist me for the rest of their life or something like that. And what it was, was the call was I had won a fellowship that you didn't apply for that literally paid for everything. And when I had gone to Claremont, my undergraduate, I was— I gave debt a new meaning. It was when he admitted me, he said, look, I've given up all the scholarship money, but I'll loan you whatever you need. So as I kind of looked at graduate school, I figured the two largest debtors were the United States government and me. It wasn't clear who was the wiretapper, but we were there. And so when Harvard did that, then it made an easy decision. And for me, it was a terrific decision because I had never traveled much. So that exposure to the East Coast was also significant. And so that led then to a chance to go into a firm McKinsey. I was the youngest one in the office. I was fortunate to get some early opportunities there that led to kind of a first CEO gig at 34 years old of a billion-and-a-half-dollar company and things like that. But I literally go back to that one day that really kind of changed the course of my life. And I think about that, you know, if I hadn't have kind of done the trip if I hadn't have met the dean of faculty or if it would've been the associate, they wouldn't have felt empowered to be able to do it. So, a lot of those things, again, short question, long answer, really went back to that one day and that really changed my life.

Well, I'm glad you circled back because that's where the majority of my notes are just right now is seizing the opportunity from a random engagement, because you got to think, what would your life be if you did just do a 15-minute conversation or if you didn't show up at all? I'm a big proponent of showing up because you never know what opportunities come from those 15-minute conversations to a 3-hour conversation. So have you ever done the opposite, which is reflect what if you didn't go?

I've thought about it. I guess that's the fair way to say it. But I can't come up with an answer. I honestly don't know what it would have been. I mean, clearly, if I had gone to a local school, I would never have had a chance to be admitted to the schools that I was. Those gave opportunities that I would have never dreamed of. When I was at McKinsey, I took a year off. I was fortunate to be selected as a White House Fellow. I interacted with folks that you would only dream about. We ended up on aircraft carriers out in the middle of who knows where, just experiences that you could never recreate. It led to one where one Sunday morning I met with a guy named Jaruzelski who was the head of the Polish Communist Party, the head of the Polish military, and the head of Polish state. He ran the place. And it was a meeting on a Sunday morning when he showed up in full military gear, There was only a couple of us and we were able to ask questions and spend the time. The only reason he was meeting with us is there was a guy sitting behind me who was State Department, but you can imagine he wasn't State Department. You can figure out which agency has 3 initials. And the only reason he was talking to us was because he knew that guy was going to run right back and do a wire to Washington and talk about that because we did not have diplomatic relations, so we didn't have any way to talk to him. So this White House fellows was the way to do it. That. Later on in the day, we went to Auschwitz, which was a lesson that I will never forget of governments that come so far off track and what the implications of those are. And then that evening, coming back to Warsaw, we stopped in a small place called Czestochowicz, which was a Catholic.

Church.

And Sat in through, I'm not Catholic, but sat in through a mass and then met with, I'm not sure the titles, but rector or something like that in an office that was the size of this table. And I can't even remember the conversation, but all of a sudden he reaches in his desk and pulls out this gold thing and hands it to me. And I look at it and I've seen it before. It was in the Roosevelt Room. It was Nobel Peace Prize. That was Valencia's Nobel Peace Prize. That's where he kept it, was in some desk of a small Catholic church somewhere in rural Poland. And it was kind of— you think about that day and you think about kind of the exposure and how even that changes your perspectives on how you think about government, how you think about what's important in life, those sorts of things. Those are just great experiences. And I didn't manufacture any of them. I was fortunate enough to be there.

One thing that you just said that I'm ashamed to say I've never even thought of it that way. I think mandatory citizens in the United States should be forced to go to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. It's such a just impactful moment. But what I was— you said it's a lesson in government, you know, like I've never even thought because I've always heard of like the Holocaust as being, you know, lessons in evil or lessons in one man's power. But I never put two and two is like, oh yeah, that was a government sanctioned. Absolutely. You know, and it's probably that's, that's a 20-hour conversation right there.

It's a problem with autocracies. That's what happens. Yeah. Um, power can be misplaced. It can be misplaced in business and surely be misplaced in the public sector.

Yeah. And I think that dovetails into the whole conversation— well, maybe not that dovetail, but like public-private sector, uh, because I know that's something you, you're very passionate about.

That path to Claremont McKenna. Yep. Um, and, and how that influenced your life is pretty remarkable to think about that. And the alternative was Arizona State with 40,000, 50,000 students. You became the student body president at Claremont McKenna. I don't know that that would have happened at a school with 50,000 students, less likely. And Claremont McKenna is known for its public service and sort of political environment. I was looking at some of the alum. Steve Bullock, the 24th governor of Montana, is a graduate. Greg Jarrett, Fox News host. David Pryor. Michael Anton. We do have a businessman in there, Henry Kravis, KKR. So it's a pretty— for its size, actually, Roberts too.

So it's really two of the three Ks.

He didn't make the list.

Kravis did.

Roberts didn't.

But that's kind of remarkable. So was your political interest and passion inspired as a result of going to Claremont McKenna? Had you thought about— I mean, being elected president of the student body, you had to be engaged in a process. So was that the first time, and did that start you on another path?

No, not really. And I enjoyed that at Claremont. It was a small environment, so it was fun to do. And I had gotten involved in the student body and those sorts of things. But I really expected once I got out, I probably would have told you early on that I was interested in the public sector. And I was to an extent, clearly applying for the White House Fellows was a sign of that. But the reason I applied for that is at that point that I did, I kind of felt I had thrown my lot on the business side. And again, I had been very fortunate even early on with some of the assignments at McKinsey and just the opportunity at McKinsey. So I kind of figured the lot was— I clearly at that point wanted to run large organizations, large, large companies. And I really, when I stepped back and looked at it, I felt more and more the bifurcation between the public and the private sector even at that point was gone, much less where it is now. And so, it was an easy way to get a lot of exposure at a very high level in the public sector because I thought that would always be beneficial to me as I got back and rose up on the private sector. So, that was really the motivation on that. It really wasn't until very late on that I even considered getting in, in the, onto the public side and running for mayor here in Dallas. I, if you had asked me 2 months before I got in the campaign about it, I probably would have laughed at you. But I was fortunate. I had been involved in the community. So people understood that and understood that I did spend a lot of time in the community and a whole host of different roles. And I had a couple of folks in the community that came and made the argument that You know, what we really need is someone that's more of a business person. Given the opportunities in Dallas, it was a pretty dysfunctional government at that point, probably known more for city council meetings of throwing chairs and yelling four-letter words than, than getting things done. And so some people came and made the argument to me, and it was an open seat. So there was, there was a better opportunity at least. And they made the argument, given the sort of things that you've done and you've kind of always preached about giving back, to the community, this was an example of what you ought to do. And in the end, I think they're right. I'm not sure I bought it all at that time, but I think in the end they're right.

How much did being a White House fellow during the Reagan administration influence you? Reagan was known for saying government's not the solution, government's the problem. It looks like from, from how you governed, you, you saw government and private sector as a partnership. Am I missing Reagan? Am I mischaracterizing?

I think my mom was conservative. So I kind of came out of that mold. I think the Reagan years reinforced it. I think seeing him up close, seeing the administration, those sorts of things, it reinforced it.

Interesting. How do you see yourself more? Do you see yourself more as a business person or a public figure or public figure politician type?

Neither one, actually. I think they were all jobs. People's identity gets consumed with their job and with their title.. And I think that's a big problem. And I saw it when I was young. It's still amazing to me that anybody that was a senior executive listened to anything that I was saying when I was in my 20s. But again, McKinsey was, clearly had the support mechanisms and that sort of thing to make it work. But I was always amazed at that. But I also saw some folks that, you know, ran large public companies and they thought it was their company. It was never their company. But they thought it was, and their identity became so consumed with that. So, I've always never kind of viewed it as their jobs, the great opportunities, and I'm very appreciative of it, but they were never me. I'm something different. You know, my faith is very important to me. I go back to that, my family. Those are kind of who I am. It's not the job. The jobs have always been fun. I've enjoyed those. I clearly tried to do well in all of them, but I never got lost in the fact that they were me. And mayor was being fun and that sort of thing, but I never got lost in Titus.

Real quick, what is a White House Fellow?

It was a program that was established back by President Johnson. So we're going back into the early '60s now. And the goal was to take a relatively small number. So the classes have ranged. My class was 12. The average is probably closer to 15. 15 individuals who in theory have been successful at the midpoint in their career and then give them the opportunity to see the highest levels of government and work in the highest levels of government to hopefully improve them as a leader that will contribute either public or private sector going forward. There's usually some business people, there's usually people from medical. It's a very diverse kind of background and military officers too.. So some of the most significant military officers have come out of it. And there's really two pieces to it. There's the work you are assigned to a cabinet-level officer. So in my case, I worked in the office of the Secretary of Treasury and worked directly for the Deputy Secretary of Treasury. I was kind of his executive assistant. In other cases, there was a woman that was in my class. She was She worked very closely with the director of NASA. One person was in the CIA, kind of a whole variety. One person worked in the office of the vice president. So it's kind of spread around different opportunities. I was fortunate because I worked both at Secretary of Treasury, but then I also worked in what they called the Office of Policy Development, which is a fancy title, but it was the gentleman that reports to the president that's in charge of crafting domestic policy. And that's kind of half of it. The other half is an education program. So we would meet probably on average 3 times a week for lunch, just the fellows, and you'd have somebody join us. So a given week, which would not be out of the ordinary, would be the Secretary of State, CBS White House correspondent, and a Supreme Court Justice. Every week. Every week. And it was fascinating conversations. There usually were no speeches or anything. It was over lunch and it was basically a chance to ask questions. I love asking questions. So of the 12 of us, I probably asked more questions than anybody else, but it was a great opportunity. And then part of that, there were travels. So we did, we actually traveled to the East Coast that focused largely on urban development. So going to Atlantic City, seeing what they were trying to do, meeting with the mayor who claimed that he was a good guy and he was in prison 6 months later, which is kind of the standard in Atlantic City. We were in California, met with the governor that was most focused on agriculture. And then I had never been in the military. And so as I referenced earlier, spent a couple days on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic. That was— Went down on some Atlantic, on some subs, nuclear subs, both attack and boomers, the missile subs. I, again, never been on those. The security clearance I had, I could go and escort it. So I could literally go into the nuke room and walk around. So fascinating things that you'd never recreate. We were in North Carolina and went off at 2 in the morning while the paratroopers were flying out the back of the plane. I did not fly out the back of the plane. I actually landed. But experiences that you wouldn't do and then did international trips and the one that I referenced earlier in Warsaw. So, it was a phenomenal experience. And again, just really fortunate to have been selected. They selected 12 people my year out of thousands of applications and things like that. And I was just very fortunate. And I had a gentleman who was the managing director of my office at the McKinsey, and he was very supportive, and it worked out. So, that's the program. It was a phenomenal program. It was funny because when I was at McKinsey, I had been very fortunate, had gone very well. And the gentleman I referenced, the managing director, the chances of being selected for the program are really, really low. But I had some folks that had been involved in it. That were in my graduate class at Harvard. Elaine Chao was one of them. And so I'd seen that and that kind of looked interesting. Again, it kind of checked the box for some exposure to the public sector, but I didn't have to spend 10 years and got great exposure. So he was very supportive and the deal was that nobody would know about it largely because The chance of being selected, and the last thing I want to do is all these people tracing your office, say, "Oh, it's too bad you didn't get in," that sort of thing. So anyway, but the deal was once you got to a certain level, kind of, they do several cuts and there's a regional level where they narrow it down to 144, I think it was. Then given client relationships and that, then we've got to start thinking about it at least. And as it turned out, I found out about that. Ended up going into the office the next day, and he wasn't there, unfortunately. And I got a call from the receptionist and said, there are two federal agents out here. They've got a list of people that they want to talk to. And so I had to run around the office to the partners and others explaining that I really wasn't under indictment, that this is what the deal was. This was actually good. It made for an interesting morning. And so That's the program. It was terrific. I chose to go to Treasury. I had an opportunity to do a couple of different things. I had an interview at FBI. It was 90 minutes. There was only 2 people in the room. One was the director of the FBI, Judge Webster, and his number 2 guy. He never said a thing the whole time. It was all Webster and I going back and forth. I went over to Defense, and the gentleman who interviewed me there was the military liaison to Caspar Weinberger. He had 3 stars. A guy by the name of Colin Powell, who you probably have heard of since. Never heard of him. And so it was opportunities like that. And to your point, great things you don't do but come back to help you in different ways. So then I decided, then I got into the mayor's race. So funny story, I'll tell you this. So I called Colin Powell. And at that point, of course, he was no longer a three-star. He had been a lot of different things, including Secretary of State. And I called him and said, "I'd love to have your support," 'cause I didn't know what I was doing. I was in this campaign, you know. And he said, "Well, given my positions, I can't endorse candidates, but here's what I'll do." And again, you learn something. He goes, "I'll send you a check, and what you do is when you file your report, Put my name at the top. And so sure enough, that's what we did. And of course, the morning news, as soon as they got that, Cole and Powell, that was the story.

So it was actually better than an endorsement. What's funny, you were talking about doing all the interview, background interviews. I've done one of those before. And a buddy of mine was getting his clearance probably 20 years ago. The FBI guy that was doing the interview was very like good old boy, kind of like, like, and he just kept asking the same question over and over. Like he was kind of like aloof. And then it was later, I was like, oh, he's trying to trip me up. He's trying to see if I'll say a different answer. But it was just, but you feel like you're under investigation when I'm just, my buddy's trying to get his security clearance.

Oh, I had, I got a call from my old finance professor at Harvard and I literally hadn't seen him for 5 years more and said, by the way, I had this federal agent that came walking in. And so it's like, but it was funny what they did when they went, they spent the most time at McKinsey 'cause that's the people I was with. And they spent, they had a whole list and where they got the list, I still have no idea where they got the list. It's the FBI. Yeah, yeah. But what was fascinating was they must've spent 20 or 30 minutes with most people. My secretary, they spent 90 minutes with. So that's where they spent all the time. Kind of who's he talked to, that sort of thing. And when you think about it, that's.

Probably where you get more information.

When you're, when you're in public office like a mayor, are you still doing business? Do you still have your companies? Like, how do you divvy up the time? Because I have a friend of mine who's in politics, but I only see him doing the politician stuff. But I know he has 2 or 3 other companies on the side. And it's just like, how do you even manage those things? So how do you divvy up the time?

People do it different ways. So there have been mayors that have maintained their law practice, things like that. My view is very different. If I'm going to do this, this is the only thing I'm going to do. So I had no other business relationships at all. All those had been severed, and I thought that was the right thing to do. And again, different people can make different decisions, and I'm not advocating one is right and one is wrong. For me, The way I saw the obligation, the responsibility I had was to do this, do this full time. And this was the only thing that I was going to do. I felt that that's what I owed to the people of Dallas that elected me. And that's the only way I felt that I could do a good job is to go at it in a 24/7 fashion.

McKinsey is a great training ground. I run a middle market M&A firm and a lot of ex-McKinsey consultants are buying businesses and stepping into operating roles and been very impressed with the quality of their knowledge and education. You transitioned from McKinsey. Was it a straight transition to Turner Corporation?

No. So I was at McKinsey and then I was fortunate to have a relatively short time with Trammell Crow organization and then at a very difficult time. So it was beneficial for me 'cause I learned a lot. For the organization, it was a very difficult time. And then I was fortunate at the age of 33, 34 to get the first opportunity to run a large company. It was Castle Cooke in Hawaii. So Castle Cooke was one of the largest companies there. I was responsible for all of the real estate operations. So not the food, but all the real estate operations. And it was a great opportunity. So I was 33, 34. All the people that reported to me were in their 50s. Was involved in that business community again with all of the senior folks. It was just a great opportunity. Hawaii was— we lived there for 11 years. Great, great opportunity and great situation. We loved it. And I was fortunate to get a.

Lot out of it.

How do you leave Hawaii? The— you get the opportunity, which turned to be Turner. They had approached me for a period of time, which is a good story and I think says a lot about Dallas. They had approached me for a good period of time. And as I mentioned, I lived in, grew up in Arizona and my wife did too, although we never met until later. We actually met both working at the White House. That's where we met. But she had come from Arizona too. Turner, when they approached me and they had been very gracious in their offer, they were based in New York and I had lived in New York for a brief period of time and I had seen people that did the commute from Greenwich and Westchester and that just didn't appeal to me, especially we had one small child, we wanted additional children. We had three small children at that time that I did it. And spending all that time going back and forth, that had no appeal to me. And she didn't want to raise children in the city, so that kind of eliminated the two broad options. And finally, that's what it came down to. And we had a dinner one night and I explained it to them. It wasn't a question of— they were very gracious in their offer. They were much more gracious than they should have been. But it was just the issue over location and said, "Thank you, but..." The next day they called back and said, "If we will let you move the headquarters wherever you want, will you take the job?" A Fortune 500 company, CEO position. From a career standpoint, that's the sort of thing that I wanted to do. And Turner was a great organization, the leader in its industry, really good people, stellar reputation, et cetera. So it was a terrific opportunity. Now, clearly when they said that, I couldn't move it to Bismarck or something like that. And we had had some exposure to Dallas not long. And while it made all of the kind of the business side of it, Central Time Zone, good regulatory environment, low cost of doing business, low cost of doing, of living, all those sorts of things that fit. It really would end up being a personal decision. We just thought it was a good place to raise kids. So it was kind of a, in.

A lot of ways, a personal decision. I feel like out of all the things to be fearful of turning something down, I think that's one of the ones, you know, kind of the same thing with Harvard is like, how do you turn that down? You know, a company you want to work for, but also with them being so gracious, like, hey, we'll move wherever.

You want to go. Yeah. And that's what solved the situation. So we came here. I was fortunate because it's not a— it's a type of company that's really the operations are in the locations all over. There's 40 offices in the United States. There's another 8, 10 internationally. That's where it was. So it's not like a company where its headquarters dominated. Where there's 3,000 people. We didn't have near that many people. So it was an easier one to be able to do when you said move the headquarters. It probably cuts costs too if they're in New York. Oh, it absolutely did. In fact, today I get lots of conversations with companies and clearly did as, as, as mayor of trying to do relocation. So we fortunately had one of the top 10 companies in the nation that relocated during my time here. Back then, I would kiddingly say that it was a fiduciary obligation for companies to move away from the two coasts to Dallas. Today, I don't think it's a flippant comment. And I think it's actually true now. If you look at the regulatory environment, if you look at the costs, companies being in California, companies being in the Tri-State, that's why we're seeing moving companies that moved to, to Dallas. We had a lot during my time. It's continued. You add up the top 10 companies in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, it's zero.

We've got 2 of them. I feel like with your experiences being the Dallas mayor and being a CEO of a company that did relocate, and with what we've seen in the last 4 or 5 years of like, to your point, so many people coming to Dallas, like coming to DFW, I mean, are you hit up like once or twice a week for consulting calls on.

Hey, should we relocate? No, I've had some calls that have been more helping the Dallas side of the equation of getting people. It's, it's been amazing to see. I honestly believe if you just step back and look at the hard numbers, Dallas is really becoming the center of the U.S. economy. If you look at growth, growth in population, growth in GDP, if you look at companies that are moving here, This is really where the focus is now. California actually lost a congressional seat. 20 years ago, you would never even thought that was possible, but that's what's happening. New York loses a congressional seat. This is where kind of the center of the country is really coming. And for the first time, because of international flights, DFW is an enormous asset, that sort of thing. You've got the focus we'll have in another year and change, we'll have the, the World Cup. I would have liked to have had the finals, but we'll have the semifinals. We'll have more games than any other location.

Plus we'll have the press corps here. I don't know the exact numbers, but to your point, I think Dallas and the Texaplex—Dallas, Houston, Austin—has more Fortune 500.

Companies headquartered here, maybe number 2 in the country. No, more in Texas than any other state, than any other.

More in Dallas-Fort Worth than any other place in Texas. And you referenced sort of leading the charge for relocation. I believe that was AT&T. It was during your tenure. We had John Donovan, the former CEO of AT&T Communications, on the podcast last month. And so not only are you attracting companies, but the talent pool, the, you.

Know, just the intellectual capital that's coming. And that's what they look at when the AT&T— and I just recently was— I played golf with Randall Stephenson, who was the CEO at that time. And he has told the story publicly, so I can too. I called him. I had been mayor a relatively short period of time, almost measured in weeks, not months. And again, I wanted to see what I could do. Clearly business-oriented economic development, my background, not surprisingly, wanted to pursue that. So I called him and I said, I'd like to meet with you. And I'm sure his reaction was the last thing I want to do is meet with a mayor. But given operations here, he felt obligated. And it was just me and one other person and he and his chief of staff. And I kind of laid out what the arguments were. And he was very polite, listening, not committing, nodding his head. It was a nice conversation, but there was really no reaction. And again, a lot of the things that I said were the things I mentioned to you that led me to the decision. Plus then you add in, you know, Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, you add in Love Field, et cetera, those sorts of things. 2 weeks later, his chief of staff called, said, hey, I'd like to visit with you on what you talked about. Again, make a long story short, with lots of phone calls and lots of efforts in between, 11 months later, they announced that they were gonna move to Dallas. So what was the economic impact of that? Significant. So they said, and I'll give you a couple of examples. They said on the front end that this would be 800 people. I never believed it would be 800 people. That was— we put a relatively limited amount of money down on the table. So we did, the city of Dallas did put about $5 million down on the table, which was probably more when you think about it, a show of support than it was a number. Clearly, if you looked at the balance sheet of AT&T, you would be challenged to find where that number was. But I knew the 800, and that was the number they gave that kind of justified our contributions of bringing jobs to town, etc. But I— there's other folks that spent time on that. I never spent any time on it. See, some city council people that were, you know, kind of, well, how do we do that? That was never an issue to me, largely because I knew the 800 number was going to be a joke. And the reason it was a joke was if the headquarters moves here, I can tell you some of the units that they were going to leave back where they were They weren't going to stay there. Those units would migrate to where the CEO and the senior leaders were. In addition to that, you would have vendors that would come in and that would be focused on it. So we've ended up with a multiple of those number. Then I'll give you a perspective on that $5 million. So about 16 months after they had moved, I did a little calculation myself. I went in and looked to what their donations into the community were. Where they had made donations, educational, arts, etc., across there. $55 million is the number I got. I may not have got everything. $55 million. So if anybody wants to ask me about that $5 million investment, I would love to have them show me their portfolio and see if they got a.

Return over 6 months that went from 5 to 55. Is Dallas set up to manage this growth?

Is our infrastructure— As long as we don't screw it up, then we can screw it up. As examples, the people in California, the people in the tri-states, they've screwed it up. And so a lot of our benefit has come from all of their mistakes. We need to do some smart things. We need to manage the infrastructure. To an extent, that's the roads, but it's also water and things like that. Dallas is actually in pretty good shape of water. One of the things I learned, and you learn a lot of things when you become mayor, things you didn't expect is water is a 40-year exercise. By the time you want a drop of water and the time you actually get it is a 40-year period. Dallas is in pretty good shape, but we've got to continue to do that. It's roads, those sorts of things, but it's also infrastructure, things like the F.W. Airport and those sorts of things. We're making the investment. I think if you look at the investment we're making in Terminals A and C, the new Terminal F, this is going to be the largest hub any place in the world. It's already the second largest airport in the world. So we're doing those sorts of things, but we've got to make sure that we don't mess them up. The other way that we can mess it up is we can do stupid things in either Austin or in— down at City Hall that all of a sudden make it difficult for companies to move here. And it can be on the left side of the political spectrum or it can be on the right side of the political spectrum. We've got to make sure that we do the sort of things that we've done to get business here, which basically says to businesses, we want you here, we'll give you a great environment, and then you go and do the right things. Once we start telling either from the left or the right side, which California has done a good job, how they want to run their business and how they need to manage it, then we're going to mess it up. So as long as we don't do those things, I think that run for the next 20 years, as good as we've seen the last 20 years, it's.

Going to be even better. The topic of screwing up. Well, I mean, yeah, talk about screwing up. No, no, because we all— I think anecdotally people are like, oh, California screwing up, New York screwing up. Can you give specific examples or specific policies that in your opinion are— this is why there's an exodus out of those locations to places like Dallas. And what are things that Dallas is doing right specifically that's attracting versus like, like what you just said, as long as we don't mess it up, like, what are you referring to when you.

Say specifically what we don't want to mess up? I was in a conversation with the head of one of the largest companies in the nation. They did analysis of the cost of an employee, the same position in Southern California versus Dallas. It was a 40% differential, 40% differential. And that wasn't just the salaries. It was all the regulatory. It was the amount of leaves that they've got to provide, all those things built in. It was 40%. And that's what's happened. If you look at California and you look at the Tri-States, they have heaped so much regulation on companies on the way they have to operate. It is— it makes it very difficult. It just adds cost after cost after cost. And that's the problem. And it comes— it is not one single thing, but it's a whole host of layering things. The other thing that is a piece of it too, which I think drives the cost, is an attitude and a want. I had, when I was mayor, I had a call from the editor of the Pittsburgh newspaper. I don't even remember what it's called. Pittsburgh newspaper said, the head of one of the largest companies in Pittsburgh told a story in a speech and I want to verify it. I said, okay, I don't know what the story is, but tell me and I'll be happy to do it. He said he was giving a speech and he said that one day he walked into a restaurant and he sat at a table next to the mayor of Pittsburgh. The mayor of Pittsburgh wouldn't even acknowledge him or say hi. He said that same day he got a call from you and you gave him an argument of why you should move to— why he should move to Dallas and all of the great things that you could provide for him there. It's an attitudinal type of thing. As long as we understand what makes a great business environment and the benefits that come with that— jobs, opportunities, etc.— we'll be fine.

Do you think that's the attitude adjustment of the mayor of Pittsburgh being kind of standoffish is more just a Northeastern.

Type thing, or is it a political status thing? I think, I think it's both. When Toyota moved here, they tried to contact the governor of California to tell them they had made a decision to move. The call was never returned. Chevron just moved to Houston. Energy, you would expect to win most everything, to be frank with you. Energy, Houston will win. Chevron moved there. The governor of California had accused the CEO of Chevron of killing people, literally killing people, killing people. That doesn't kind of build an environment that's, I think, conducive for much, to.

Be frank with you. What is interesting is like, I heard Dean Myers speak from SMU a while back, and he, on this topic of relocation, and he was talking about how he heard of a company in California that was moving to Dallas. So they immediately sent two SMU representatives, SMU Cox representatives, to go meet with the CEO. And the CEO was so taken aback that people would come in that he gave them the meeting. And, and I, I think to your point about the attitude was, you know, SMU, these guys were like, hey, we want you— absolutely welcome here, we want you to take our graduates as employees. And, and, and from what I gathered from the story was they had never had that before, because otherwise why would the CEO of a company just take a random meeting from these two representatives from a college you may or may.

Not have heard of before. Well, when AT&T moved here, and this was partly based on my experience of having moved Turner, one of the things we did right away in working with AT&T was set up different ad hoc groups. So we had a group that was focused just on education, K-12 education. So we had the head of at that time of ESD. And I called him and he was gracious enough to head that up. Joel Allison out at Baylor headed up a group that worked with Baylor, Texas Health Resources, Southwestern, et cetera. There was a woman, Abby Holliday, who did the real estate. So we sent all of these people off to AT&T headquarters and they worked with all of the individuals because The moving of the company in a lot of ways is the easy part. And dealing with the executives is the easy part. If you're going to move, I know where your 12 hours of the day are going to be. I can address that environment very, very well. It's the family that's the issue. It's the spouse that all of a sudden says, the kid's sick. Where do I find the name of a pediatrician? How do I just deal with all of the little stuff? We actually had— I don't know who they are, but we actually had, I think, 2 or 3 individuals that were on chemotherapy. So, they managed the transfer of that chemotherapy treatment there. And so, that's part of it is understanding what the issues are and not just kind of going through the road exercises, but understand what the issues are and bring people to bear. So, they went in there so people knew what the private school options were. They knew what the medical health options were, those sorts of things, just to make that transition as smooth as you.

Could be, as smooth as you can make it. I feel like that should have been a much larger storytelling piece because as a production company, we're all about storytelling. But anecdotally, you only hear how horrible companies are, how bad they are to their staff, you know, especially like the TikTok era where everybody's just complaining about where they work. But the fact that a company would even consider taking care of the chemotherapy and in that transfer and making sure all that is, I think, a foreign concept, even though it may happen every day. It's just, why isn't that being shared?

Why isn't that being put out there? AT&T is a really good company. I have great respect for them. I developed enormous respect for Randall Stephenson, for his senior team, John Stevens, et cetera. They are— they understand that their great asset is people. And as a result of that, they want to make— and I did too. They wanted to make the transition as easy as possible. I wanted to do it for a reputational standpoint because I wanted other people to call them and say, hey, this was a great deal.

We love the move. When I moved here in 2019, I met with Dr. Turner, the president at SMU at the time, and part of our discussion was around— oh boy, yeah, tough job to replace him. But they found, they found a great, great individual to do that. Part of our discussion was around the evolution of higher education and sort of where it is today. And part of that dialogue was around the fact that you have online education being delivered at a very low cost. You've got the Ivy Leagues, and between that you've got the middle. They had just finished a $1 billion capital campaign, which apparently is just the norm now, right? Is there always— and he said, we'll always be raising $1 billion because we have to build pretty buildings, we have to build our infrastructure, we have to create a value proposition that drives students here and connects them to the community. Elon Musk, who is now a Texas resident, or at least his businesses are, said recently, college— I'm quoting— college is basically for fun and to prove that you can do your chores, but they are not for learning. And he has said he is indifferent to whether or not you have a college degree or not. Where are we? And you ran Kaplan. And so I want to connect that dot to your being involved in a delivery of educational.

And I've spent a lot of time on education all my life, and in part because it was what made the difference for me. Exactly. I mean, it was— again, we go back to that day, that education is what— and I'm smart enough to understand it— it has made everything that I've done possible. And that is kind of the foundation that's been in play. You threw a lot of things out there, so let's try to unpack them. And unfortunately, I don't think there is one answer. And with all due respect to Elon, that's a generalization. If you look at the numbers hard, you will find that having a college degree solves most problems for a person. The unemployment rate is 2 to 3% long-term if you've got a college degree. You will find out that you will make at least $1 million and probably closer to $2 million more over the course of your life with a college degree than without one. People know that. That's the economics. What they don't know is your divorce rate will be much less. You will live 5 to 7 years longer. Your healthcare will be less. And there's exceptions, but incarceration rates are almost zero. Those are what makes a difference. Education is valuable. It is valuable In the past, it's going to be valuable in the future. It'll take different forms. So some jobs, it's going to be more certificates than it's a degree. So it'll be more skill-oriented. So I think there's clearly that move to having skill-oriented, and the schools are going to have to absorb that and deal with it. Then to get to the next part where it comes into is what you talked about is the affordability. It has gone completely out of whack. There is absolutely no question about that. The cost of an education, it has been double the inflation rate. And probably if you looked at it a little bit more over the course of the last couple decades, and the reason for that is a couple of fold. The administration costs have gone through the roof. We talked earlier, strangely enough, it's not the faculty. The faculty has kind of stayed pretty flat, at least in real basis in wages and in terms of numbers, not a big difference there. But the administration has gone through the roof. And then you look at some other factors on it. We now have degrees that have no economic sense attached to them, where somebody can get a degree and I almost challenge you, say, finding one academic position if there's any jobs that fit that. So, we've gotten into institutions that have no relation to the economy at all. That comes with a cost. Then the other thing we've done is not only in terms of all the administration costs, but what I'll call non-learning costs. We've ramped those up substantially too. I use the analogy of the rock climbing wall. Every school in the nation has got to have a rock climbing wall. I'm not sure that that improves your ability to take the physics test the next day, but we can put that aside. The reason for those things, though, is really easy. It is federal money. There has been so much federal money that has come into the system that has not been regulated, that it has allowed a system to go forward that's got literally no price competition attached to it. I can charge anything I want because a lot of it's going to be financed by the federal government. That's where you get these ridiculous debt numbers that come into it. And in a lot of cases, though, debt numbers are associated with those degrees I mentioned a moment ago. That have nothing, no economic value attached to them all. I'm sure the professors enjoy teaching something like that, but there are just no jobs out there. And that's really what it comes down to. And until we get a little bit smarter on how we talk about federal money going into it, how we get a little bit smarter about holding schools accountable for the graduation rates and the repayment of debt, and as a result of that, put a little bit of fiscal discipline into this game, and all of a sudden take some of these ridiculous noneducational costs, put them over, and finally take the responsibility for running the school and putting it back on the school and not on the federal government, where a lot of these additional regulations have come for the dean of this and the dean of that and all sorts of things. We're going to see these numbers continue to rise. They don't need to, but that's, that's where it is. And that's what's made it so difficult. The education itself is still extremely valuable in a number of ways, as I mentioned. What we've done is we've just removed any type of economic semblance out of the equation at all. And schools today, the good schools understand it, but they're not doing what they need to. You look at the Ivy League schools, 70 to 80% of students get an A. I'm sorry.

Really?

Yes.

I'm shocked by that. No. Actually, I wanted to jump in on that because I was at a World Affairs Council event maybe last 2 or 3 weeks. Jim Keyes, Education is Freedom.

Do you know Jim?

I was in the front row. Oh, you were?

So, but, you know, I had met.

With all those guys before. Amazing.

Yeah.

But, and they use a term that I'd never heard of before. It was grade inflation. What they're referring to is this teachers primarily— Everybody gets an A. Well, they brought up a story about how they had a 7th grader who was the president of some organization. That couldn't read, but they were getting A's. And it's just because the teacher just.

Passes them through because of this grade inflation. One of the fascinating things right now is there's a woman— and I won't get all of it, but I'm going to get most of it right— there's a woman who is suing today because— suing her school because she cannot read and write, but she's been elevated into an Ivy League school. Your comment was largely oriented towards higher education. In my view, it's very valuable. The other thing that we have to understand about higher education is they are terrific research vehicles in a lot of ways. When I was head of the chamber back in the early 2000s, one of our real problems here in Dallas is we didn't have any research institutions. Any level 1 research institutions. That's changed now. SMU just got it. You've got UTD. Southwestern is one of the best medical schools in the nation. And the research that they're doing is clearly at the top of the heap. So now we've got those research institutions. What you're getting into is now the K through 12. And now if you— now you can really rile me up is the short answer. Because the quality of public education here and nationally is horrible. If you look at the Dallas Independent School District, and I will say upfront, I will give them credit. They've done some very innovative things in teacher pay. Dallas and Denver are at the front end of that. Some of their schools, Booker T. as an example, is arguably one of the best schools in the nation. Period. But if you look at the numbers of the large number of students, under 50% are at grade level in reading. Under 60% are at grade level in math. Fort Worth is 10 points worse than that, 10, 15 points worse than that. We congratulate ourselves too often for, gosh, we improved by 2 or 3 points. That's like your business. You've got a failure rate of 70% and you take it to 68%. Terrific. You're still bankrupt. And that's what we've done with public education. Most people think public education, that kids can read, they can't read. There's a lot of talk in Austin about taking books, and that was part of the conversation that you heard the other day, taking books off the thing because they, it doesn't make any difference. The kids can't read them anyway. It is, it is just horrific that we have let the administrations and we have let teachers unions get away with what they have. They are just not educating kids. To go into the tougher neighborhoods, I went places my security detail didn't go to, and you wouldn't find parents. You'd find some uncles and aunts and you'd find some grandparents. And, you know, we are just writing.

Off those generations and it is just a crime. Yeah. One of the things that was brought up, just speaking about the unions, is the gentleman on stage was saying, I don't think anybody here would have a problem paying a teacher $150,000 a year if they deserved it. The problem is right now, if you paid one, you have to pay them all. And there are certain teachers that shouldn't.

Be paid at all, but you can't guarantee— Actually, I was the one that said that.

Oh, you said that? Well done. Well, it shows you how much I was paying attention.

No, I'm just kidding. No. Oh yeah. I learned this when we were in Hawaii. As I said, I was fortunate to lead one of the large companies there. And so again, I was head of the business roundtable. So you get involved in the community. And one day, and I actually, Pete Yearin was one of the gentlemen that was on this panel who I have enormous respect for, former congressman, former secretary of the Army, et cetera. And he is spending all of his time now at the Sid Richardson Foundation on education. I told him this story. When I was involved in an education issue and in my boardroom, it was about 9 o'clock one night, and I had the teachers union there, the head of the teachers union, number 2 person, and we had some other business folks there with me. And we were going through something. I can't even remember what the issue is. But it was late at night and it was to the point where everybody kind of lets their guard down. Part out of exasperation, part out of just— everybody's just tired and frustrated. And finally, the number 2 person in the teachers union— and Hawaii is one of 2 states that have a single school district statewide— looked at me and said, "You don't understand." I said, "Okay, I probably don't understand. What don't I understand?" She goes, "You do not understand that the primary function of the public school system is to provide a stable employment opportunity for the teachers." Oh my. And I said, "You're right. I don't understand." But that's what you get. And that sounds like such a farcical thing to say, but look at what happened during COVID in Chicago and look at what happened in San Francisco and make any argument to me any argument that that was in the best interest of the students. We won't know the cost of COVID for another 5 years plus, but what we're going to find out is those kids are lost because if you're not at grade-level reading by the 3rd grade, your chances from that conversation of getting an associate degree are 2%. 2%. And how many things do you need at least the equivalent of associate career to do? I got to tell you, to be a mechanic in a, in a car.

Dealership today, you got to have some pretty good education. A lot of these issues tie around sort of a gulf in ideology. You have an ideology about how the world works and somebody has a different ideology. And we seem today to be very politically polarized around ideologies. We generally avoid politics on the podcast, but you, you have lived in and out out of the political arena rather than getting you to pine on, on the things people are screaming about at each other every day.

I'm curious about— as you can see.

I usually don't share opinions. Exactly. I'm not fearful of asking you an opinion, but, but rather than focusing on the noise of the day, I guess I'm interested in your take on, one, the current political environment. I think we have— we tend to forget history. I recently read Chernow's biography of Ulysses Grant. You want to talk about a polarized country?

Absolutely. Okay, that's Civil War.

Yeah.

So there have been many times in our history where we have been a very polarized and fragmented country. I certainly perceive that that's where we are today. Um, the Republican Party, um, uh, is, um, led by an individual. It is the party of, of largely an individual. The Democratic Party seems to have a complete void of leadership at this point. Where do they go? What happens to the Republican Party post-Trump? And how does the Democratic Party find its footing?

So I'm happy to take a shot at it, but I will also say upfront, my crystal ball is no better than anybody else's. I'm no smarter, with most people being smarter than I am. I think both have enormous problems attached to them. And I'll start with my first premise. And I'm usually in conversations like this or in speeches, and I'll ask the room, how many people think that the American political system is working today? And usually out of a group of 100 people, there'll be one person will raise their hand, and it's the individual that had hit the bar before the speech and was drunk. Needless to say, most people don't. My view is it's working perfectly. It's working perfectly for the people that designed it, and that's the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. It works terrific for them. They can raise lots of money. They can tell if you're a Republican, you're a Democrat, they can tell you that he's the evil person and you better give money just so we can stop him. And then the Democrats will say, you need to give me your money because we got to stop him. It is a structural problem. And we didn't have so much the structural problem back in the organization of our political system the way back then. The divisions, I would argue, were even larger than they are today, the divisions. But the problem we've got now is we've got a structural problem. I can't answer your question, what happens on the Republicans? But I can give you an indication. If the Trump years are successful, I think that means that you will have the Trump— I don't want to say ideologues because they're not ideologues, but at least the Trump affiliations that will continue to run the Republican Party. If they are not successful, and we'll know this kind of in '26, if it's not, then I think it does open the door. Who walks into those open doors, I'm not sure. But I think a lot of it's going to depend on how people view the Trump years and if this next 4 years are successful or not. The Democrats have, I think, some completely different problems attached to it. One, they're clearly on their heels now. They have not figured out how to respond at all to this, the Trump agenda, as well as the timeframe that he's attached to it. But I think there's something that's deeper to that too. Clearly, they don't have the leadership. They've got themselves in a hole, which is an economic hole, not just a political hole. We make the argument political hole. The nation is not progressive. So when you have these progressives come forward, I think they're going to have a very, very difficult job of getting elected kind of nationwide. That's not where the nation is. The nation, when it comes right down to it, is slightly right of center. That's kind of where most people fall if you talk to them and you look at the surveys and the different polling and that sort of thing. The Democrats have developed an economic model, however, that is oriented towards a very progressive agenda. That's where their money comes from. And it's not little money, it's big money. It's billions of dollars. For them to move back, as a lot of Democrats would advocate, to back to what, when I grew up, was their strength, was Ohio, Pennsylvania. It was the working class. It was the union, which now really, if you look at the last election, went to the Republicans and to Trump. For them to pivot back and get that, they've got to turn their back on what I'll call the elite agendas on the coast. And that's going to cost them a lot of money. I think that's going to be a real problem. I think that's one of the things that they're going to have to balance because staying progressive is not where the nation's going to be. They're going to have to move. But for them to move, they're going to have to give up a lot of money because those folks that are giving them a lot of money today, they don't care about those issues of the working class in Ohio. They care about their identity issues, and that's where they put the money. And for the most part, those folks are very rich. And they've isolated themselves and they're only.

Concerned about their own agenda. Well, it's funny because it's like, I mean, "It's the economy, stupid" was a Bill Clinton phrase. Absolutely. And I don't know if anybody remembers, but Bill Clinton's a Democrat.

So in what, 25— He ran a.

Balanced budget, the last balanced budget in history. So to stray 30 years, in 30 years to stray so far away from.

That simple statement is, it's fascinating. —You know, if you were in the Clinton years and thought about where's the Democratic Party going to be, you'd be stunned at where it is now. If you were in the Republican Party and you worked in the George W. Bush, not even H.W., but George W. Bush administration, I think you'd be surprised at where the Republican Party is today. I mean, the Republican Party fiscally, we'll see where this plays out, but the Republicans have spent as wildly and as dumb and stupidly as the Democrats have. This view of globalization, Ukraine, Russia, that's completely foreign to anything that you would have thought of the Republican Party 10 years ago. It's fascinating to watch this. It's just unfortunate that there is so much at stake.

You brought up the crystal ball. And what's funny when you said that, I told you earlier, I'm in the SMU Executive MBA program.. And one of my instructors was Harvey Rosenblum, who was the 30 years of the Dallas Fed. And we had a global economics class, which is fascinating. I highly recommend anybody to take a global economics class from somebody who's been 30 years in the Fed during all this talk of tariffs with Trump as president. And in our last class before finals, he was like, I have no idea what's going on. And that's not necessarily what you want to hear from your professor, but it just shows to your point how chaotic everything is right now in terms of, of the Fed, the economy, and the tariffs, the administration. And even this guy who has so much experience in policy with the Fed and everything, even he's like, I don't.

Know what's going on. What we're going through now is an.

Agenda that nobody expected and nobody understands.

Yeah.

So we're here on the campus of old Parkland. Harlan Crow's creation. And last year I attended an event at his and Kathy's home for the No Labels Party. Yeah, he was a large supporter of that. They were going to run a, you know, a Democrat and a Republican on the, on the ticket. And their polling had suggested there was a whole lot of anybody but Joe Biden at the time or Donald Trump. And the room in his home was filled with people that are credible, rational, serious-minded people. Joe Lieberman was there. That was an interesting audience. Weren't able to field a ticket. But it does seem like there's a void there where there are a whole lot of people that aren't happy with the Democratic Party, aren't happy with the Republican Party. But it doesn't seem like the Libertarian Party hasn't been able to gain traction. Part of that is the two-party system being able to choke them out of elections. And that's part of my frustration, is I feel like there must be better.

Candidates than the ones we're being presented with. But before you respond, though, I think it's also the fact it's not just the parties that choke them out, it's the media arms of those parties as well. Because what rational human wouldn't want to run for office if you know that both parties and both media arms are.

Going to attack and vilify you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's because they've got the media no longer is, is providing what was originally intended. It was originally intended to be a watchdog for government. That's, that's what you really want to have in a democracy. You want to have a media that's a watchdog. And it's clear now that the mainstream media is not. Any semblance of that was completely lost when you saw the ridiculous way that they treated Joe Biden and his abilities and his capabilities in the last years of his presidency. They were advocating for a party, and that's unfortunate. In part, that's a structural change. They went from an advertising model where if my paper is dependent on advertising, then what I want to do is make sure that I'm kind of staying in the middle because I don't want to alienate people too far because those advertisers want to get— they don't care if it's conservatives, they don't care if it's liberals, they want to get somebody to buy their product. So they kind of want something that says, hey, you know, stay in the, stay in the middle lane. Now it's changed towards a subscription model. So all of a sudden, and it's Fox and New York Times are exactly the same, the reason that they're there is they've got their group that's supporting them economically. The New York Times moves right, they lose their entire subscription base. It's kind of the old adage of, you know, you mentioned the Clinton, the economy stupid.

It's the other adage of follow the money. Well, also Michael Jordan, you know, Republicans buy shoes too. Yeah.

I don't know if you've heard that before.

I have not heard that. So Michael Jordan, he gets a lot of grief for not jumping in on political conversations.

And his whole thing was Republicans buy shoes too.

And dumb as a fox. Yeah. I grew up in Phoenix and Charles Barkley was a big person there. He once had a great comment. He was talking to his grandmother and his grandmother said, You know, you've turned into a Republican, you know, and Republicans, they're just those rich people.

His grandmother says, I'm rich. Yeah, that's great. Circling a little bit back to like the relocation, because I know Dallas and pretty much every major city has a tourism department.

Yeah.

Do y'all have also like a relocation department? Because it feels like the money that's spent on attracting tourism especially for a city like Dallas, should be reallocated to.

Like, hey, instead of attracting tourists, let's just attract businesses? I think they're distinct. I think we do both of them. The Greater Regional Chamber, Greater Dallas Regional Chamber, they've got a couple of people that are really good. Mike Rose is one of them. He does a phenomenal job of plugging into different opportunities and working to, to do everything we can to put the best foot forward. In terms of attracting companies in that. There's some good people in each of the local governments too, as well as in the, in downtown at City Hall. So we've got people focusing on that. Then on the visitor side, we've got some folks that you call more governmental. That is our convention center, those sorts of things. But then we've got Visit Dallas and those sorts of organizations Craig's a good guy, heads a piece of that up. There's actually several different pieces of it, but they do a good job of going out and bringing visitors. And our visitors are largely more of a convention group than they are, you know, people don't come for our skiing and for our beaches. Instead, they come because it's just a good place to be and it's a good place to meet., and that's most.

Of what our visitors are. When it comes to arts and culture of Dallas, like, uh, a friend of mine is a big proponent that right now Dallas is a sports town and has no culture compared to like other places like in LA or, or like in New York. Does Dallas have any hope of being more artsy and more culture-based?

And if so, how do we get there? I, I would actually challenge him on that. We've gone from where we were kind of when I moved to now having— we've got a symphony hall that according to Jaap, who headed up the symphony here and was by every measure regarded as world-class, one of the 3 best acoustical symphony halls in the world. We now have an opera center, which in part because it's new, so the technology's better and that sort of thing, which competes wherever you want to. So I think we made enormous moves on building what is the largest arts district in any city in the nation. So I think we made a lot of moves. We're clearly not the New York Philharmonic yet, and I understand that, but I think we're making the movements to be able to get there. Dallas is the 4th largest metropolitan area in the nation. Back in the mid-'80s, late '80s, we were 12th. So, we've come from 12th to 4th. In 4 or 5 years, we'll be the 3rd largest. Chicago's going to fall behind us. There's nothing they can do. That's just a simple math number. So, you're seeing these things grow. I haven't lived in Chicago. I've lived in New York and I've lived in Los Angeles. And again, Sports. Everybody's got the sports, got all the sports teams. You want to go to the opera, you can do opera for all of those. The difference about Dallas is it's accessible. I challenge you, if you live in, in Palos Verdes, to just decide that one night you're going to go to the, to the symphony downtown in Los Angeles. That's not something that you can do. There's a lot of planning that goes with that. Even if you want to go to the Lakers games, people now on the corporate side, if you invite people, they also give you a room because they know how bad it is to get traffic out, out outside. So ours are accessible. So I think there's an advantage in that. I think they continue to grow. I think it's continuing investment. I think it's part of the infrastructure. We've talked about the infrastructure needs of the city. I think that's part of the infrastructure is making sure that you've got that arts and cultural. Because people, when they decide to move here, they want, they want those pieces. It's not just, okay, give me water. They want to have a lifestyle that's comparable to other places. And I think, you know, if you think of where we've come from, not that we're there all the way and everything, but we've made some pretty good progress.

And I think you can claim that we're competitive now. The Adelson family now owns the controlling interest in the Dallas Mavericks, and they are casino owners and operators. And there is a movement afoot on their part driven by them to legalize gambling and to, as I understand, sort of wrap a complex around the Mavericks with legalized gaming. Going to happen? You've been the mayor of Dallas.

Is that, is that in our future?

You did not see my op-ed piece. I.

Did not. In Friday's newspaper. Wow. Okay. It has gotten attention. I'll put it that way. Okay. What I wrote about was the mismanagement and the failure of leadership. With the Mavericks organization over the Luka Dončić trade. Yeah, you can like the trade or not the trade, but there is no question that it was failed leadership, that it was done for the wrong reasons. It was done the wrong way. And it demonstrates the importance of having ownership that is both focused on the basketball operations and focused on the community.

Neither of which has been demonstrated to me at all.

I think Mark Cuban would agree with you. Yes. And I think— and I actually mentioned that in it. I think Mark's legacy has been hurt by this. And I had a chance to work with him. He showed the compassion that you want for the community in so many different ways. And then he showed the enthusiasm for the basketball and commitment to it. Neither of those exist now. And I think maybe in hindsight, he's looking at it and saying there could have been other ways to go. But that's going to be Mark's determination, not me. That's the view on the trade itself. On gambling, I think people have looked at that in completely the wrong way. What they would love to do is have a casino here and then attach the arena to it and kind of make it a large complex. Two things to keep in mind about gambling that the advocates don't want to talk about. One is the social cost that comes with it. There is a significant social cost. And the social cost is absorbed by those in our society that are most vulnerable, those that are least able to take on that additional burden. It tends to be the lower income where it does enormous damage, not only to the individual but to families. And they don't want to talk about that. And there's a cost that has to be paid by society on that. And it's paid by you and me as taxpayers too. The second aspect of it that they don't want to talk about is one of the reasons— and I was involved in— I would have loved to have years before gotten the Cowboys downtown in Dallas. I would have loved to have and tried a little bit to try to get the Rangers in downtown Dallas because I think the franchise would be worth 20 or 30% more if it was in downtown Dallas. Tried to do both those. And one of the reasons you do that, from a community standpoint is it's terrific because all of a sudden you build that downtown, that economy around it. Businesses flourish, restaurants flourish, cabs flourish, people shining shoes flourish. There's lots of great things about it. That's not the model that the casino uses. The casino is designed to grab you and never let you go. So I want to have you eat there. I want to have you gamble there. I'd love to have you stay there in the hotel and that sort of thing. No clocks on the wall. No clocks on the wall. So all the businesses around it become gutted because they don't get to compete. So you and I go down to a Stars game. There'll be a good one coming up here soon. Thankfully, it was a good result yesterday. We'll go down there and you and I'll probably go have dinner someplace. Who knows where? You and your family will go to another place and have dinner. And that's terrific for the community. It builds it up. It gives vibrance to the downtown. I spent a lot of time on trying to build the downtown up and thankfully we were successful and did some really neat things so that we've got some vibrancy downtown down there. But that's not what casinos do. They will gut all of that. So all of that, which should be a benefit, you take a look at the American Airlines Center, they probably get 280 to 300 dates a year between Mavericks, between Stars, between concerts, between, I don't know, whatever else comes down there. And that flourishes all those businesses around there. All of a sudden you take that away, then what are those businesses, what can they do in terms of downtown, in terms of lunch hours and that sort of thing? If there's not there, it's that much more difficult to attract companies to come downtown. Et cetera, et cetera. It just goes on. And that's what an economy is. Economy is nothing more than a lot of pieces that are working together. And that's where I think people have missed the gambling. They've missed it on the impact that it will have on the downtown area or the area wherever it's in, and they miss it on the societal cost. So I'm not in favor of gambling. I think it works great for Las Vegas. They were the first ones. I think it works great for Atlantic City, although most people in Atlantic City might argue with me today. They didn't have any other choice. That was a place that was completely gutted. I look around at Dallas, we're going to be the third largest metropolitan market. We've got companies moving here to explain the need. Yeah, if I'm some small place in Louisiana, yeah, maybe I need to do that just to get some boost in the economy. I think we're the focal point of the U.S. economy today. We don't need gambling. I mean, it's not necessary. And being the 358th bite of the apple, That's never seemed very smart to me.

And from a business standpoint, it's interesting though. I've never heard it in terms of the silo, you know, being siloed where everything all is in one place. Because obviously you hear about, well, the reason it's never going to happen in Texas is because the lobbying efforts from like Oklahoma or Louisiana or Vegas just saying, hey, don't go there because obviously that would be competition for them. But I've never heard of it in terms of the competition for the small businesses because, yeah, I've heard, you know, if just think about if AT&T Stadium was in Fair Park, like, A, Dallas would be booming, Fair Park would have exploded. But to your point, if that was gambling, if that was a casino, who.

Knows what the outskirts would be? It would just be lots. So that's, that's the model that they work on. And again, understand the economic model behind it. Ask the question, Let's understand what, what.

Where the money goes. Yeah. One other topic regarding downtown and, and economics and a mix of government and private sector. There's been discussion about a train that will run from Dallas to Houston.

Yeah.

And I don't really get the math of a train. You got to acquire a lot of right-of-way. You've got to build a lot of infrastructure. It's a multibillion-dollar project.

Project.

There's property around Reunion Tower. Apparently there's a high-profile family that wants to develop that into a different set of amenities. But the train also wants it. Amtrak has pulled the federal funding for it, but there's a family that has said, we'll, we'll write the check. What is the math of running a.

Train from Dallas to Houston? I don't know well enough to give you an intelligent answer. So I'm going to back up. I can tell you from a theoretical standpoint, for the community, it would be great to have that going back and forth. I mean, there's really only a few corridors that it works. The Boston to Washington corridor, you might argue San Francisco to Los Angeles. And but I do think Houston and Dallas, that would be one of the corridors. But I just don't know the numbers well enough to tell you. It seems to me that if you expected any federal money come this January 20th, that's probably a pretty bad bet right now. It's off the table. Yeah. So as a result of that, I just don't know. The other thing, which is unfortunate, any big project now is the regulatory issues become so difficult to do any type of a large project. It raises the cost. Everybody's talking about nuclear and I am— I am— I think the answer to a lot of our issues from an energy standpoint and from a climate standpoint is nuclear. But then I have to realistically look at what it would take cost-wise and time-wise to go through that. They just opened one in the Carolinas. The original, I think the cost was $8 billion and it ended up being over $40 billion by the time they turned the lights on. You know, the regulatory has got to get better if you're going to do it. I think that's a real danger for us as a nation, not only here, but as a nation. We've made it so difficult to do big major projects, things that make a difference now. That, that's unfortunate. You look back in Eisenhower's days and the interstate highway system and all the benefits that that's generated for our country. I don't know how you do that today. And that's, that kind of makes me sad, to be truthful with you, to think that as great a nation as we are, that doing the big things is going to be so difficult that.

People won't— they won't take the swing at the fences. Yeah, I can't imagine a Hoover Dam.

Or a Panama Canal. Yeah. I mean, the regulatory would just be so difficult. But I look and see the benefits that those had and what they've done.

On— still have for our nation. Still have.

Absolutely.

One thing, though, to push back a little on the train, the train In an era where you're going to have self-driving cars, does.

A train like that even matter anymore? I don't get it, but you know, somebody does. There's somebody willing to put billions of dollars, an individual investor willing to put billions of dollars. So I'm assuming he's run the math and he's a lot more informed than I am.

We would hope. We would hope.

I've learned there's a lot more smarter people than I am. Yeah, it goes back to the adage of like, if you're the smartest in.

The room, you're in the wrong room. Well, Tom, we appreciate you joining us today on Deal Table. It's been a privilege to have you here and pick your brain and hear.

Your thoughts and opinions. You know, it's been great being with you. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much.

Thank you.