Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings to leave office after 8 years

DALLAS (AP) — On a recent stormy morning, Mike Rawlings took the podium at his final annual police memorial event as Dallas mayor to again pay respect to the memories of two more cops who died in the line of duty.

In Rawlings’ two terms, Dallas, especially around the city’s core, boomed, although others had planted some of those seeds before he took office — the Wright Amendment’s expiration that led to Love Field’s boom, for example — and the city remained divided by great wealth and dreadful poverty.

Rawlings’ political opponents, often led by City Council members Philip Kingston and Scott Griggs, who is now a mayoral candidate, grew their power over the years and defeated some of the mayor’s plans. Those included the construction of the long-debated Trinity River toll road, the reorganization of the Dallas Independent School District and the turnover of Fair Park’s management to a group of his choosing.

Sometimes Rawlings managed to eke out victories in those defeats. With help, he wrested a compromise on the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System’s overhaul after a bare-knuckles political brawl that strained his relationship with first responders. He paired the Trinity toll road’s death with the birth of a new entity to build a park between the levees. He won plaudits for his education boosterism, which coincided with Dallas ISD’s academic gains. And the council still turned over Fair Park’s operations to a private group.

In addition, as marketer-in-chief for Dallas — former aide Sam Merten said Rawlings always saw that as the mayor’s main role, “whether or not you agreed” — and in the bright lights of big moments and crises, Rawlings often shined, say both supporters and some of his fiercest critics.

City Council member Adam McGough, Rawlings’ former chief of staff, said the mayor “didn’t always say and do the right thing, and he didn’t come through unscathed.”

“But he led the city through some of these tough issues and helped put the city on a course to do bigger and better things,” McGough said.

Rawlings — a former Park Board president, city homelessness czar, advertising executive and CEO of Pizza Hut — won his first mayoral term in 2011 with the business establishment’s support. In a runoff, he defeated former Police Chief David Kunkle with nearly 56% of the vote.

Rawlings quickly went to work on his GrowSouth effort. He scored some symbolic wins for southern Dallas, such as the creation of the Trinity Forest Golf Club and the AT&T Byron Nelson Tournament’s arrival there.

He also grew skeptical of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System’s investment strategy and began to battle its leadership. And the 2012 murder of Deanna Cook by her ex-husband — and subsequent focus on whether police could have prevented it —helped prompt his launch of another signature effort: his campaign against domestic violence.

Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who chaired Rawlings’ domestic violence task force, said the mayor’s advocacy “made a difference.”

“That is one of the roles of the mayor — to take a topic you feel strongly about and use the bullhorn. And that’s something he felt strongly about,” she said.

After the new mayor of Dallas is sworn in later this month, Rawlings wants to take a road trip with Micki through the Midwest and visit friends and family.

The longest-serving Dallas mayor in six decades will go back to work at CIC Partners, the private equity firm he helped found in 2004. He said he has deflected calls about seeking a statewide office as a Democrat.

Rawlings said he could’ve done other things with his life during the past eight years, but he remembers his friend Roger Enrico, the late former PepsiCo chief, telling him that he’d have richer life experiences as mayor.

“I have regretted at times being mayor because I felt like I was treading water,” Rawlings said. “But it was the right thing for me to do.”

Dallas police investigating homicide of another transgender woman

DALLAS (AP) – Dallas homicide detectives are investigating the death of a transgender woman after her body was pulled from a lake in north Texas over the weekend.

Police Chief U. Renee Hall says there were “obvious signs of homicidal violence” in the death 26-year-old Chynal Lindsey, but did not describe how she died. The department has asked the FBI to assist in the investigation.

Police say a game warden retrieved the woman’s body Saturday from White Rock Lake after a passer-by reported it around 5:45 p.m.

Hall says police don’t currently have evidence to connect Lindsey’s death to the killings of other transgender women in the North Texas city over the last several months.

Maj. Vincent Weddington says Dallas police have four open homicide cases involving black transgender women dating back to 2015, including Lindsey’s.

In May, someone killed 23-year-old Muhlaysia Booker a month after a cellphone video showed her being brutally beaten in a seemingly separate attack.

Cuba restrictions hit cruise lines at the start of summer

MIAMI (AP) — The Trump administration’s new restrictions on travel to Cuba will hit hardest at the cruise industry, taking away a new and increasingly popular destination at the start of the critical summer vacation season.

Major cruise lines immediately dropped stops in Cuba from their itineraries and hastily rerouted ships to other destinations including Mexico.

Nearly 800,000 passengers already on cruises or booked for future trips were affected, according to the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group.

At docks in Florida and aboard ships at sea, frustrated travelers vented Wednesday over wrecked vacation plans. In New York, shares of cruise line companies fell in midday trading.

“We have a ship full of disappointed and angry people,” said Darcy Van Zijl of Cape Coral, Florida, who had planned to celebrate her 45th birthday with a cruise to Havana.

The U.S. Commerce Department announced the new regulations Tuesday to take effect Wednesday. Cruise lines that carried passengers for “people-to-people” travel to Cuba were told they could not continue. The restrictions effectively made it illegal to cruise from the U.S. to Cuba, according to the industry group.

Cuba trips represented a relatively small percentage of passenger cruises — about 3% or 4% for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and even less for Royal Caribbean Cruises and Carnival Corp., according to UBS analysts.

But passengers typically paid more to visit the island. Cuban itineraries commanded premiums of up to 20% over cruises to the Bahamas, according to UBS analyst Robin Farley.

“This is going to have a noticeable impact on the cruise lines’ earnings this quarter and the rest of this year and likely into 2020,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Atmosphere Research Group.

At midday, shares of Norwegian were down 5%. Royal Caribbean was off 4%, and Carnival had dropped 3%.