Annette Strauss, a member of the Dallas City Council for 15 years, was elected mayor Saturday, the first Jewish woman to be elected mayor of a Texas city.
The 63-year-old Strauss, who will be sworn in May 4, is also the second Jewish woman to become mayor of a major city. The first was Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco.
Strauss won a runoff election with 56 percent of the vote, defeating Fred Meyer, a businessman and former chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party.
REPUBLICANS HAVE USUALLY BEEN ELECTED
Although the election was nonpartisan, Strauss, a Democrat, was considered the liberal candidate in a city that has usually elected Republican businessmen as mayor, according to Jimmy Wisch, editor and publisher of the Texas Jewish Post.
Wisch said she got support throughout the city, but was especially popular among Jewish, Black and Hispanic voters.
Strauss, a public relations consultant and former fashion model, is married to Theodore Strauss, a brother of Robert Strauss, former National Democratic Party chairman and briefly Middle East negotiator for the Carter Administration.
She and her husband are members of Temple Emanu-El, a Dallas Reform temple. She is a former chairwoman of the Women’s Division of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas and a member of the boards of the temple sisterhood and the Greater Dallas chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women. She is also a member of the American Jewish Committee and has received its Humanitarian Award.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
