My Coffee with Alan C. North

Source: RichardsonMayor.com.

It turns out that newly-elected Mayor Amir Omar is not the only candidate who has coffee with voters. This week, mayoral candidate Alan C. North had coffee with me. And now, with his permission, I'm here to answer all your questions.

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Is he real? Yes.

Was he serious? Yes.

Did he make mistakes? Yes. In fact, he says his campaign was an example of Murphy's Law in practice: if anything can go wrong, it did.

Would he do it again? Read on.

To recap the election, Alan C. North finished third in a three person race for mayor of Richardson. Amir Omar received 55% of the vote. Bob Dubey received 42%. And Alan North received 4%.

Although he lost, and lost big, there was something huge that North got right. He saw incumbent Mayor Bob Dubey as vulnerable. He could be beaten, something that hadn't happened in Richardson since 1987. North was absolutely right about that. Amir Omar's convincing victory demonstrated the truth of that theory of the election, which Omar had shared.

But things started to go wrong for North almost from the beginning. North drew up plans to run too late. He now realizes that to mount an effective campaign as a challenger, you have to lay the groundwork at least a year in advance.

North didn't count on Amir Omar also running, and he didn't expect Omar to be as good a candidate as he turned out to be. In fact, someone knowledgeable in Richardson politics (whom North wouldn't name) advised North that Amir Omar's candidacy would be "DOA" (dead on arrival). So North persisted in his candidacy hoping that he would be seen as Dubey's most serious challenger.

That last paragraph should answer another question about Alan North. Was he put up to it by Amir Omar himself? No. I heard this theory occasionally, usually from Dubey supporters. It never made any sense to me. Two candidates running against the incumbent risk splitting the anti-incumbent vote, allowing the incumbent to win or at least get into a runoff. And if there's a runoff, the candidate favored would be the one who raised the most money. In this case, that would be Dubey. The only way the theory made a lick of sense to me is if North agreed to act as the attack dog, criticizing Dubey and allowing Omar to stay above the fray and appear statesmanlike. But if that's what they were doing, North executed it poorly. His campaign website is critical of the city, but it doesn't even mention Dubey.

So what was North's messaqe? He had a great campaign slogan: C.U.R.E. (Clean Up Richardson Ethics). His campaign website says: "Richardson Texas has a corruption problem and I plan to provide a CURE. Richardson deserves integrity, transparency, and leadership that puts people before politics." But the evidence behind this accusation was lacking. He didn't associate Dubey himself with any corruption. Perhaps with more time and more money, he could have fleshed out his indictment with evidence to win over voters. But he didn't give himself enough time, and he didn't raise any money.

Probably a fatal mistake was North deciding to run on a shoestring budget. He collected no money and spent only about $1,000 of his own money. Compare that to Dubey's $60,000 war chest and even Omar's $30,000, and North was simply unable to get his message out to voters.

North used a (mostly) free service from GoodParty.org, who provide basic campaign tools for free and personalized consultations for only $10/month. All that's required is that you run a non-partisan campaign that's grassroots driven with an anti-corruption stance. This was perhaps the smartest thing North did.

North paid for the personalized consulting from GoodParty.org. He used GoodParty.org's services to build a campaign website and craft campaign messages. They advised him that yard signs and expensive direct mailers are less effective ways of reaching voters than text messages. Of the people who responded to his text messages, very few were negative, most just asked for more information, and about 30% were very positive. He overestimated how many of those people would be converted into voters on election day.

North also made a mistake in counting on getting at least 20% of the vote just from the goodwill earned from North's involvement in the 2012 petition to change the city charter to have direct election of the mayor. As it turns out, North received 4% of the 2025 vote, similar to what he received in 2011 when he filed to run for city council but failed to campaign at all.

North failed to utilize the free press he could get by participating in as many candidate forums as possible. Some of this was his fault, some wasn't, and some was a mystery that I still haven't figured out.

North did answer the League of Women Voters questionnaire. And he did a recorded oral interview with Lauren Decker for her substack, The Richardson Independent. North answered a questionnaire by The Dallas Morning News and took part in their in-person interview. About that, he said he was seated between Dubey and Omar and was largely overlooked by the DMN interviewers, so much so that, at one point, he asked, "Why am I even here?"

Not that it mattered, but before the election, North didn't sit down with me over coffee. We had it scheduled, but he backed out when I posted a blog article that made him decide that I had already made up my mind who to endorse. He also failed to participate in the Richardson Area Democrats' Zoom forum, deciding that they had already made up their minds. I advised him that he should participate in these opportunities to get his arguments in front of people regardless whether the people asking the questions are going to support him or not. It's free publicity.

North also didn't participate in the UTD Student Government forum, for reasons that are still unclear to me. UTD-SG says North didn't respond to an invitation. North says he did respond, multiple times, by email, by text, by phone. North also didn't participate in the League of Women Voters' forum, but only because he had a business commitment in another state. He recognizes now that these no-shows hurt his chances. He should have worked harder to participate in these forums and sought out other opportunities to engage the public in person.

Will North run again? I wouldn't expect him to have decided yes this early, but he thought about my question and didn't say no. Instead, he said that he believes that Amir Omar will make a good mayor and he supports him and wants to see him succeed. But he didn't close the door on the possibility of running again for mayor himself or perhaps for one of the other council seats.

I am grateful for Alan North taking the time to meet with me to answer my questions and tell me the story of the election from his point of view.

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"Misread the goodwill
from long ago charter change.
Now just a footnote."
—h/t ChatGPT