Eric Lynn Johnson[1] (born October 10, 1975) is an American politician and attorney who has served as the 60th mayor of Dallas, Texas, since June 2019.

While at Harvard, Johnson was involved with the Phillips Brooks House, Harvard's premier community service organization, where he served as the director of the Cambridge Youth Enrichment Program (CYEP), a summer program for the children who lived in the public housing projects in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[4] After graduating from Harvard cum laude in 1998 with a degree in history, Johnson returned to Dallas to work as an investment banker with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, and then as an aide to state representative Yvonne Davis.

[5] After the 76th Texas Legislature adjourned in May 1999, he moved to New York City for three months to work as a graduate intern for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he conducted research to support several of their desegregation lawsuits in the Deep South and also to combat the proposed elimination of remedial education on City University of New York system campuses.

Johnson was sworn in as a member of the Texas House of Representatives on April 20, 2010, filling the vacant seat he won in a special election.

[8] Prior to the special election, Johnson defeated the longtime incumbent state representative, who was under federal indictment at the time related to corruption and abuse of office charges, in the 2010 Democratic Primary with 75 percent of the vote.

[23] The first time Johnson brought up his proposals to "defund the bureaucracy," members of the Dallas City Council rejected it by a 13–1 margin.

In September 2020, Johnson, who had vowed to take his plan to the public, published a message opposing police overtime cuts on NextDoor, which political opponents decried as inappropriate and attempted to brand as illicit.

[24] The Dallas City Council again rejected the "defund the bureaucracy" bid in a subsequent meeting and voted to cut the proposed police overtime budget by 25% over the mayor's objection.

Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison, former President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard W. Fisher, Kathryn Walt Hall, Robert W. Jordan, Ron Kirk, Mark Langdale, James C. Oberwetter, and Jeanne L. Phillips.

[31] He formed the task force after the death of Brandoniya Bennett, a 9-year-old girl who was killed in her own home by errant gunfire meant for someone else.

[37] Dallas became the only top-10 city in the United States to see violent crime fall in all the major categories tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in both 2021 and 2022.

[6] On March 11, 2020, Johnson announced the cancellation of the St. Patrick's Day Parade, an annual event that draws more than 100,000 people to Lower Greenville, because of concerns about COVID-19.

In an accompanying op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, Johnson wrote that "some of the measures we have taken — and actions we still may have to take — to stop COVID-19 may have seemed unimaginable a few months ago.

"[44] Johnson created two COVID-19 recovery and assistance committees, started a private sector task force on economic recovery, pushed for Dallas county to begin reporting COVID-19 cases by ethnicity, required hospitals to report capacity numbers daily, and appointed a COVID-19 health and healthcare access czar.

[52] The city of Dallas then received several direct allocations of vaccines that were distributed at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and at The Potter's House.

As a result of Johnson's party switch, Dallas became the largest city in the United States with a Republican mayor, surpassing neighboring Fort Worth.

They describe Johnson's mayoral style as being dependent on interpersonal politics, rewarding loyalists while threatening and obstructing opponents.

[67] In 2021, Johnson said he was "open to trying different things" and was later lauded by The Dallas Morning News for his committee assignments that seemed to embody a different approach in a new City Council term.

[68][69] On February 11, 2023, Johnson had posted on Twitter criticizing local news media for, in his view, having "no interest" in reporting on the second year of dropping crime rates in the city of Dallas, prompting responses from multiple local media outlets, including reporters from The Dallas Morning News.

[72] Mangrum was fired from The Dallas Morning News three days after Johnson's reply for violating the paper's social media policy.