McALLEN — With just five days left before his retirement as mayor of McAllen, Jim Darling was still as busy as ever, facing a full schedule of meetings that would last until 6 p.m. that day.
But on that Wednesday afternoon, there was some indication around his office of Darling’s pending departure as many personal relics were now gone. A less obvious sign of his departure came from a cardboard cutout of the mayor, a remnant of a going away party, that had been affixed to the window in his office door.
Asked how he felt about leaving office, Darling summarized it in one word — ambivalent.
“I’m going to miss all the people but I’ll be around to an extent,” he explained, adding that the job was still fun and he still felt very young at 72.
“If I ran again, I’d have to make this decision at some time and so I’d rather go out while it’s a lot of energy and somebody can pick up the ball and run with it,” he said. “That’s important to me and I don’t know if I’d still be that way when I’m 76.”
Darling became mayor in 2013 but his history with the city began long before that.
He first served as the city attorney for McAllen for 28 years and then also became the assistant city manager.
Darling then left the city in 2006 to take a position as general counsel for DHR Health in 2006.
While continuing his work at the hospital, he was elected city commissioner for District 6 in 2007 and served as such for six years before he ran for mayor in 2013.
Running unopposed, Darling cruised into office that year, though he was challenged by Othal E. Brand Jr., son of former Mayor Othal Brand Sr., when he ran for reelection in 2017.
Despite his success in running for office, Darling said he at first wasn’t interested in getting involved in politics. A big reason why is because of what he had already gleaned about politics through his role as city attorney.
“I was involved, a lot, in enforcement during elections and saw people lose friends and all the craziness,” Darling said. “It’s a very personal process to run for office.”
Even now, Darling said he never grew to like the campaign process. Even though he loves meeting people, Darling said he didn’t enjoy feeling like he was only meeting people to get their votes, even if he was being sincere with them.
Another issue is that campaigns can get nasty. One thing he never did was look at who contributed money to his opponents.
“I never wanted to say, ‘Oh, I thought you were my friend and you contributed this,’ so I never did that because I saw too many hard feelings after elections,” Darling said. “And then the other thing is it’s kind of tough on your family. Probably more tough on your family than you because they hear all this stuff too.”
Darling and his wife, Sandra, have six children together who Darling said want to make sure he’s happy and isn’t too active post retirement.
But as former mayor, Darling is still going to be around.
He will remain on the Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council Board of Directors, the McAllen Economic Development Corporation board, and is still chair of the Rio Grande Regional Water Planning Group.
He also agreed to be nominated for an appointment to the McAllen Chamber of Commerce.
Though still serving the community in some ways, it’s still a significant reduction from his full-time schedule as the mayor.
Darling admitted that his decision to not seek reelection had a lot to do with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“2020 kind of affected me; it was like a lost year,” he said. “We were really rolling in economic development, doing a lot of things in Mexico, doing a lot of things in McAllen — recruiting businesses, etc. — the university medical school was just starting up.”
“In 2020,” he continued, “it was a terrible year. Not only a year stolen out of your life socially but, for me, a year of being mayor. I spent a lot of time Zooming on COVID matters, an awful lot of time on that and reading the people that died that day and just going to the emergency operation room, so everything was COVID.”
“It was a tough year, it was tough year to be mayor, the COVID part was, but the real part was not going and furthering some of the things we were working on,” he said.
In reflecting on the things he wasn’t able to accomplish during his tenure, Darling pointed to the city’s hopes for a new federal courthouse which rely on where the U.S. Congress chooses to appropriate funding.
Darling also pointed to delays on improvements to the Anzalduas International Bridge where the city hopes to implement full freight facilities.
“We would have started in April but our state money got kind of tied up in the budget process so we’ll get the state money in August when we start construction of the new northbound facilities on the bridge,” he said. “So that took a little longer. That’s kind of a fight since 2014.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to run again and see those things through but, again, he wondered if he would be able to put as much energy into the work at 76 years old.
When he first decided to run for mayor, Darling said he was motivated by the desire to drive the agenda and implement things that he couldn’t as a city commissioner.
Among his priorities was annexing property into the city and rezoning property from agricultural open space to multi-family so that people of low-income could afford apartments in McAllen. He also wanted to implement a 3-1-1 call service center, an idea that had been turned down when he was city commissioner.
“It was kind of fun,” Darling said. “I had a vision, I said, ‘Here’s what I want to do and we’re going to set it out each year in the state of the city.’”
Darling, like many mayors before him, did set out his plans during the annual State of the City address but his addresses quickly became notable, not for his agenda, but for his colorful entrances.
From biking into the McAllen Convention Center, rappelling down into the building, or dancing onto the stage, Darling has cemented his legacy of grand entrances.
It all started his first year in office with wanting to get people’s attention so instead of just reciting where the city was economically, they wanted to also show it with a video of Darling biking around the city.
But to take it a step further and really have fun with it, Darling suggested that he ride into the convention center.
“So we did the video and the last part of the video, people are watching the screen and then the doors open up and I ride the bike through,” he said.
Once it got rolling, it became a question of what they were going to do the following year.
It’s unclear of Mayor-elect Javier Villalobos will continue the tradition of those entrances but they will certainly be part of Darling’s legacy.
But what would Darling choose to be remembered for?
“Being the funny mayor,” he joked.
“You know, I didn’t think about that,” he said seriously. “I mean if you work hard and do it and you try to listen to people, you don’t need a legacy, it was worth it when you’re doing it, so that’s good. Good enough for me.”
