I doubted Jerry Dyer would be a good mayor for Fresno. I was wrong | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mayor Jerry Dyer defied early skepticism with high visibility and civic engagement.
- Dyer earned bipartisan support by prioritizing Fresno’s interests above party lines.
- Policy reversals, like his Pride flag decision, signaled openness to diverse views.
When you write opinions for a living, a few are bound to be wrong.
My biggest miss is underestimating Jerry Dyer as an elected leader. I was wrong about Fresno’s mayor. And as Dyer approaches the back nine of his second term, it’s become difficult to imagine anyone else equally capable of holding down that office.
My initial reservations about Dyer centered around his 18 years as the city’s police chief. I questioned whether his four-decade career in law enforcement provided a wide enough prism to lead a sprawling city of 540,000. I wondered if Dyer’s strong evangelical Christian faith beliefs permitted him the latitude to represent the morals and views of a diverse community. I had my doubts about the working relationship between a Republican mayor and a super majority of Democrats on the city council and “One Fresno” being more than a catchy slogan.
In each instance I was mistaken.
As mayor of the 34th largest city in the U.S. by population, Dyer serves as the city’s public face both here and elsewhere. It is a highly visible job, and during my time here no Fresno mayor has been more visible and accessible.
From Dyer’s first month in office, when he personally shook the tents of unhoused individuals camped along the 41 freeway at 7 a.m. on a Monday, all the until the present day, his energy seems boundless. There isn’t a press conference, ribbon cutting, dedication ceremony or city-sponsored activity at which the mayor doesn’t hold forth. Even on weekends.
“He does every one of them, and in all seven council districts,” said Tyler Maxwell, the Fresno city councilmember for District 4. “Whatever your background and wherever you live geographically in the City of Fresno, he really tries to make everybody’s priorities his priorities. He really is the mayor for everybody.”
A powerful force in Fresno region
Dyer is arguably the region’s most influential elected leader. An example of that could be heard during a recent Fresno County Transportation Authority Board meeting when Supervisor Buddy Mendes only had one question after listening to an informational item on the county’s public relations campaign for the 2026 Measure C renewal.
Mendes, the board chair, was informed several local officials filmed short ads for TV and social media in support of the measure but only cared about one.
“Did Dyer do the spots?” Mendes asked several times, until he received a satisfactory answer from staff.
Mendes knows how important Dyer’s endorsement is to renewing the half-cent sales tax. So he must’ve been groused a few weeks later when Dyer and 10 other county mayors voted to collaborate with, rather than stiff-arm, the coalition of community groups that defeated Measure C at the ballot box in 2022.
Therein highlights a difference between Dyer and Mendes as Republican elected leaders. One is willing to listen to county residents who may have ideas or priorities that go against the status quo. The other clings to every scrap of power and shuts out differing views.
“He’s been willing to work with everybody,” said Maxwell, a Democrat who is one of Dyer’s key council allies. “He puts the City above any party.”
The first major signal I had misjudged Dyer appeared in June 2021 when he did a sudden about-face on the Pride flag being raised in front of City Hall, one day after meeting with members of Fresno’s LGBTQ+ community and consulting with liberal faith leaders.
The change of heart surely didn’t go over well with many of the folks sitting in the aisle next to Dyer during Sunday service. But it showed uncommon character on his part.
Reaches across political divide
Few, if any, local Republicans possess Dyer’s willingness to reach across the aisle. Without a solid working relationship between Fresno’s mayor and Democrat state leaders including Gov. Gavin Newsom, the city would not be getting $293 million for downtown infrastructure upgrades. Nor have received hundreds of millions more to convert seedy motels, most of them drug- and human-trafficking dens, into temporary shelters and low-income housing.
Dyer has done so much across-the-aisle reaching that it has become a little joke among City Hall insiders.
“People ask me when Fresno is going to elect its first Democrat as mayor” since the 1970s, said Miguel Arias, the District 3 city councilmember and past critic of Dyer who has become a frequent collaborator. “I tell them we already have one.”
Other successes worth mentioning are Beautify Fresno (the city is noticeably cleaner) and Camp Fresno near Dinkey Creek, which often provides urban-raised youth with their first Sierra mountain experience.
Dyer’s tenure is also marked with a couple blemishes. The one with the most potential for negative impact occurred in May when California housing regulators revoked Fresno’s pro-housing status, stripping the city of its ability to apply for millions of state housing dollars.
Despite Dyer’s constant drum-beating for more people living in the city’s core, no new market-rate housing has been built downtown since Fulton Street reopened even though several projects are permitted and shovel-ready. The mayor can’t control the construction costs of these projects, but he needs to find a way to overcome the “gap funding” hurdle that keeps them in limbo.
While I continue to have qualms about how Dyer and the council are treating the unhoused, his overall performance has far exceeded many people’s expectations including my own. Five-and-a-half years in, that by itself is worth acknowledging.
This story was originally published July 29, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
