Since voting last month to remove the Robert E. Lee statue from an Oak Lawn park, Dallas City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates has been called a traitor, a disgrace and a failure.

And those are among some of the tamer comments that her office has received. Some called her explicit names. A few have threatened her harm, prompting police investigations. One caller couldn't believe a white woman could do something like this. Another said that "black people kill each other every day and blame white people for all their problems," according to Gates' call log.

Gates said the comments can be frustrating, but "this particular issue is just complicated."

"It's complicated. It's complex. It's very emotional," she said.

The inundation of council offices didn't stop after the statue's removal or after the Las Vegas shooting captured the nation's attention.

The ferocity of the anger took council members by surprise, especially after thousands turned out to an anti-hate rally in the days after the violent protests over the Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va. But most doubt the Confederate fervor — which will resume next month when the council votes on the fate of the Confederate War Memorial near City Hall — will affect low-turnout local Dallas politics in 2017 and beyond.

"We're almost done with this process," said council member Philip Kingston, who led the initial push to remove the Lee statue this year. "And at this point, the people who are complaining are not from inside the city."

Kingston, who called the attacks on Gates "childish" and stomach-turning, said he has heard little resistance within his district, which includes East Dallas, downtown and Uptown.

It's difficult to discern where some of the callers and emailers live. But some do live in the city. Tea party groups and others have expressed their displeasure and shown up in force to meetings of the Mayor's Task Force on Confederate Monuments.

One group conducted a survey of Dallas residents that showed most residents would prefer an alternative plan — which did not yet exist — to preserve the statues in place and put new ones up.

Political strategist Brian Mayes, who helped conduct the poll for the group, said the longer-lasting effect will be that the vote "reinforces the impression that City Hall does things in a rushed, disheveled way."

"It just reminds voters again that City Hall is not necessarily responsive to the will of the community," he said.

But Kingston said Confederate statues make it difficult to sell the city as forward-thinking to companies such as Amazon.

"It's analogous to showing up to a job interview with a face tattoo," he said.

1 / 10James Murphy of Red Oak created a protest sign last month before the This Is Texas Freedom Force protest over removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from an Oak Lawn park.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 2 / 10A man who identified himself as Frank from Dallas showed his disrespect for Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings as he paraded with a Donald Trump flag during This Is Texas Freedom Force protest over removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Lee Park in Dallas, Saturday, September 16, 2017. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News)(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 3 / 10Motorcycle officers start to escort a truck carrying the Robert E. Lee statue at Robert E. Lee Park on Turtle Creek Boulevard in Dallas, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News)(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 4 / 10People watch the Robert E. Lee statue being carried on a truck at Robert E. Lee Park in Dallas, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News)(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 5 / 10Frank Darbo holds a sign as crew members work to remove the Robert E. Lee statue in the background at Robert E. Lee Park in Dallas, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News)(Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer) 6 / 10John Lee, the great-great grandson of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, speaks with the media after a federal judge heard arguments on whether a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee continues to stand in the Oak Lawn neighborhood of Dallas at the Earle Cabell Federal Building in downtown Thursday September 7, 2017. U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater halted the statue's removal in Dallas on Wednesday after near-unanimous City Council vote. Fitzwater then dissolved the temporary restraining order Thursday, which prevented the city from removing the statue after Dallas resident Hiram Patterson and the Sons of Confederate Veterans complained to the court that the City Council had violated the First Amendment and its own rules of procedure. (Andy Jacobsohn/The Dallas Morning News)(Andy Jacobsohn / Staff Photographer) 7 / 10Dallas Councilman Philip Kingston (left) shakes hands with Dwaine Caraway as they came to see the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Robert E. Lee Park in Dallas, Wednesday, September 6, 2017. Earlier in the day the Dallas City Council voted 13-1 for immediate removal of the monument to the Confederate general with a soldier at his side. The removal was halted though by a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News) (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 8 / 10Dallas City Council voted 13-1 to remove the Robert E. Lee statue at Robert E. Lee Park in Dallas on Wednesday, September 6, 2017. Councilmember Rickey Callahan did not vote. (David Woo/The Dallas Morning News)(David Woo / Staff Photographer) 9 / 10Dallas area ministers join hands around the statue of Robert E. Lee to pray for its removal from Lee Park after gathering at Oak Lawn Methodist Church as part of the 1,000 Ministerâs March Interfaith Commemorative and Call to Justice in Dallas on August 28, 2017. (Robert W. Hart/Special Contributor) (Robert W. Hart / Special Contributor) 10 / 10A statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee at the Confederate War Memorial in Dallas on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News)(Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

Gates and Mayor Mike Rawlings have caught the brunt of the criticism — the correspondence overwhelmed their staffs — because of radio ads from a group called the Conservative Response Team, a national group that vows to "fight back anywhere, anytime against leftist kooks who want to attack our values."

Gates, who is far from a leftist, said she will "keep doing my job, continue to do my homework and make informed decisions." Rawlings, who will be term-limited out of office in 2019, has said he has no plans to run for office again and believes he did the right thing after the violence in Charlottesville.

Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway said the some of the messages are from "sick people who refuse to accept every human and every American being accepted as equal." He said people who don't live in Dallas and don't pay taxes in the city "should express their opinions in their own city and let Dallas take care of Dallas."

Council member Lee Kleinman said the only time he has seen a comparable amount of outrage was after the city implemented a 5-cent fee for plastic bags, known as the "bag ban," in 2014. The council eventually repealed the ordinance in the face of a lawsuit the council's majority felt it couldn't win.

Lee statue supporter Diane Benjamin, who is part of a new group called Citizens Matter, said the vote will have an effect on Dallas politics.

"People are going to scrutinize our City Council people and how they performed in this instance," she said.

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Benjamin and others are still pushing for a voter referendum on the statues and are now trying to sink the city's proposed $1 billion bond package. At first, she said the city had no propositions for police — in fact, a $32 million proposition supports police and fire facilities — and then said it was because she wants the city to use pension obligation bonds to shore up the police and fire pension fund. The high-risk debt was a nonstarter for city leaders, who instead committed to paying more general revenue dollars into the fund.

Carol Reed, who is promoting the campaign to pass the bond package, said she has seen some of the ruckus on social media. But she was unfazed by it.

"I don't even know if they're voters, but it certainly doesn't seem very serious," she said.

And Reed, a longtime political consultant in Dallas, said she doesn't foresee the anger over the monuments carrying into the 2019 City Council elections.

"I've never seen anything last that long," she said.

Kleinman said the anger over the statues "has gone on longer than a lot of times stuff like that does," but agreed that it wasn't likely to affect 2019 races.

"It may mobilize that hard right-wing base," said Kleinman, who has voted in Republican primaries. "But typically, they just like something to be mad about. I just don't know if there's enough to make a difference."

Kleinman, who was first elected in 2013, said he received an email with a photo of someone giving a Nazi salute. Kleinman is the only Jewish council member.

But Kleinman was particularly frustrated after a recent council meeting when open-mike speakers chastised the council members for their decisions and said the city should be spending the money — cost estimates for the removal came in at about $450,000 — on police or homelessness or anything else.

The speakers then left, choosing not to stick around for the council's discussion and vote on property tax rates and the annual $1.2 billion general fund budget for police, streets, homelessness services and every other aspect of the city's government.

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