Brandon Hayman
Cowtown Politics
There are many in Tarrant County who associate a Democrat, particularly those labeled the modern liberal kind, with the dinosaur.
The only dinosaurs any of us have ever seen are in museums. Or “The Flintstones.”
That’s embellishment, of course. The Blue people have been here over the last 30 years but in too small numbers to generate enough votes or quality candidates to win local offices.
Conventional wisdom and demographic data indicate that all that is shifting, a transition whose end has yet to be written. But hope springs eternal for local Democrats, whose electoral hopes and dreams are as bright as who knows when after Beto O’Rourke and Joe Biden broke through in Tarrant County in 2018 and 2020, winning over Ted Cruz and Donald Trump by the skin of their teeth.
Whether those victories represented a breakthrough or outliers against polarizing incumbents is difficult to discern. Tarrant County Democrats are hopeful that, unlike 2018 and 2020, a favorable outcome in the top-of-the-ballot race for governor will finally lead to down ballot success in local races, specifically the county judge and district attorneys’ races involving Republican Tim O’Hare of Southlake and Democrat Deborah Peoples, and Republican Phil Sorrells and Democrat Tiffany Burks.
No incumbent Tarrant County state legislators appear to be in trouble.
O’Rourke is back in 2022 running for governor against incumbent Greg Abbott. Abbott has an internal poll that shows he’s down 4 points in Tarrant County entering the Nov. 8 election, according to Scott Braddock of the Quorum Report.
O’Rourke has put a focus on Tarrant County, appearing here on several occasions for campaign opportunity.
“Tarrant County and Fort Worth is the only urban area in the country that is not dominant Democratic, so, the result of that is, people focus a lot here because it’s the largest ‘in-play’ county in the nation,” says Jim Riddlesperger, a professor of political science at TCU. “That’s the reason we get so much play here.
“A lot of what will determine [the election] are straight-party ticket voters. The outcomes of elections in many states will be determined in local issues and candidate characteristics than general trends.”
That could be particularly true here. Another dynamic was added to the brew in the form of a factional controversy among local Republicans involving a far-right element led by Tarrant County Judge nominee Tim O’Hare of Southlake and the centrist element of outgoing County Judge Glen Whitley and former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, who was beaten soundly by O’Hare in March’s Republican primary.
Whitley has been critical of O’Hare and declined to endorse him. Moreover, he endorsed Dan Patrick’s Democratic opponent for lieutenant governor. Price, too, didn’t endorse O’Hare. Both Whitley and Price denounced the campaign he ran in March as disingenuous and mucking up Price’s record as Fort Worth mayor, including allegations that she was soft on Black Lives Matter activists and mismanaged the pandemic shutdown.
“I wasn’t really angry. I was disappointed,” Price says about her race with O’Hare. “I’m very worried about where that puts local government. It’s about delivering services. If you can’t work with people at the table, you’re going to lose a lot of that ability to deliver services.”
The term “factionalization” doesn’t quite do it justice. There are warring parties within the party. We’ve seen this before. When Democrats were the dominant party in Texas for generations, factions developed between the conservatives and more liberal elements and lingered for years. John F. Kennedy made his ill-fated trip to Texas in an attempt to heal wounds between the John Connally conservative faction and the Don Yarborough and Ralph Yarborough element.
“That’s what happens to majority parties,” Riddlesperger says. “They factionalize. The Republican Party has done so in an open way. The Democrats were a factionalized party going back to the end of the 19th century. It wasn’t a question of whether you were a Democrat, but what kind of Democrat were you.
“We’re seeing much the same thing now among the Republicans and for the same reason. Once you have been in power for so long, you begin to see factions develop in party politicians.”
Nationally, it’s a Trump wing and Liz Cheney wing. That could have repercussions locally.
The Texas Democrat schism became most pronounced in the 1950s when Gov. Allan Shivers used the party to deliver the state’s electoral votes to the Eisenhower ticket in 1952 and 1956. In the aftermath of Kennedy’s death, the fighting resumed, though Texas easily remained in Democrat hands with Lyndon Johnson, then still an ally of the conservatives, at the top of the ticket. That didn’t stop Shivers from supporting Republican George Bush in his bid to unseat Ralph Yarborough in the U.S. Senate.
“There’s not been a single move toward conciliation from the conservatives, and we don’t expect a thing,” one of the liberal order told the New York Times in 1964.
Ultimately, conservative Democrats revolted and left the party, leading to the Republican takeover in the early 1990s, but that took years to manifest, including Connally’s defecting in the 1970s. For many Tarrant County judges, it was a matter of political survival. More than a third of 22 Democratic judges seeking reelection in 1990 switched parties after all nine Democratic judges were beaten in the previous election.
Judges Don Leonard; Joe Drago; Frank Sullivan, a lifelong Democrat who began as a student congressional intern with former Speaker of the House Jim Wright; and Howard Fender, who had been a Democrat for more than 30 years of public service, were all among those to exit.
The reason: survival.
“I don’t know if it’s true [the sweeping out of Democrat public officials], but I’m not going to wait and find out,” Fender said at the time. “I’d just like to continue serving this community.”
The local Democratic Party, too, is dealing with dysfunction heading into Nov. 8.
There is dissention in the ranks with new party chair Allison Campolo, a failed Texas state senate candidate in 2018. She was highly critical of Peoples when she was the party chair.
“Allison really blamed the party and lack of infrastructure for her loss,” one party insider says. “Not that they were bad candidates running in unwinnable seats.”
After her loss in 2018, Campolo founded a countywide voter registration initiative Tarrant Together. The undertaking, particularly the fundraising part of it, was perceived to be in competition with the local Democratic Party apparatus.
“The Democratic Party is not running a coordinated campaign,” the insider says of the local branch for this cycle. Tarrant Together did more in the 2020 election than the Tarrant County Democratic Party is doing this time.
“I’m not a fan.”
That insider is still hopeful, though, that an O’Rourke Tarrant triumph will lead to success for Peoples and Burks. There is also, she says, concern about O’Hare, who has baggage from his days as mayor of Farmers Branch. He championed public policy that required every apartment complex in town to verify that its tenants were there legally. The ordinance banning landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants was eventually ruled unconstitutional by a federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The seven years it took to find a full resolution of the case cost Farmers Branch roughly $6.6 million in legal fees.
More recently, Peoples has had to stand down allegations she was involved in dirty dealing as Democratic Party Chair. A police body camera video surfaced showing a homeless man claiming that he had been involved in ballot harvesting scheme. He said he was paid $200 cash for each signed absentee ballot he produced before the 2016 presidential cycle.
The man claimed in the video that he had earned $1,200 that day for the ballots he had secured.
That’s not bad work, if you can get it.
Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn declined to investigate the case, saying it was inappropriate as an elected official himself to initiate a case against a candidate for office right before the November election. Peoples has denied the allegations.
Tarrant Democrats, the insider says, are also fighting the perception that comes with, fairly or unfairly, being tied to “the AOCs of the world.”
“But you’re really seeing more of the [Fort Worth Democratic Congressman] Marc Veaseys of the world. You can work across the aisle because you’re reasonable. I find Tiffany Burks to be rooted in policy and not politics. I think she’s wonderful.”
Some Democrats believe the race between O’Hare and Peoples is similar to the set of circumstances in the race in which Beverly Powell, a moderate Democrat, defeated very conservative Republican incumbent state Sen. Konni Burton in 2018.
“That’s how we took District 10 back,” the Democratic insider says. “Disillusioned Republicans who thought Burton was too far right. People are really terrified of Tim O’Hare. You hear that over and over and over again from elected officials and business leaders.
“I think there is some opportunity in Tarrant County.”
Riddlesperger notes that as the party continues to gain a stronger foothold, with that will come more voters and better candidates who can form coalitions.
There’s another elephant in the room, as well, Riddlesperger says. Abortion, an issue that doesn’t seem to be to the advantage of Republican candidates. How or if voters, particularly women, are motivated by the issue could be decisive.
“Education levels are the best predictors of voting outside of ideology or party affiliation. Suburban voters are not as accepting of conservative narrative as a whole as they used to be.
“That’s reflective in Tarrant County.”
