The Mind of Mattie Parker: How Fort Worth's New Mayor Plans to Level Up the City

It was coincidentally enough before a recent meeting of the Fort Worth City Council that a writer, thinking he was clever, asked new Mayor Mattie Parker if she had yet requested a recount. She had, of course, only taken on the job six weeks prior, a June runoff victory and public installment that made her the 45th mayor of the city and youngest of any current big city in America. 

It came into full focus during the weekly “public presentations” — that point in the meeting when John Q. Public addresses the elected officials as they sit in their exalted positions in the chambers of City Hall. If you’ve never had the pleasure of being witness, seven out of 10 times, these presentations lack the wit of Will Rogers and the charm of Dale Carnegie or Bond, James Bond. Think more Robespierre. 

“They don’t exactly live to support us,” one former councilman deadpanned long ago.

To wit: The council in the coming week will consider expanding a cruising ordinance to the West Seventh corridor. A young lady armed with a set of facts approached, poised as a teen ready to poke and provoke her parents at the dinner table. Whether her lowdown had been properly vetted by Facebook fact-checkers, it was not known. There did seem to be some holes to the impartial listener.

“This seems basic,” she said giggling slightly under her breath at how dumb one could be. “But I’ll spell it out anyway. If you don’t want people driving around, make sure they have other opportunities. Pay, parking, public transportation.”

Pay, as in it’s the council’s job to attract high-paying opportunities in the city and to otherwise generate economic development. That is presumably done through some sort of tax credit that will garner her attention next year. The city also needs more parking spots in entertainment hot spots, she said.

She continued.

“How embarrassing for you all to admit you’re an elected leader of the 12th-largest city, and the best solution you can come up with is criminalizing cruising. Really? It’s sad. And let’s be real: If cruising is criminalized, Black and brown people will be most impacted and most harassed. Some people might argue that point because the POA has you in their pocket, but we live here, and we know.”

She had not — in fact, it was obvious — spoken to the United Lowrider Association council on the North Side, which has been working through this issue and all the implications involved in a multicultural society for years. But, alas, she eventually got to her point.

No one, she asserted, could possibly trust the Fort Worth Police Department to enforce the ordinance on West Seventh in an unbiased way.

The time for this public presenter had expired, and she walked away pleased, convinced the City Council was one more step closer to the guillotine. There was no discussion of her remarks because the council is prohibited from doing so if it’s not on the agenda. That’s government code. 

All rules are Byzantine. All criticism is withering. 

Despite it all, the encounter served as a metaphor on the state of the city. Fort Worth is in transition, having grown from a child on the frontier to the verge of a big American city. The newest population data spells it out: Only 11 other cities in the U.S. are bigger than Cowtown. If that’s not enough to give you pause while taking another bite of a Fred’s burger or a sip at Oscar’s Pub, consider also that Fort Worth is the second-fastest growing city in the country. 

Yet, the city in those terms in reality is a teenager, not yet ready to call itself world-class and with lots more growing pains to endure before the onset of adulthood. Fort Worth is a great place to live, make no mistake about it, but that giant leap to international city, whether the long-timers want it or not, still demands missing ingredients.

“We have to take that responsibility seriously,” Parker said in the past. “If we want to become a world-class city, you have to act like it.”

That means world-class education for children regardless of ZIP code, world-class economic development, world-class infrastructure and transportation, world-class public safety, and world-class neighborhoods. And, lastly, world-class thinkers and, yes, critics.

For the job of city government, the townspeople have sent to the dais the most diverse and youngest council in the city’s 148 years. 

How is this to work exactly? Many wonder.

Among those sent to the sidelines was Councilman Jungus Jordan, an eight-time incumbent and the godfather of transportation advances and mobility innovations as well as institutional knowledge as far as the eye can see. In his place, a young, albeit bright, 31-year-old with no experience in government. 

The next generation is up, no doubt about it.

In the city of Fort Worth governing chambers, it is led by Parker, at 37, a former aide to then Mayor Betsy Price and council, and CEO of Tarrant To & Through Partnership, a nonprofit designed to transform students into — here it is again — a world-class workforce. That was a job that was very difficult to leave, though she will remain involved where she can.

“I’m excited,” Parker says. “I think we’ll be able to work together in a really unique way. I want to get with them and know their major initiatives are for their district, and where, as mayor, I can help marshal stuff through. How I can help them. 

“We won’t always agree. No one does. But it is important for me to maintain the decorum we’ve traditionally had in Fort Worth.”

Smart with depth, frank, and savvy. And she has a sense of humor. She describes herself as a mother — she and husband David have three children — wife, and woman of faith. Hers is a personal, more private relationship with Christ, nurtured through the United Methodist Church.

But, yes, she said in the flippant spirit with which the question was asked, she had wondered about asking for a recount. 

“Am I sure about this?” she joked while taking a ride to Dunbar High School to recognize the achievements of some of those Tarrant To & Through scholars who were about to take flight to various universities.

It was a joke. Hell, no, she has no regrets about entering the arena. We are in an interesting time in history, both locally and nationally, she said. History, someone wrote, long ago, has a way of putting the exact right people in the right places at the exact right time. The new mayor, an attorney by education, many believe, is just that person.

It’s no blind faith. 

One critique heard throughout the mayoral campaign centered on a Parker mayorship being Betsy Price 2.0. She has a bicycle, but “I don’t love riding it. Betsy is a machine. I’m also a bit clumsy. I don’t like to clip [her shoes] in [the pedals].” Parker said she has visions of riding right into the Trinity River. She is a runner.

“We talk all the time,” Parker said of Price. “She loved the job. She told me to enjoy it, first and foremost. Take care of your family responsibilities. And just to lead with your heart, which she always did. It’s a very difficult job, especially in moments of crisis. If you’re always trying to put your best foot forward and lead on behalf of other people, despite the noise and criticism, remember if you’re doing it for the right reason and you’re leading with your heart, you’ll be OK.” 

Parker’s office at City Hall is a work in progress. It lacks the mementos of a public servant in her fourth term, rather than weeks into her first. The bookshelf is full, however, with some interesting titles that caught the eye. Will Rogers. 

Simply put, it’s hard to imagine being mayor of Fort Worth without at least some base knowledge of one of the city’s best friends. If Fort Worth had a face, it’d probably have been Will Rogers’. Until his fateful flight in Alaska with Wiley Post in 1935, Will Rogers, in his folksy, cowboy philosophizing way, made the complicated seem really easy to understand. He, too, was a withering critic. But at least he was funny.

“Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat nowadays,” Rogers once joked. He also once said the more he witnessed politics, the more he wondered why on God’s green earth anyone would want to take it up.

“I ran for office because I care so deeply about this city and what’s possible in our community,” Parker said with a message she essentially repeated in the first of her now-weekly podcast titled “Go Time in Fort Worth.” “We’re at the pinnacle of a lot of possibility.”

“Go Time” was a mantra she adopted during the campaign, which she punctuated with the exclamation that Fort Worth was on the verge of greatness. 

“I want to empower employees all across this city, residents and students, to feel they’re part of our long-term success. Police officer, teacher, barber, all are critical to our long-term success.”

She wants to inspire — it’s the most important thing leaders do, after all. 

Parker said she will approach decisions on the council with the mindset of “how will this impact my own family.” As a former city employee, she added, she understands the value of what “we’re trying to accomplish here.”

Another title sticks out: Adapt or Die: Leadership Principles from an American General.

Whatever you see up there, she has probably read, she said. But possibly not. Away from the office, she said you might find her with a novel written by Kristin Hannah, she of The Nightingale, historical fiction telling the story of France in 1939 and war with the Nazis. She’ll also read some wonky stuff by the fire, such as The Twenty-First Century City, by Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis whom Parker calls a friend.

Many of the books on the shelf of her office were given to her during the campaign or since the election. A wide array of books and subjects are on display.

“I’ve always been eager to learn about the different perspectives of people,” she says. “I might not agree with it, but it’s important for me to understand it.”

Also on her shelf was The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Parker says she read that a few years ago and has since again. 

Does the title give any hints to her mayorship?

“No, not necessarily.”

The Chisholm Trail Parkway has made the 80-mile trip from Fort Worth to Hico much more manageable in the 21st century. Lord knows Brushy Bill Roberts could have used it to expedite his arrival sometime in the first half of the last century.

Brushy Bill made sure his legacy was secure by “admitting” that he was the notorious Billy the Kid, believed killed by a sheriff in New Mexico. However, no, Brushy Bill said, the sheriff killed the wrong man. Brushy Bill escaped into the night into Mexico, eventually reentering the U.S. through Texas and settling in Hico, where he died at age 91 in 1950.

The tale has made Hico the destination of pilgrims who worship the Old West. A museum there tells the story. New Mexico, too, is immovable in its belief that Billy the Kid is there.

Brushy Bill is buried in Hamilton, about 20 miles south of Hico. On one Billy the Kid Day in Hico, residents gathered — demonstrated, really — to ask then Gov. Bill Richardson to make good on the promise of a predecessor to give Billy the Kid a pardon for his crimes if he testified about another murder. Richardson even ordered up documents on the case.

It was to no avail. The governor couldn’t be moved.

Movements to excavate the burial sites and exhume the remains to settle the dispute once and for all have never manifested. Neither town in reality probably wants to know. With disappointment in the truth means the bit and cents are over, the statue removed.

Billy the Kid is industry in Hico.

Hico is the hometown of Fort Worth’s 45th mayor. She was a “scrappy kid from a small town. That is absolutely true.” 

There is a theme that appeared time and again while researching and interviewing subjects for this story. 

It’s dancing. And music, which, it has been said, reduces the beast in men.

Her maternal grandparents, Jimmie and Hazel Ramage, met at a dance near Camp Pendleton in California. Jimmie was coming back from the war. Hazel was visiting her sister and brother-in-law from Midlothian. It was a love-at-first-sight-type encounter, said Parker’s mother, Cherry Pearcy. 

“The war was over,” says Pearcy, a quite charming conversationalist, sipping a glass of water at a local coffee shop. “So, they were having a good time.”

And then he moved her to the farm, she kidded.

But that’s where they wound up, at Ramage Farms, 13 miles outside of Hico. It’s the same farm Parker grew up on. The house, built in 1897, according to Pearcy, had been moved by Parker’s great-grandfather, Hawthorne Ramage, from nearby Duffau to the Ramage farm and rocked in the 1930s. Parker is named for her maternal great-grandmother, Mattie Ramage.

“My first memories were walking the property with my grandmother,” Pearcy says.

Parker did some work on the farm, her mother said. Parker also went to work at a Mexican restaurant at about age 15, about the same time as her parents’ divorce. 

“Of course, she did. If it starts to rain and hay is in the fields, you haul it,” Pearcy says laughing at the memory. “It wasn’t her favorite thing to do. I don’t think she aspired to be a farmer.”

It was English, books, and government she enjoyed in school. And speech. Parker was a state-champion-caliber speech competitor during high school at the annual University Interscholastic League academic festivals, her mother remembered. 

And she loved dance. There it is again. 

On the campaign trail, Parker enjoyed telling observers that she was the daughter of a defense attorney turned Methodist minister and a ballerina. All true. Her mother was a trained ballerina and taught for many years. She still does when she has time.

“She was quite a dancer,” Pearcy says. “She was my star. She was willing to get out there and dance on her own, with a group or teach. She loved it.”

 Pearcy called her daughter’s style a “mixture of lyrical and jazz and ballet.”

Of her daughter generally, Pearcy says: “She was energetic and always quick to make friends.”

Progress, whatever that means exactly, is never on time. It doesn’t matter who you ask. 

The year was 1897 — the same year the city of Fort Worth was in the midst of a contentious debate over amendments to the city charter — and the place was the Texas House of Representatives, serving with Gov. Charles Culberson, who went on to serve in the United States Senate from 1899–1923. 

“The election of a woman to be postmaster of the House has set all tongues a-wagging,” the Fort Worth Register reported. “The opponents of this innovation declare the act to be a bad precedent. They argue that it will not be a half a dozen years before all minor offices will be filled by ladies, leaving the men, who so nobly assisted in saving the country, out in the cold. 

“It is a question here whether the distinguished members of the house were hypnotized by a pretty face and attractive form or whether their innate gallantry prompted them to her aid. It was doubtless the former, for when the pretty Mrs. Franklin went forward to take the oath of office, there were 128 pairs of eyes focused upon her. She bore the scrutiny well. The members reason that it will be so nice to have a sweet smile turned full upon them when they call for their mail. This is the view generally shared and will no doubt fully explain why the sturdy and loyal Democrat Frank Mullins was beaten in the race.”

The state has moved forward over the course of 125-some-odd years. 

Like the ranch in Hico, the Texas House has a family connection. Parker served there, of course, with then-Speaker Tom Craddick. Craddick, a Republican from Midland who continues to serve in the House, is a big fan of his former protégé. 

“Mattie’s determination and commitment to doing what is right for all citizens of Fort Worth will serve the community now and in the years ahead,” he said when this writer asked about her during the campaign.

Decades before Parker’s birth, her grandfather, Cecil Pearcy, was a member of the Texas House, a Democrat from Temple who served there from 1959–64. He was an assistant attorney general from 1964–78.

“All of her relatives are quite colorful,” her mother continued.

According to Cherry Pearcy, right around the time of the birth of Parker’s younger brother, Robert, Cecil Pearcy — the family called him “C.W.” — called his son Cecil “Robin” Pearcy III and demanded that the newborn’s name be Cecil Wilton Pearcy IV. By the sound of it, not just anyone told Cecil Pearcy no, but that’s what the son did. Robin Pearcy, an attorney who reinvented himself into a Methodist minister, swore Parker into office in June. 

Robin’s brother is Paul Pearcy, a notable drummer and percussionist whose recordings include cuts with Willie Nelson, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and The Dixie Chicks’ Emmy-winner “Home.” Robin is a musician, too.

Robin and Cherry Pearcy met at Texas State, he an attorney and teacher, she a graduate student of paralegal studies.

Like Parker, they all, mother, father and uncle, went to the University of Texas.

C.W. Pearcy died in 1988, when Parker was still a very young age. She was too young to know him well. Parker was much closer to her paternal grandmother. Barbara Pearcy, who lived to old age before passing in 2009, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1943, according to her obituary, and became a Navy pilot trainer before meeting C.W., a Navy officer.

“I didn’t think about that necessarily,” Parker says about whether her grandfather served as any inspiration for entering public service. “No one else in my immediate family was interested in politics. There was no reason I would have been. I was a government major, but I was clueless.” Still, it’s intriguing now to think back about the connection, she says. 

“At the capitol, there are portraits of members of every session on the walls,” Parker says. “Outside the office I had [when she was working for Craddick] on the third floor was a picture of my grandfather during his first session.”

C.W. certainly said things that could have come out of the mouth of his granddaughter, who has resisted urges from opponents to put her in a box of political labels. That’s the game, certainly today, to pin policymakers into corners they have to swing out of. A politician is not as narrow-minded as he forces himself to be, Will Rogers advised.

In announcing a run for the Speaker of the House in 1961, Pearcy, a Democrat, refused to be labeled, declaring, according to news reports of the day, that he didn’t believe in “fixed political tags.” 

He wasn’t a conservative or a liberal, he said. “If I must be labeled, I should certainly be considered a moderate.”

C.W. eventually dropped that bid for the speakership, instead supporting another candidate.

Another more notable scuffle C.W. found himself in was with a state rep from Oklahoma, who said, untactfully, that had there been a backdoor to the Alamo, there wouldn’t have been a Texas, implying the noble defenders would have taken off. C.W. responded to that bull hockey, telling the gentleman from Oklahoma that there actually was a backdoor, and “the only guy who used it was a one-time citizen of Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.”

Had that been the case, the other guy said, that an Oklahoman been at the Alamo, “if he had stayed, the Alamo would never have fallen.”

“He was a character,” Cherry Pearcy says, thinking about a story from the first time she went to Christmas at the Pearcys’ while dating Robin. “They’re a very musical family, and the boys started jamming. Well, C.W. just grabs me and starts jitterbugging. I was very new to that scene. I was like, ‘Oh, my, gosh. What is going on?’”

Dancing.

“I know that I am out of order in speaking of the good things that cops do,” Will Rogers said, “but I am one of the old-fashioned people who believe if someone pounces on me, I could holler for a policeman, and he would come and help me out without me having to pay him anything.”

Among the myriad of growing pains Fort Worth has experienced has been the roller-coaster relationship between the police and people of color. It has never been worse, but that depends on whom you ask and requires sorting through a box of various motives.  

The young lady who addressed the city council on the issue of expanding the cruising ordinance to West Seventh said she was affiliated with United Fort Worth, whose work as activists increased dramatically in the aftermath of the tragic death of Atatiana Jefferson.

“The leadership of Fort Worth police must be held accountable” is the battle cry. 

Members of the group attended the June swearing-in ceremony at the Convention Center for Parker and new council members Jared Williams in District 6, Leonard Firestone (District 7), Chris Nettles (District 8), and new District 9 councilwoman Elizabeth Beck. 

The United Fort Worth contingent briefly delayed Parker’s address to the assembling on swearing-in night, chanting, “What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now.”

She waited until they had finished and thanked them for their attendance.

That matter and the aftermath are of serious concern, obviously. Whether criminal or a breakdown in protocol or training, or a result of systemic racism — as has been asserted — it’s vitally important to get to the bottom of. 

The answers are unclear and require careful study. At risk is not seeing the forest for the trees, Parker believes, adding that she sometimes becomes frustrated by so much attention given “fringe issues.”

“I don’t think they move the needle,” she says. “There’s been so much focus on police and community. Sure, there are issues there, but we are not focusing on all the other systemic issues that affect communities, like education, infrastructure, safe neighborhoods, all those other things because we get so focused on this issue over here, and if we’re not careful, we’ll have done nothing to improve the lives of people.

“My responsibility here is to make sure we don’t just focus on the fringe issues.”

Parker entered her new office with a number of other pressing concerns. The city charter was amended in 2016 to add two seats to the council in 2023. How those districts will be drawn will be another contentious issue.

Parker has vowed transparency and public inclusion in a process that is clearly in the jurisdiction of the council. There are a handful of citizens who don’t think the duly elected council of this representative democracy should be the architects. 

“No matter what process we decide on, we can do it in a transparent, community-led way,” Parker says. “I do think it’s important for the council to have some say in how the boundaries are drawn. They are the only elected body, but at the same time doing it behind closed doors is not acceptable.”

Anything “shrouded in controversy is not healthy for anybody.”

The budget is the council’s chief priority, “the most important thing they do,” she says. Playing with other people’s money is not to be taken lightly. The budget, she reminded, tells a story of what the priorities are. 

Her focus will remain that of recent past councils: fiscal responsibility and efficiency, superior city services that focus on safe and prosperous neighborhoods. 

“Those are my budget priorities. Those are at the bedrock of our budget.”

Parker also said she planned to take a more pronounced role in transportation. “Only for my own education and a signal to the community that it’s important.”

A bond election is also on the horizon. 

The package is still evolving, but the majority of the proposed funding will go to streets and pedestrian mobility, followed by parks and recreation improvements, fire safety, public facility improvements, and community center improvements. The last objective is open-space conservation as the city continues to grow out of its beltloop. 

“The transition [to a new mayor] was smooth,” says District 2 Councilman Carlos Flores, now a senior member of the council. “To her advantage, Mattie had knowledge of the inner workings of city government. We have been able to continue on certain measures and also start new initiatives without the delay a brand-new person would have. It takes time when you’re completely new to council to get acclimated, to get up to speed. All that is true. Mattie had that going for her in that she came prepared. Having knowledge frees her up to concentrate on those initiatives every mayor wants to concentrate on. 

“Mattie has an open door not just for me, but for all of us. That’s an indispensable trait to have, not just for mayor but any elected official.” 

There are plenty of issues to coalesce and unite around, as well as the vision to see that the invocation the night of the swearing be reality: “By your grace, may the city of Fort Worth not only continue to grow in size but also compassion; not only in numbers but in wisdom. 

“Let every citizen find here community.”