Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare
There are some things that simply endure the test of time.
They are inevitable and inseparable.
Pizza and beer quickly come to mind. Fish and chips. Texans and trucks. Peanut butter and jelly. Of course, Ben Franklin’s death and taxes.
You can also, it certainly seems, add controversy and Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare. It seems to follow him like a piece of Wrigley’s on the bottom of a shoe.
To be fair, Judge O’Hare and County Commissioner Alisa Simmons could both desperately use a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Or, better yet, How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies.
These two are enemies, make no mistake, waging political war against one another for the better part of a year. The exchanges — more like rows — between the two in meetings have been uncomfortably tense and nothing short of cringey.
Their decorum on the dais — Simmons has taken liberties with cursing in the public square — is beneath the standards of public officials and supposed servant leaders, or even shoppers at the grocery store.
However, by all appearances, O’Hare has now crafted a plan to send his nemesis to the ash heap: pack the Commissioners Court with a mid-decade redrawing of the four precinct lines ahead of the 2026 elections, when O’Hare, Simmons, and Commissioner Manny Ramirez will be up for reelection.
“Well, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head,” says former County Judge Glen Whitley, O’Hare’s immediate predecessor. “From the very beginning, he had indicated he was going to make this the reddest county he could. And it’s already pretty much the reddest county in the country.
“I don’t see this as anything other than [trying] to get rid of Commissioner Simmons without just blatantly saying it, but that’s exactly why we’re bringing somebody from Virginia down here, or wherever they’re from.”
It’s the Public Interest Legal Foundation in, yes, Virginia. In a vote along party lines — 3-2 — the Commissioners Court approved spending up to $30,000 for PILF, as the firm is commonly called, to study redistricting.
Redistricting is always political. It is also always divisive. And when conducted mid-decade rather than every 10 years to coincide with new census figures, it is always controversial.
It’s even more controversial when the fix appears to be in. There seems to be little doubt what PILF, a supposed conservative law firm who took part in challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, will recommend.
The Commissioners Court in 2021 studied but passed on redistricting, citing studies that showed no variances in population between the precincts in the previous 10 years, despite significant overall growth in the county.
The current makeup of the court probably best reflects the county’s population. It’s majority Republican — 3-2 — with a majority of its members minority, with Ramirez, Simmons, and Roderick Miles in Precinct 1. Tarrant County is majority minority.
O’Hare took office with a reputation for controversy.
As the mayor of Farmers Branch, a city of almost 40,000 in Dallas County, O’Hare advocated for ordinances banning landlords from renting to immigrants in the country illegally and requiring that flowerpots and other landscape receptacles contain living plants, according to documents. Opponents denounced the laws as illegally targeting the city’s Hispanic population.
The controversy attracted a national audience and ultimately cost the city about $6.6 million in legal fees defending its position, according to reporting. A federal court eventually found the city ordinance unconstitutional.
That’s the same road the county is going down.
O’Hare did not respond to an invitation to talk about the redistricting.
Redrawing the lines will bring the lawyers out of the woodwork, even for a Tarrant County Democratic Party apparatus that is almost nonexistent. The decision to redraw the map will undoubtedly face accusations of undermining the voting power of minority groups in Precinct 2. Legal fees to pay for it, of course, will come from your backyard.
The Texas Legislature redistricted mid-decade in 2003, redrawing congressional maps even though it had already adopted post-2000 Census maps in 2001. The new maps were challenged but upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry in 2006, concluding three years of litigation. The court ruled that mid-decade redistricting is not unconstitutional, so long as it doesn’t violate the Voting Rights Act or other legal protections.
But aside from all that, the other side likes to play rough, too. This is an experience they likely won’t forget and a play they’ll run at first chance. And rest assured, one day they’ll get their chance.
It takes a special kind of hubris to believe you’ll always be a majority party.
Democrats in this state once believed that.
