Inside Downballot Dems’ Effort to Flip Texas’ Key County Battleground

On an August day in Fort Worth, when the temperature will reach the high 90s before noon, Tiffany Burks is counting door hangers. Volunteers have gathered at Portico Coffee in the Northside neighborhood, and Burks, the Democratic candidate for Tarrant County district attorney, is reviewing logistics before a block walk. Her choice of venue was strategic: In the 1930s, banks, insurance companies, and housing authorities “redlined” Fort Worth, denying loans to people in neighborhoods like Northside based on race. The practice helped entrench racial and economic segregation in Fort Worth, with effects that continue to shape where people live and if they can accumulate wealth. 

As Burks sees it, the redlining also helped create long-term “disillusionment” in government. 

“I go and I talk to people and I ask them, ‘Who is your DA?’ And they have no idea,” said Burks. That’s why she and her volunteers are “going into areas where people don’t normally go, to try to let them know that we really do care about Northside.” While 40 percent of Tarrant County’s population is white, 92 percent of the death sentences sought by prosecutors since 2012 have been against people of color. The decision on which charges to file and when to pursue the death penalty lies with the DA’s office. 

Burks, who worked in that office as a prosecutor from 1999 to 2021, previously ran for the top job in 2022 against Republican candidate Phil Sorrells, who beat her by about 6 points. She says Sorrells is part of an “old boys network” that doesn’t work for the people they’re elected to represent. Burks wants to create a new diversion unit within the office that connects people struggling with addiction and homelessness to services rather than repeatedly jailing them. 

The DA hopeful frequently campaigns with fellow Democrats Nydia Cárdenas and Alisa Simmons, who are both running for spots on the commissioners court. Similar to Burks, Cárdenas meets many people who don’t know that the governing body handles county finances, elections, budgets, and taxes. Voters will ask her, “Oh, is that the one where the guy kicks everybody out and he’s rude?’” She tells them, “Yes, that’s the one.”

County Judge Tim O’Hare—the Republican leader of the court and the guy who “kicks everybody out”—has spent years making it more difficult for people to vote. That includes a September vote in which the judge and his two fellow Republicans on the five-person court approved just 224 voting locations, down from 316 in 2022. In a public meeting that ran over eight hours, incensed speakers pointed out that the move would adversely impact voters of color. The civic dissent that has arisen in response has often gone viral online, drawing new levels of attention to the oft-overlooked machinations of county government in the region. 

“Come November, you better find yourself a new job,” a man tells Republicans on the court in one video that earned over 87,000 likes on Instagram. Similar videos have darker endings: A local podcaster uses the word “bullshit” and is thrown out of a meeting (and later jailed). Lon Burnham, a former Democratic state rep, was dragged out of a meeting (and also jailed). 

Burks and her fellow Dems know that translating widespread frustration into votes will be key to any wins they pick up in Tarrant County, where local politics are widely influenced by “the Fort Worth Way.” To people happy with their city, that old moniker conveys a folksy, tourist-friendly charm. To the people who feel like they are on the outside looking in, it conveys a conservative status quo.  

Now, the latter group may be angrier and more organized than ever. 

“In 2026, the numbers are just exponentially greater in the amount of people who are organized, who are active, and who are on the ground working to bring about change in our leadership,” said Pamela Young, a local criminal justice organizer. “I think it’s a cumulative effect of all of the horrendous things that our current leadership has done and the leadership that we’ve had over the last several decades in Tarrant County.”

There have been some signs of Democratic momentum. Beto O’Rourke won Tarrant County in 2018, as did Joe Biden in 2020 and Colin Allred in 2024. But the momentum rarely reaches further down the ballot to county government posts; in fact, a Democrat hasn’t served as county judge here since the mid-1980s.

At the same time, politicians like Bo French and institutions like Mercy Culture have helped turn Tarrant County into a hotbed of extremism.

Brian Mayes, a longtime GOP strategist, says “everybody’s looking at Tarrant County” as an example of how anger at Republicans could lead to Democratic victories. “Over the last decade, what you’re finding is every Republican is so worried about being primaried by the Tim Dunns of the world that they’re voting against their own interest,” Mayes said. 

Cárdenas says there was already momentum at the backs of local Dems even before Republicans on the commissioners court slashed voting locations and limited the time and topics allowed during public comment. These “crazy things,” as she calls them, add more fuel to what she describes as a highly collaborative campaign cycle for Tarrant Dems, where candidates up and down the ballot are co-hosting events and sharing volunteers and talking points. Candidates are focused on affordability, education, and the argument that the current crop of leaders are answering to billionaire donors while Tarrant County deals with one crisis after another. 

For example, Burks has pledged to more closely investigate the high number of deaths in Tarrant County Jail. Over 80 people have died at the jail since Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office in 2017, and DA Phil Sorrells has argued that not every death needs an outside investigation. In an interview with the Texas Observer, Cárdenas echoed Burks, criticizing how Tarrant County leadership uses the jail “as a hammer” to address crises like mental health and addiction. 

“Every time Tim O’Hare cuts our polling locations, or every time Bo French says something awful on Twitter, I get more volunteers,” said Allison Campolo, chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party. The result is a record-breaking number of volunteers and, for the first time in eight years, more local precinct chairs than the Republican Party, Campolo said.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, adds that there are other factors—beyond palpable anger—that bode well for local Dems. Tarrant County becoming more racially and ethnically diverse gives Democrats “an opportunity to build a stronger, more durable coalition,” he said. He also believes that “suburban political change” is working in Democrats’ favor. 

“College-educated and increasingly diverse suburban electorates in Tarrant County are less reflexively Republican than the Tarrant County electorate of 10 to 20 years ago,” Rottinghaus said. 

Mayes, the GOP strategist, echoed that point, saying that he’s long suspected Republican mothers would “start turning” when they see their local schools get underfunded. He says his firm’s polling on local school bonds has found that Republican parents in typically GOP-leaning districts agree that their schools need more funding.

Indeed, an anti-Republican backlash has already surfaced in Tarrant County school board races. In May 2025, all three Mansfield Independent School District (ISD) incumbents backed by the far-right Patriot Mobile lost their reelection bids, while conservative candidates suffered additional defeats in Arlington, Grapevine-Colleyville, and Keller ISDs. 

Mayes said that parents don’t necessarily “compartmentalize” their frustration when it comes to public schools being affected. This means they may not turn out to vote Republican in races that ostensibly have little to do with education. “The issue isn’t whether a DA or county commissioner directly controls school funding,” he said. “It’s the extreme and growing intensity of the frustration brewing and whether that frustration begins to affect how female Republican voters, moms, and grandmothers feel about the Republican Party more broadly.”

He argues that the people visibly energized by the conservative movement don’t necessarily reflect the younger parents who are most invested in their local schools. “If you look at these rallies with the far right, it’s never a 35-year-old mom. It looks like a casino on a weekday in Shreveport, right? It’s oxygen tanks and walkers, man.”

The first signal of a possible blue wave came in January, when local union leader and machinist Taylor Rehmet pulled off an upset over right-wing GOP candidate Leigh Wambsganss, a Patriot Mobile exec, in a special election runoff for an open state senate district. His 14-point win marked a 31-point swing from when Trump carried the seat by 17 points in 2024. Now, Rehmet and Wambsganss are facing off again to determine who will hold the seat for a full term.

At a recent fundraiser in Austin, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick—who handpicked Wambsganns for the seat—warned members of the Senate’s Republican caucus that polls had her trailing Rehmet by 5 points, according to Quorum Report. 

At his campaign kickoff in August, Rehmet laid out his plan: get schools and teachers more funding from the state by increasing the state’s share of the public education budget, which would also allow more sustainable property tax relief at the local level. “I know a lot of you are feeling the squeeze of this affordability, because I am,” he told a crowd of roughly 200 people at a union hall across the street from a Lockheed Martin facility in White Settlement, about 15 minutes west of downtown Fort Worth. 

Emad Salem, a local precinct chair and member of the Muslim Democratic Caucus, said he believes Tarrant County residents are motivated, in part, by the “horrible things” the Trump administration and its allies are doing, including rampant immigration arrests of people with no criminal records. But he also believes Rehmet and other local contenders, including Burks, are strong candidates. “He’s talking about making life more affordable and taking care of our students,” Salem said of Rehmet. “It doesn’t get more ‘common-sense’ than that.” 

Despite the apparent wind behind Tarrant Dems’ backs, they are still underfunded compared to the county’s Republican machine. For instance, Cárdenas had roughly 5 percent—about $14,000 total—of Manny Ramirez’s cash on hand as of mid-July, the most recent campaign finance report available. At that same point in time, O’Hare had 10 times as much cash on hand as his Democratic challenger, Simmons—who is already a county commissioner but now running for the judge spot—with more than $700,000 to Simmons’ $67,000. Among O’Hare’s many PAC contributors is the Accountable Government Fund, a PAC funded by the Bass family, which has held massive political and economic influence in Fort Worth for many decades. 

Karla Palomares, a local community organizer, said she has talked to many down-ballot candidates who don’t feel supported by the Texas Democratic Party. 

“A lot of money is still getting stuck at the top of the ticket, especially with [James] Talarico,” she said. “Candidates further down the ballot on the Democratic side are struggling to raise funds. And there is still not enough support coming from the state party and the [Democratic National Committee] overall.” 

For his part, Kendall Scudder, the chair of the Texas Democratic Party (TDP), says the state party itself needs more funding, even as the Democratic National Committee has invested more in Texas. Specifically, Scudder said TDP is receiving an additional $5,000 per month this cycle from the national committee, which increased its regular monthly allocation from $12,000 to $17,000. 

But that’s a drop in the bucket for a massive state like Texas. “So while I’m grateful for the investments that we have gotten, I will just say we’re going to do this on our own if we have to,” Scudder added. “And I’m not sitting around and waiting for the national folks to decide they’re going to swoop in and help.”

In an interview with the Observer, Simmons was bullish about the prospect of a “blue wave” because, as she puts it, “People are tired of the corruption we’ve been seeing here in Tarrant County under this current county judge colleague that I have.” 

She adds that everything about her and her fellow Dems’ campaigns has been “planned, strategic and intentional,” especially when it comes to collaborating with each other. She and her team have been working alongside Nathan Smith, a former Simmons staffer now running for district clerk, as well as county clerk candidate Lydia Bean and Jared Williams, who is running to fill Simmons’ current commissioner seat.

O’Hare’s campaign did not respond to questions for this story, nor did Phil Sorrells. But there are signs O’Hare is trying to soften his public image. In a recent campaign ad featuring his daughters, he ditched the culture wars for a message about being budget-conscious. 

In mid-September, the county judge attended a meeting held by the far-right group True Texas Project to say that he is “sounding the alarm” on a possible rash of Democratic victories this November. 

“They’re not going to keep you safer,” O’Hare said of Democrats. “They’re not going to cut your taxes.” During his speech, two people stood up to protest O’Hare’s slashing of voting locations. 

“Why don’t you want people to vote, Tim?” one man asked. 

“Tim, is voter suppression your newest campaign tactic?” a woman chimed in.

Both were promptly removed from the room. 

The post Inside Downballot Dems’ Effort to Flip Texas’ Key County Battleground appeared first on The Texas Observer.