The county judge acts like a county mayor and there are a lot of eyes on race in purple Tarrant County
TARRANT COUNTY, Texas — From the top of the ballot in the race for Texas governor to election for Tarrant County judge, about 25 races later, property taxes and how taxpayer dollars are spent is a critical key issue for voters and candidates.
WFAA has been profiling Republican candidate Tim O’Hare and Democrat candidate Deborah Peoples in the Tarrant County judge race. The county is viewed as a key battleground after it voted for Beto O’Rourke over Ted Cruz in 2018 and for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020, but it has continued to elect only Republicans for countywide office.
O’Hare and Peoples have both promised to reduce property taxes, but both accuse the other of providing a plan that wouldn’t work.
Peoples, a former AT&T executive who lives in Fort Worth, says the focus should be on reigning in appraisals which impact not just the county taxes but total property taxes.
“It is not necessarily the tax rate that’s killing us. It’s the appraisal rate. It’s what’s happening with appraisals,” she said. “It’s just not in Tarrant County. This is a statewide problem, and we’ve got to sit down and look at what’s happening with these spiraling appraisals.”
Like current Republican County Judge Glen Whitley, she blames lawmakers in Austin for not properly funding schools and therefore requiring higher taxes to close the funding gap.
“We need to be good stewards and be down in Austin and working with our delegation and working with the legislature to look at fully funding public education,” said Peoples.
O’Hare, who was the mayor of Farmer’s Branch before moving to Southlake, has said he wants to cut the Tarrant County tax rate by 20%. Whitley has said such a move would be impossible without cuts to multiple departments, including law enforcement.
“When you talk to people about, ‘I want to come in and provide real property tax relief’, they want to hear about it. They’re interested in it,” O’Hare said. “There’s always waste and abuse in government, especially when the budget is this high, so I’ll go in and I’ll find the waste and I’ll find the abuse.”
He says his plan to cut the budget would simply be to wait for county employees to retire and possibly not fill the open roles, instead having remaining employees double up on duties.
“Do we really need to refill this position? Can we combine duties somewhere else?” O’Hare said.
Both candidates have traded barbs calling the other divisive.
Peoples points out that O’Hare’s policies in Farmer’s Branch targeting undocumented immigrants cost the city millions of dollars in legal fees and that he would not be inclusive to all county residents. She pushes herself as someone who will represent everyone.
O’Hare gained notoriety in Tarrant County after founding Southlake Families PAC, a group that embraces Christian and conservative values.
Doesn’t matter what political party you’re in, I will you will never hear me say that I don’t want to work across the aisle,” she said. “I think that there are a lot of people who will be left out of the equation, and it’s not just by race, by religion, it’s by sexuality is by income level.”
O’Hare counters that Peoples uses race to be divisive.
“Everything to her is about race. Everything she talks about is about race,” he said. “Regardless of what it will do for my reelection chances, regardless of what the media is going to say, regardless of what the cancel culture mob will say, I’m going to do what I think is right.”
Peoples faces an uphill battle to win in a county that has continued to elect Republicans as countywide leaders and facing a candidate who has far outraised her, with donations from statewide police groups and oil industry leaders.
O’Hare feels confident in his chances.
The race could forecast whether Tarrant County will continue to turn blue or if it swings back to firmly conservative.
“I’m confident that on November 8, Republicans are going to sweep Tarrant County,” said O’Hare.
“They’re going to have to make a decision on whether they want to keep good, steady leadership focused on all the residents or if we want to see this divisive rhetoric that only focuses on a certain few,” said Peoples.