WFAA sat down with Democrat Deborah Peoples and Republican Tim O’Hare to discuss the race that could forecast the county’s future.
FORT WORTH, Texas — The race for Tarrant County Judge highlights the battle for a county that’s continued to vote for Democrats at the top of the ballot, but Republicans have continued to dominate at the bottom.
Monday, WFAA shared the first in a series of stories on the candidates, highlighting their backgrounds. Now, the candidates are weighing in on where they stand on key issues.
Property taxes and balancing the budget may be most important in the race but crime and the county jail have dominated ads and headlines.
Republican Tim O’Hare is endorsed by Sheriff Bill Waybourn, who oversees the jail where 45 inmates have died since 2019.
“The first thing that you need to do is to make sure that the deputies in the jail get good training to recognize medical problems,” O’Hare said.
He also wanted to look at contracting out medical services instead of relying on John Peter Smith Hospital employees
“I think we have to go back in and look at the staffing, at the jail, look at who we’re hiring, look at how we’re training them,” Democrat Deborah Peoples said.
O’Hare has far outraised Peoples in the race, with the Southlake resident raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from statewide PACs and large donations from energy executives while Peoples has received mostly smaller donations. Much of O’Hare’s money has been used to run ads trying to pin the race on crime.
“When liberals get in charge of these cities and counties and law enforcement, disaster strikes,” O’Hare said. “Crime is on the rise in Fort Worth, in multiple parts of Tarrant County.”
It’s Republicans, though, who hold every county office and control commissioners court and Fort Worth mayor Mattie Parker is also a Republican. O’Hare didn’t share how his policies would differ from those running the county now. Instead, he accused Peoples of wanted to defund law enforcement, a claim she denies.
“I come from a family of law enforcement,” Peoples said. “My brother was a policeman. I have cousins that were here on the Fort Worth police force. I am critical about bad policing and anybody I think any citizen would.”
Peoples claims O’Hare is trying to deflect from comments he made in the primary to win over conservatives from former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, who ran as a moderate.
“If you think you’re going to appease the left, that is as ludicrous as thinking you’re going to appease Iraqis and they’re going to start loving America,” O’Hare said in a podcast interview.
Both candidates claim the other is more polarized and focused on national politics, not local issues.
“Doesn’t matter what political party you’re in, you will never hear me say that I don’t want to work across the aisle,” Peoples said.
“Everything to her is about race,” O’Hare said, referring to Peoples. “Everything she talks about is about race.”
Budgets and taxes may matter most to how the county is run. It’s unclear how much they matter to voters.
“On Nov. 8, Republicans are going to sweep Tarrant County,” O’Hare said.
“When you create a common vision about what you want, then it’s easy to get people to move in the same direction,” Peoples said.