Could this Republican steer Tarrant County into a new age of conservative leadership?
Before there were any candidates in the race for Tarrant County judge, there was a phone call between two colleagues.
Tim O’Hare, of Southlake, remembers the conversation between him and Andy Nguyen, now a candidate for county commissioner.
At the time, Nguyen was planning to run for county judge. But over the phone that day with O’Hare, Nguyen’s plans unraveled.
O’Hare had been considering the position, too.
Tim O’Hare is a lot of things, and he’s worn many hats.
He’s a husband and a father. He’s a personal injury attorney. He’s a deacon at his church, First Baptist Church of Grapevine. He served two years as the Tarrant GOP chair.
O’Hare has also been highly scrutinized. He worked on the city council in Farmers Branch and championed ordinances that made English the city language and barred landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants — the latter nearly took him to the Supreme Court. He led a successful counter effort against a cultural competence plan in Southlake Carroll schools.
O’Hare is also an honor corps member of Alliance Defending Freedom — a nonprofit focused on protecting religious freedom. It’s also designated as a hate group against the LGBTQ community by the Southern Poverty Law Center. O’Hare did pro bono hours for the organization years ago and said it was sad the organization was “vilified.”
But Nguyen knew a couple of things from his years working with O’Hare. The county judge needed to be a person with strength, a vision and an ability to bring people along to pursue that vision.
And in Nguyen’s eyes, O’Hare hit all those marks for the job.
So Nguyen decided then to let O’Hare take the reins. Nguyen had a heart for county government and making it more effective for constituents — it was something he could still do as a commissioner.
The proposal was something O’Hare had been thinking about. He initially blew off a friend, someone O’Hare won’t name, who called and told him to run for the position, but wheels in O’Hare’s mind kept turning even after the conversation was over. They turned so hard he dropped to his knees in the bathroom and prayed for an answer from God.
And that’s when the calls started coming in with requests for him to run for the county’s highest office. After that last conversation with Nguyen, O’Hare’s answer became clear.
Then the headline hit newsstands: “Former Tarrant County Republican chair Tim O’Hare says he’s running for county judge”
Growing up in Farmers Branch
O’Hare, now the Republican candidate for county judge, wasn’t always the favorite for the nomination.
He ran a contentious primary against former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price during which he attacked her political record during her 10 years in office, and caught heat from establishment Republicans in the process.
O’Hare has gone back and forth with his county judge opponent, Democrat Deborah Peoples, about which candidate is more inclusive. Peoples argues it’s her, and that she’s the one who will be able to reach across the aisle in the county’s top elected position given O’Hare’s political record.
But in the historically red county, O’Hare argues he’s the conservative leadership the county needs.
In O’Hare’s Southlake home, there’s a tank full of exotic fish in the office. He owns four pinball machines. The most ironic finding in the staunch conservative Republican’s home: two donkeys grazing in the backyard.
O’Hare has been married to his wife, Christen, for nearly 14 years. Together they have four daughters and two dogs — one is a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever named Dutch, after former president Ronald Reagan. The other is a boxer named Clyde, who is just Clyde.
O’Hare is a man with an affinity for animals, George Strait and Coke Zeros — he drinks five to six a day. From his kitchen table in June, he dumped them into a silver Yeti tumbler emblazoned with Law Offices of Tim O’Hare.
O’Hare was born in Dallas on July 12, 1969, into largely nothing. He came home to a worn, 900-square-foot house in Farmers Branch with tan bricks and yellowed white trim. His father left the family when he was six months old, and his mom brought in $1,200 a month.
As a student, O’Hare was an athlete and graduated near the top of his high school class. When it was time for college, the University of Texas at Austin was the choice for the fifth-generation Texan.
O’Hare majored in finance and lettered on the Longhorn football team. Within three years he was ready to graduate. But his quarterback from R.L. Turner High School in Carrollton had just started at Abilene Christian, and O’Hare wanted playing time. With only one credit left, O’Hare took the last class he needed at Abilene Christian and transferred it to Texas, where he eventually got his degree.
By the time O’Hare graduated from Texas, the hit NBC legal drama “L.A. Law” had wriggled its way into the minds of people like O’Hare who were looking for advanced degrees and next steps. He chose to attend Southern Methodist University’s law school, and in 2001 he opened his own law practice.
Farmers Branch
O’Hare’s political involvement began with membership on Farmers Branch committees. He was a member of the Zoning Board of Adjustments for three years and the Planning and Zoning Commission for two years.
O’Hare was elected to City Council in 2005 and elected to mayor in 2008. He served until 2011.
O’Hare’s top three political accomplishments during his tenure in Farmers Branch vary widely.
The first is the city’s efforts toward economic development. O’Hare said during his time on council, property values appreciated at a better rate than neighboring communities. Farmers Branch, he said, had the third-highest rate of economic development in the Metroplex behind Dallas and Arlington.
The second is changing the way the government functioned. During O’Hare’s time on council, the city created a program that froze property tax rates for 10 years for people who tore down and built new houses in run-down neighborhoods. The initiative increased home values and school scores, he said. It also played a role in getting a new grocery store to come to town for the first time in 35 years.
And the third: bringing 287(g) to Farmers’ Branch. The program, named for a section of federal immigration law, allows local law enforcement agencies to work with federal immigration officers and “perform immigration law enforcement functions.”
The city, during O’Hare’s time on council and to this day, splits nearly down the middle between white and Hispanic residents.
O’Hare said the media likes to run with the narrative of 287(g) being anti-Hispanic. He called the narrative “hogwash.”
The policies, to O’Hare, were about safety and security, he said — and no one ever wanted to write about the positive effects.
Tarrant County, too, has participates in 287(g). Undocumented immigrants booked into the Tarrant County Jail with high misdemeanor or felony charges are at risk of an ICE detainer and warrant. The county’s contract, as of 2021, is open-ended and can only stop if the commissioners are brought back for a vote on it.
O’Hare said the city’s lower crime rate was a result of the program.
Farmers Branch ended the program in 2012, the year after O’Hare left. If he wins, O’Hare doesn’t getting rid of the program in Tarrant County anytime soon.
While O’Hare is proud of the work he did surrounding 287(g) in Farmers Branch, it’s not his most well-known crusade against undocumented immigrants.
As a member of city council, O’Hare brought forth ordinances that made English the official language of Farmers Branch and prohibited landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants.
The ordinances made national news and were eventually ruled unconstitutional. Farmers Branch spent $7 million defending it, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Southlake
When the O’Hare family bought land in Southlake in 2016, O’Hare chose to stay out of local politics and didn’t pursue roles on the city council.
In Farmers Branch, there were things to be fixed, he said. In affluent Southlake, he thought everything was going well.
O’Hare was used to people calling him and asking for political advice after he served two years as the chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party.
In July 2020, he began to receive the concerned calls about an agenda item for a Southlake Carroll school board meeting. It was the district’s Cultural Competence Action Plan, which had been formed after a viral video showed a group of Carroll High School students using racial slurs.
“It literally sought to overhaul every aspect of Carroll ISD,” O’Hare said, referring to the plan as a “leftist dream document.”
It ended up passing, and soon after, a group of angry parents gathered to figure out what to do next. About 120 people showed up — O’Hare was one of them.
The people who attended were educated and accomplished, O’Hare said. But he knew no one else at the meeting understood the political maneuvering required.
So O’Hare got up and started leading the conversation.
He quickly became the lead for the parents’ cause, along Leigh Wambsgnass, who now leads communications for Grapevine-based Patriot Mobile, which calls itself “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider.” She is also executive director of Patriot Mobile Action, a political action committee started by Patriot Mobile executives.
Candidates endorsed by the PAC won school board seats in Carroll, Mansfield, Grapevine-Colleyville and Keller in 2022.
Together, O’Hare and Wambsgnass formed Southlake Families PAC. The political action committee eventually got its own two members on the Carroll school board — Alex Sexton and Andrew Yeager.
“Ultimately, we became a model for how to keep school boards from going off the deep end into leftist ideology,” O’Hare said.
The cultural competence action plan was never approved. The PAC and the uproar over the plan, to some, divided a once united community.
Angela Jones, who’s a member of Southlake Cultural and Racial Equity for Every Dragon, or CREED for short, has lived in Southlake for nearly 22 years. Everyone in Southlake agrees on the quality of its schools. There was a time where everyone was a Dragon. Jones said now it’s a two-headed dragon with the heads fighting each other.
The county judge needs to be a person who stands for all people, not just their own, Jones said. She thinks O’Hare has made it clear he’s only interested in his people.
Platform
O’Hare has spent his campaign for county judge hitting on the same issues: lowering property taxes, supporting public safety, creating jobs and monitoring election integrity.
He specifically wants to cut the property tax rate by 20%. This year, that would have amounted to a savings of $183 for the owner of a home valued at $350,000.
To accomplish the goal, O’Hare plans to make staffing cuts through attrition, eliminate wasteful spending, lower the price of county contracts by 1% to 2% and enlist nonprofits and private sectors to fulfill county needs.
O’Hare also wants to add the position of election integrity officer. It would work two ways: as an auditor and law enforcement arm. The role of the county’s election administrator wouldn’t change with the election integrity officer position in place, O’Hare said.
If the position is approved by the commissioners court, the person would report to a three-person committee made up of the county judge, sheriff and a commissioner. The person in the position would observe elections, go over local, state and nationwide practices and recommend about what the county can do to improve its elections.
Eventually, O’Hare wants the position to become more about looking into instances of voter fraud the same way a task force would look for crime.
He said it would be great if the position didn’t find any instances of voter fraud, but he doesn’t know of anyone who thinks that is what would happen. Results of an election audit in Tarrant County following the 2020 election found few flaws in the system.
“If there isn’t any, OK, then we don’t need that piece of it,” O’Hare explained. “But having a secure election, I mean, is paramount to people’s confidence in their government, and people’s confidence that their vote will matter.”
And what happens if that person doesn’t find any evidence of voter fraud? Will that person continue having a job? For how long?
“Well, I know they’re going to find it,” O’Hare said, adding that he’d seen it during his time as GOP chair.
O’Hare also wants to create an environment in Tarrant County where people want to create jobs and start businesses.
The county judge, he said, needs to be pro-business and know how to sell the community.
“Can you sit across from business people and speak their language?” he said. “Can you sit across from them at a table and sell them on why Tarrant County is the best place in Texas to relocate their company, or their headquarters or their division? And why is this place a phenomenal place to live, work, go to church, raise a family?”
O’Hare wants more jailers, better tools for sheriff’s deputies, a way to figure out how to combat crime when it rises and how to reduce the load on the criminal courts.
He thinks the notion of defunding the police is irresponsible. O’Hare thinks Tarrant County voters need to know he won’t do that. Tarrant County commissioners are in charge of the sheriff’s office budget. Sheriffs patrol unincorporated areas and Edgecliff Village and Haslet.
“We need a strong police presence,” O’Hare said. “We need a strong DA’s office, great prosecutors and people need to know in Tarrant County, there’s going to be law and order.”
Where does Tarrant turn next?
While Tarrant County for the last 31 years has been red, it’s been under moderate Republican leadership.
Tom Vandergriff was a Democrat in Congress and a Republican as county judge. Current county judge Glen Whitley is a Republican, but just endorsed Democrat Mike Collier in the race for Lieutenant Governor against incumbent Dan Patrick, a Republican.
While the purpose of elections is to draw distinctions between candidates, the challenge of running an actual office is working together across the commissioners court, county offices, schools and other county entities to accomplish a shared goal, said TCU political science professor Jim Riddlesperger.
The government can’t exist without that symbiotic relationship, Riddlesperger said — and county functions like the jail, roads and record keeping have nothing to do with whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.
It’s here where O’Hare has received criticism over whether he will be able to work across those lines; Not all Republicans in Tarrant County are on O’Hare’s side.
Whitley chastised the way O’Hare ran against Price as soon after the race was over. In an interview with the Texas Tribune, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker said she couldn’t run in a Republican primary and that it wasn’t the party she once knew. Price told voters recently that they should focus on the candidates, not their party.
O’Hare isn’t worried about endorsements from Whitley and Price. After all, endorsements matter the most in the primary races, and O’Hare didn’t think they would come out and support his opponent.
To this day, few Republicans have stuck their neck out for Peoples beyond Steve Murrin, Fort Worth’s “Mayor of the Stockyards.”
Riddlesperger has said before he believes those who voted for Price will eventually vote for O’Hare in the race. The biggest question mark in the county judge race is: what happens to the moderate and independent voters?
But one thing is clear: It’s the big state races like governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general that bring voters to the polls.
Those who show up to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate and incumbent Greg Abbott will most likely vote Republican down the ballot. Those who show up to vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke will go blue down the ballot, Riddlesperger said.
And the farther voters go down the ballot, the more lost they may become. Some who don’t follow local politics closely may vote down party lines. But others, Riddlesperger said, may simply choose to not cast a vote in those races at all.
Why O’Hare?
Among O’Hare’s endorsements is Commissioner Gary Fickes, who represents areas like Keller, Grapevine, Colleyville and Southlake. Fickes used to be Southlake’s mayor and has been in county government for 15 years.
Fickes initially endorsed Price in the race for county judge. After O’Hare won, Fickes met with him and they both shared their perceptions of the job.
“Sometimes things are said in a primary race that you might not say in other races,” Fickes said in response to a question about the way O’Hare ran his primary against Price. Fickes said the key for O’Hare is getting the Price voters on his side.
Fickes said that as a Republican commissioner, there was no other person he would vote for besides the Republican candidate. He’s on the same side as O’Hare with wanting to see the tax rate lowered, and Fickes thinks it can be done.
Nguyen, who’s running to represent Mansfield and Arlington on the commissioners court after he lost his spot to Commissioner Devan Allen in 2018, has known O’Hare since he ran for party chair. Nguyen described O’Hare as open-minded, inclusive and sensitive to the needs of others, even though he may not seem like it at first.
He can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat their family and friends. Most people, Nguyen said, don’t get to see that side of O’Hare.
Nguyen believes that as commissioner, O’Hare will be able to hear others out.
In Arlington, Texas one night at the end of June, Republicans with the city’s club gathered at the Texas Star for Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. He was there for the third time in history, the club’s president Mark Hanson said over chatter that drowned out his voice.
Nobody doesn’t like Tim, state Rep. Tony Tinderholt of Arlington said as he introduced the candidate for county judge.
And when O’Hare spoke that evening, those in the audience listened attentively.
As O’Hare paced back and forth in black cowboy boots, he spoke with his hand, alternating the microphone back, and forth, and back again.
O’Hare doesn’t prepare his speeches. And, on this evening, he wanted the audience to know that what you see with him is exactly what you get.
“I love America,” he told the crowd.
He wanted them to know he’s working. He’s meeting with the leaders, the movers, the shakers, the influencers.
O’Hare told the audience he’s going to focus on lowering property taxes. He said he’s going to focus on reducing crime. He said his opponent, Peoples will defund the police, though she’s since said she will back law enforcement.
He’s convinced Tarrant County is “ground zero in the battle over America.” And O’Hare said he will represent their values and fight for them and this country. There’s a light round of applause.
When he finished, O’Hare made his way to the event’s bar.
The bartender slid him a Diet Coke.
