New Tarrant County Democratic Party chair aims to make it ‘a million dollar party’
Allison Campolo was elected to be Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair by a landslide of votes Monday evening, according to unofficial election results. She took over for the former chair, Crystal Gayden, at the close of the meeting.
Campolo, who had served as the party’s chair from 2021 to 2023, was elected by 90.3% of the 144 special election voters. She ran on a campaign of surpassing her previous fundraising successes and turning Tarrant County blue.
Patrick Moses, her competitor, earned 14 votes. He ran on informing, inspiring and mobilizing the marginalized community.
The special election canvased the 144 precinct chairs who attended the meeting out of 239 eligible.
Campolo, who has served as a precinct chair until being elected on Monday, said the Democrats are facing an important year.
“I feel very called to help us see us through these next three very important elections, which are the next two municipal elections, and, of course, the 2026 midterms,” Campolo said to the party before the vote. “Every time I do something, I think I get a little bit better at it.”
In her two-minute speech before the vote, she pointed at her fundraising successes in her own campaign for state senate in 2018 and the $500,000 she raised as chair in 2022.
“I’m aiming to make us a million dollar party. I’m aiming to talk to over a million voters. We can flip this county,” Campolo said. “We can kick out Tim O’Hare. We can keep Alissa Simmons’s seat. We can replace Manny Ramirez on the county commissioners court. We can replace our whole county-wide elected slate here in Tarrant, and then flip a bunch of other amazing districts that need to have Democrats in them. And I’m ready to do that.”
Moses held a similar view of flipping the county blue in his two minutes.
“We turn blue, the whole nation will turn blue,” he said.
Moses also said his main point of focus would be to reach out to the marginalized communities who have been ignored by the Democratic Party.
“I want to leverage my 30 plus years of leadership to ensure that we build our infrastructure, that we make the right kind of investments,” Moses said. “That means recruiting precinct chairs in those marginalized communities, promoting those who are there, ensuring and supporting our candidates, and of course, ensuring that we build a sustainable fundraising strategy that will get us out of the red and make sure we win.”
After the vote determined Campolo as the winner, she said she is grateful to have had Moses as a competitor in the race because he brought many good ideas to the conversation.
She said “he’s exactly right” about reaching out to the marginalized communities and that she has been trying to “bang that drum since at least 2018.”
“We need to get to folks in these communities. We need to start communicating with them. We start letting them know who’s running and why and what that person is going to do for them, so that they can get out to the ballot box,” Campolo said. “These communities have been so gerrymandered for so long that they’ve been totally underinvested in for decades, and that decades long of under investment for voting infrastructure has made a huge impact.”
Moses said after the vote that it doesn’t matter who is elected.
“What matters is that we reach out to those marginalized people who are impacted by all of our decisions,” Moses said. “I am excited that I am not the elected Chair of the party, because I can sit on the sideline and hold people accountable.”
As for making the Democrats a million dollar party, Campolo said she has confidence in her game plan of calling donors and expanding the party.
Campolo also said the most flippable district in Tarrant County is the county itself, despite the Republicans’ gerrymandering. The key, she said, is to stop running to the center of the political spectrum.
“Of course, every race is up to each candidate,” Campolo said. “But as far as the party is concerned, I think we definitely, as a party, need to be very proud of our values. And I think being proud of our values and being out loud about being progressive is a big way we’re going to flip this county.”