Mayors for life? Why Tarrant County voters keep re-electing these folks

Grapevine Mayor William D. Tate has a self-storage unit full of campaign yard signs, but they haven't seen daylight since the last time he faced an opponent three elections ago.

"I should probably throw the signs away, but they were expensive to make," the mayor said, laughing, on a recent afternoon outside the city's TEXRail commuter train station and hotel under construction on historic Main Street. "On the other hand, renting that storage unit month after month is expensive, too."

Having served as mayor since 1972 — with only a break from 1985-88 to interrupt his 43 years of service — Tate is one of the most tenured elected officials in Dallas-Fort Worth. And he is on a rather long list of mayors in Tarrant County running unopposed in the May 5 local election.

In North Texas, the incumbents often rule the roost. Of the 164 people running for council and mayoral seats in the Tarrant County area, 46 — or 28 percent — are unopposed.

Mayors in Aledo, Bedford, Dalworthington Gardens, Grapevine, Hudson Oaks, Hurst, North Richland Hills, Richland Hills and Saginaw will be elected in May without much fanfare.

Watauga has a contested race because its mayor died.

Americans talk about "draining the swamp" to get rid of career politicians nationally, but they obviously don't feel that way about local elected leaders.

"The status quo in American politics is that incumbents win," said Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, a political science professor at the University of North Texas in Denton (which, by the way, is one of a handful of Metroplex municipalities that puts term limits on its mayors).

"Even when you get a challenger, and someone has decided to give it a go," Eshbaugh-Soha said, "they need to have some sort of name recognition."

Tate says there are many keys to remaining mayor term after term, but it all boils down to how residents feel about their city.

In Grapevine, many people credit the arrival of Grapevine Mills mall, the Gaylord Texan resort, the TEXRail commuter train service (scheduled to open in December) and many other economic development projects for kick-starting the city's tax revenues. That, in turn, made it more appealing to voters to return the mayor and city council members to office.

Tate said those economic developments were the fruits of decades of work on redrafting the city's financial strategy to focus on tourism and sales tax revenue rather than relying on property taxes. Grapevine is wedged between Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (much of which is in the Grapevine city limits, including all the passenger terminals) and Lake Grapevine, which supplies water to many cities in the area.

Also, the city has only about 52,000 residents, but is home to highways such as Texas 114/121 and Interstate 635 that collectively carry more than a half-million cars a day.

"We have the airport, a reservoir lake, the highways, schools, churches and other nonprofits. A long time ago, we determined that more than 70 percent of our land is not taxable," Tate said. "We needed alternatives. So we looked at the sales tax. We welcomed people from other cities to come walk our streets, to be part of a place we think is special."

Over time, the city's property tax rate dropped to its current rate of less than 29 cents per $100 valuation ($870 for a $300,000 home, not including any exemptions), down from as high as 80 cents per $100 valuation earlier in the mayor's career.

"It's what people perceive that you can do in the future that gets you re-elected. It's not what you have done in the past," Tate said.

But lower property taxes aren't the only factor.

In North Richland Hills, a city of nearly 70,000 people north of Fort Worth, the tax rate is quite a bit higher than Grapevine's — about 59 cents per $100 valuation (or $1,770 a year for a $300,000 home). And yet, Mayor Oscar Trevino hasn't had a re-election opponent in 12 years.

Trevino was first elected mayor in 2002, his first of what will soon be nine consecutive two-year terms. He hasn't had an opponent since 2006, and is running unopposed May 5.

During his first two terms, a small but vocal group of city residents opposed Trevino, saying his highway contracting business was profiting from his public position. They pointed to the state's expansion of Rufe Snow Drive at Loop 820, a multi-million-dollar state contract that was awarded to Trevino's firm.

Trevino said he has since opted not to bid on any contracts in North Richland Hills.

He said he doesn't believe there's a magical formula to winning favor with voters year after year, other than to pursue an aggressive but financially sound growth plan, and to respond to the questions and complaints from residents.

"I think the main thing is people want to feel like you are listening to them," Trevino said, "even if you don't do what they ask."

This story was originally published April 27, 2018 at 7:49 AM with the headline "Mayors for life? Why Tarrant County voters keep re-electing these folks."