Tim O’Hare, Manny Ramirez throw Fort Worth voters world’s worst pizza party | Opinion

Before we discuss the shame, scandal and depth of hubris of the Tarrant County redistricting scheme, let me ask you this: Have you ever had a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza?

Maybe you got it for free because your school gave you a coupon for crushing your monthly reading goals in 1998, like me. Maybe you spent your own money on it as an adult (also like me). The thing you’ll notice about a personal pan pizza is that it has four slices, and they’re roughly the same size and shape. The tip extends to the center of the pie, roughly equidistant from the crusty circumference. Like Thanos said, “Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.”

The current Tarrant County district map at least vaguely resembles a personal pizza. Four slice-shaped districts, each with roughly the same-sized “crust,” extending to a radial point at the cheesy district center. It’s not geometric — more like you and your drunken friends ripping apart the pie without a pizza cutter, but it at least looks like there was an attempt to be fair.

Even if you didn’t know where white, Black, and Latino people in Tarrant County live, a life of pizza eating would have taught you how to scan the proposed new maps, compare them to the current maps, and, within seconds, see that you are being scammed. And that’s even before knowing that one slice happens to surgically absorb the locus of Black and Latino neighborhoods.

The plan proposed by Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare would fracture the voting coalition of current Precinct 2 commissioner and former Arlington NAACP president Alisa Simmons. Her base would be absorbed into Precinct 1, which is led by Roderick Miles, the other Black, liberal-leaning commissioner. If O’Hare’s gambit works as intended and pushes Simmons out of her seat, Miles’ power would also be limited, as he would be ideologically outnumbered 4-1 on most county commission votes.

There’s a phrase for what O’Hare is doing to likely Democratic, minority voters. This type of gerrymandering is called “packing and cracking” — meaning, shifting predicted constituencies into a single area (“packing”) thus, reducing their ability to swing elections in a plurality of districts. The “cracking” happens to the stragglers, subsumed into electoral minorities in districts, all but ensuring they don’t have a say.

Active or tacit support for redistricting has unfortunately (but not surprisingly) coalesced along partisan lines, with two arguments from Republicans drenched in contradictions. Though they may sound different, they are, in fact, stupid sides of the same dumb coin.

Argument 1: You just don’t know what’s good for you

Precinct 4 commissioner Manny Ramirez recently wrote an op-ed published in the Star-Telegram, trying to convince you that your diminished power is good, actually, so long as the future feudalists are Republicans. From Ramirez’s view, “this process isn’t about denying anyone representation,” while, just a paragraph down, arguing that redistricting would “provide an opportunity for an additional Republican-leaning seat.”

Sir, if securing another Republican-leaning seat means putting your thumb on the scale, you are, by definition, denying representation. Particularly insidious is that Ramirez knows this.

Less than a year ago, Ramirez criticized the attempted removal of early voting sites from college campuses — another naked attempt to diminish the political power of traditionally non-Republican constituencies. “I think that we’ve got a compelling message for college students,” Ramirez said at the time, preferring to win elections on ideas instead of scams. Ramirez might have been right! A recent poll from Catalist found that women and people of color — historically stronger Dem constituencies — made up a majority of Donald Trump’s winning 2024 coalition.

Sadly, this would be the last time anyone has seen Ramirez as the commissioner missed his Precinct 4 hearing on the redistricting plan, the primary opportunity to speak directly to Tarrant County residents furious with the plan.

Argument 2: I’m not partisan, I just vote that way

This is Mayor Mattie Parker’s nondefense defense, which Parker levied when she joined three Republican-affiliated city council members voting against a resolution opposing the redistricting attempt. The resolution passed 6-4 — District 3’s Michael Crain missed the vote — but a council fully invested in preserving democracy should have made this a clean sweep.

“Every single thing right now feels like it’s about whether you are blue or red. Everything,” the mayor groaned, as if she were oblivious about how her vote reinforced the partisanship she says she despises. “And it is dividing this city, and it’s dividing this county, and it’s unacceptable.”

I know the mayor is under specific pressure, a Republican mayor trying to follow her conscience while ostensibly maintaining an open door for her political career. But Mayor Parker: Nobody forced you to join a political party committed to stifling your constituents.

(After this column was published, the Star-Telegram obtained a letter Friday signed by Parker along with other Tarrant County mayors urging O’Hare to delay his redistricting plan and raising questions about its legality and its effects on minority representation.)

Whatever real challenges she’s facing don’t compare with what Fort Worth and Tarrant County residents will experience if Republicans successfully pack and crack Black voters out of a vote that matters. My sympathy for her entirely self-inflicted tension can only go so far.

Both Ramirez and Parker infuriate me because their assertions rely upon you being too stupid to see right through them. They tell you you’re invited to the pizza party in the hopes you have no idea whether you’re getting your fair share.

This story was originally published May 23, 2025 at 10:19 AM with the headline "Tim O’Hare, Manny Ramirez throw Fort Worth voters world’s worst pizza party | Opinion."