Tarrant County could soon be a major front in the battle for control of the Republican Party.
Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker’s recent comments about the local party’s direction didn’t mention Tim O’Hare, the likely next county judge, by name. But there was no mistaking what she meant.
“We just eat our own,” Parker told the Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith, lamenting that politics has “gotten so partisan.” Her follow-up before the Rotary Club of Fort Worth got less attention, but the mayor indicated she’s not letting this go.
“I may be on a crusade now about it,” she said.
The driving force here is former Mayor Betsy Price’s walloping by O’Hare, the Southlake activist and former Farmers Branch mayor. Staunch Price supporters think she was unfairly painted as insufficiently conservative, including through some deception. Parker is among them, having worked for Price before succeeding her as mayor.
More than once, Parker has mentioned a campaign mailer featuring a photo of Price greeting former President Barack Obama in Dallas on the day of a memorial service for law enforcement officers slain in a 2016 attack. Price met the president’s plane at the behest of her Dallas counterpart, Mike Rawlings, who was attending officers’ funerals.
Campaigns are rough, and Price’s team didn’t effectively fight back. Part of the problem is that establishment Republicans seem to have missed or underestimated the shift among the party’s core voters.
Cultural issues unrelated to county government shouldn’t have been so prominent in the O’Hare-Price contest. But candidates have to meet voters where they are, then try to bring them to focus on other issues as well. O’Hare read the moment among the small number of Republicans most likely to vote in primaries, and Price simply didn’t.
Listing her frustrations with the Texas GOP, Parker has mentioned Medicaid expansion as an urgent need for Texas. State Republican leaders have resisted taking more federal money to insure more working-class Texans, even though the need is clear.
This could be the kind of issue to chart a new course for Republicans. The smaller-government argument against the program may be fading. As more working-class people move into the GOP partly over cultural issues, they may prompt more openness to programs such as Medicaid.
And the fact that Medicaid expansion would help ease the burden on county taxpayers who foot the bill when patients without insurance show up at John Peter Smith Hospital needing urgent care should seal the deal.
Parker has the potential to help lead such a transition, having earned national attention as the youngest mayor of a large American city at age 38. It won’t be easy. She’s sure to face hard-right opposition if she runs for re-election in 2023. And she lacks Price’s clout, at least so far.
Parker indicated she wouldn’t want to run in a Republican primary right now because of the intensely partisan nature of politics. The mayor is elected on a nonpartisan basis, but city politics has increasingly seen the ideological divides present at other levels. Parker may not want to participate in such donnybrooks, but if she wants her views to prevail, she may not have a choice.
If she intends to go on a crusade for less partisan, more policy-focused campaigns and governance, we hope she’ll see it through. Fort Worth is a diverse city that leans Democratic in a county that’s increasingly up for grabs. We need leaders who can compromise and embrace smart policy to address long-standing needs such as better schools, higher-paying jobs and more affordable housing.
Fighting for values in politics is noble. But it isn’t everything. Fort Worth and Tarrant County have the potential to demonstrate conservative urban policy that gets results, in contrast to intractable problems in other cities.
Parker voiced concerns that many Republican leaders have had on their minds. The time for silence is over.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
