Voters choose between O’Hare and Simmons for Tarrant County judge Nov. 3

Editor’s note: This article will be updated with voting results after polls close at 7 p.m.

Tarrant County voters make the final decision Tuesday on whether to reelect Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare or replace him with Democrat Alisa Simmons for the next four-year term.

Simmons, a county commissioner, is challenging O’Hare for the presiding seat on the Tarrant County Commissioners Court, after the court’s current 3-2 Republican majority redrew her precinct’s boundaries to favor GOP candidates.

The Nov. 3 midterms mark the first election since last summer’s high-profile county redistricting, initiated by O’Hare. The court’s GOP trio reshaped the two Democratic-held precincts — pushing voters of color out of Simmons’ Precinct 2 — in an effort to increase their party’s majority.

O’Hare is seeking his second term, hoping to maintain control of Texas’ largest Republican-held county. In his campaign, he has promised to bolster public safety and keep taxes low, touting the county’s four consecutive years of lowering the tax rate while delivering raises for the sheriff’s office.

Simmons’ campaign has focused on delivering “meaningful” tax relief while strengthening county services and increasing residents’ access to their government. She has proposed increased oversight and independent investigations to address the growing number of in-custody deaths in the county jail.

If elected, Simmons would be Tarrant County’s first Democratic county judge since 1986. She would also be Tarrant’s first Black county judge.

What does a county judge do? 

The county judge is one of five members of the Tarrant County Commissioners Court, the county’s governing body. Each commissioner represents a portion of the county, while the judge represents the entire county as the top political executive, similar to a city’s mayor. 

The county judge presides over commissioners court meetings, where the judge and commissioners vote on county administration, policies and contracts. They also set the county’s annual budget and tax rate. 

The county judge serves a four-year term and is paid $237,234.60 annually.

Both candidates joined the commissioners court in January 2023. Since then, they’ve sparred repeatedly from the dais over accountability for in-custody deaths at the jail, decorum at public meetings and politically driven issues such as the county precinct redistricting.

O’Hare said last summer that redistricting was necessary to balance Tarrant County’s rapid population growth and reflect Republican voting power after President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection supported by 51.82% of Tarrant voters. Critics, including Simmons, accused the Republican commissioners of racially gerrymandering the county by packing Democratic-leaning voters of color into a single precinct to dilute their voting power. Two lawsuits seeking to block the map were dropped or dismissed last year. 

Flipping the county judge’s seat to blue would still leave Simmons in the party minority, unless Democrats — in the face of that redistricting — either hold onto the Precinct 2 seat or flip the Republican-held Precinct 4 representing northwest Tarrant County.

In the March primaries, O’Hare faced one challenger but secured his party’s nomination with 117,104 votes, or 87.6% of the Republican vote. Simmons won the Democratic nomination with 105,487 votes, or 61.35%, in a three-way primary including Marc Veasey, Fort Worth’s member of Congress, who had dropped out of the county judge race but still appeared on the primary ballot.

Early voting for the midterms was open Oct. 19-30. Nearly 594,000 voters, or roughly 43% of the county’s 1.37 million registered voters, cast ballots early either in-person or by mail.

Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. The Fort Worth Report’s nonpartisan Tarrant County Voter Guide features candidate surveys, a list of polling sites and other need-to-know information before casting a ballot.

Simmons’ candidate survey is available here. O’Hare did not submit responses. Both candidates were invited to a public candidate forum hosted by the Report, but neither attended.

Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at [email protected]. 

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