In Texas’ largest purple county, this far-right Republican is making a playbook for native governing

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Over the previous twenty years, Tim O’Hare methodically amassed energy in North Texas as he pushed incendiary insurance policies resembling banning undocumented immigrants from renting houses and vilifying faculty curriculum that inspired college students to embrace variety.

He rode a wave of conservative resentment, leaping from Metropolis Council member of Farmers Department, a suburb north of Dallas, in 2005 to its mayor to the chief of the Tarrant County Republican Social gathering.

Three years in the past, O’Hare sought his highest political workplace but, operating for the highest elected place within the nation’s Fifteenth-largest county, which is residence to Fort Value. Backed by influential evangelical church buildings and cash from highly effective oil business billionaires, O’Hare promised voters he would weed out “diversity inclusion nonsense” and accused some Democrats of hating America. His win in November 2022 gave the GOP’s far proper new sway over the Tarrant County Commissioners Court docket, turning a authorities that after prided itself on bipartisanship into a brand new entrance of the tradition struggle.

“I was not looking to do this at all, but they came after our police,” he stated in his victory speech on election evening. “They came after our schools. They came after our country. They came after our churches.”

In Texas and throughout the nation, far-right candidates have gained management of college boards, swiftly banning books, halting variety efforts and altering curricula that don’t align with their beliefs. O’Hare’s election in Tarrant County, nonetheless, takes the battle from the schoolhouse to county authorities, providing a uncommon take a look at what occurs when hard-liners win the bulk and exert their affect over municipal affairs in a carefully divided county.

Since he was elected county decide — a place just like that of mayor in a metropolis — O’Hare has pushed his agenda with an uncompromising method. He has led efforts to chop funding to nonprofits that work with at-risk kids, citing their views on racial inequality and LGBTQ+ rights. And he has pushed election legislation modifications that native Republican leaders stated would favor them.

O’Hare’s rise in Tarrant County has come as he and his allies proceed to align with once-fringe figures whereas concentrating on personal residents with whom they disagree politically. In July, O’Hare had a neighborhood pastor faraway from a public assembly for talking eight seconds over his allotted time. Days later, O’Hare appeared onstage at a convention that urged attendees to withstand a Democratic marketing campaign to “rid the earth of the white race” and embrace Christian nationalism. The agenda prompted some right-wing Republicans to condemn or pull out of the occasion.

“We’re seeing a shift of what conservatism looks like, and at the lower levels, they’re testing how extreme it can get,” stated Robert Futrell, a sociologist on the College of Nevada, Las Vegas who research political extremism. “The goal is to capture local Republican Party infrastructure and positions and own the party, turning it to more extremist goals.”

Ceaselessly, these goals embrace pushing again in opposition to broader LGBTQ+ acceptance, downplaying the nation’s historical past of racism and the lingering disparities brought on by it, stemming immigration, and falsely claiming that America was based as a Christian nation and that its legal guidelines and establishments ought to thus replicate conservative evangelical beliefs.

O’Hare declined a number of interview requests and didn’t reply detailed lists of questions emailed to him. His spokesperson as a substitute touted a listing of eight accomplishments, together with reducing county spending and decreasing native property tax charges.

With 2.2 million individuals, Tarrant County is Texas’ most vital remaining battleground for Democrats and Republicans. When the county voted for Beto O’Rourke for U.S. Senate in 2018 and Joe Biden for president in 2020, many political observers suspected the tip was nigh for the period of Republican dominance within the purple county.

Two years later, voters elected probably the most hard-line Tarrant County chief in a long time. After two years below O’Hare’s management, voters in November will resolve two races between Republican allies of O’Hare and their Democratic opponents. The election of each Democrats would put O’Hare into the minority.

The modifications in county management have been dramatic, stated O’Hare’s Republican predecessor, Glen Whitley, who served as Tarrant County decide from 2007 till retiring in 2022. Whitley stated O’Hare has implanted an “us vs. them” ideology that has more and more been mainstreamed on the correct.

“They no longer feel like they have to compromise,” stated Whitley, who just lately endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Texas within the U.S. Senate race. “You either vote with these people 100% of the time, or you’re their enemy.”

Political rise

In 2005, when O’Hare initially ran unopposed for a seat on the Metropolis Council in Farmers Department, a small city simply outdoors of Tarrant County, his platform included plans to revitalize the general public library and herald new eating places. In 2006, nonetheless, O’Hare started taking positions that had been outdoors of the Republican mainstream on the time. He pushed for the diversifying city to declare English its official language, ban landlords from renting to residents with out proof of citizenship, and cease publishing public supplies in Spanish.

“The reason I got on the City Council was because I saw our property values declining or increasing at a level that was below the rate of inflation,” O’Hare stated on the time. “When that happens, people move out of our neighborhoods, and what I would call less desirable people move into the neighborhoods, people who don’t value education, people who don’t value taking care of their properties.”

Hispanic residents mobilized and sued to dam the rental ban’s implementation. O’Hare doubled down: He pushed for Farmers Department police to associate with immigration enforcement authorities to detain and deport individuals within the nation illegally, and urged residents to oppose a grocer’s plan to open a retailer that catered to Hispanics, arguing it was “reasonable” to desire “a grocery store that appeals to higher-end consumers.”

O’Hare was elected as mayor in 2008. Foreshadowing strikes he’d make as Tarrant County decide, he abruptly ended a public assembly after reducing off and eradicating one resident who criticized him. He led opposition to the native highschool’s Homosexual-Straight Alliance and fought in opposition to a mentorship program for at-risk highschool college students that included volunteers from a Hispanic group that opposed his immigration decision.

In the meantime, town continued to defend the immigration ordinance after it was repeatedly struck down by federal judges. As prices for the seven-year authorized battle ballooned, Farmers Department dipped into its reserves, lower almost two dozen metropolis staff and outsourced providers on the library that O’Hare had campaigned on bettering throughout his Metropolis Council run. “At the end of the day, this will be money well spent, and it will be a good investment in our community’s future,” O’Hare stated after the city laid off workers in 2008.

O’Hare stepped down as mayor in 2011. Three years later, after the U.S. Supreme Court docket declined to listen to town’s attraction, Farmers Department stopped defending the ordinance. It was by no means enforced, however the associated lawsuits value the city $6.6 million, metropolis officers stated in 2016.

After leaving workplace, O’Hare moved his household a number of miles away to Tarrant County, the place demographic modifications have dropped the share of white residents from 62% of the county’s inhabitants in 2000 to 43% in 2020.

Dwelling to a number of the nation’s most influential evangelical church buildings and 4 of former President Donald Trump’s non secular advisers, the county is an epicenter for ultraconservative actions in Texas, together with people who name for Christians to exert dominance over all features of society. In 2016, O’Hare was elected chair of the Tarrant County GOP. Beneath him, the occasion distributed mailers that listed the first voting information for native candidates — breaking with the longstanding nonpartisan custom of county elections.

In 2020, following a collection of racist incidents on the principally white Carroll Excessive Faculty in Southlake — together with one viral clip during which white college students chanted the N-word — O’Hare co-founded a political motion committee that raised tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} to oust faculty board members who supported the Carroll Impartial Faculty District’s plans for variety and inclusion programming. The dispute helped catapult the small Tarrant County suburb into the nationwide highlight amid Republican panic over crucial race idea and “gender ideology,” and created a blueprint for right-wing organizing that was copied in suburbs throughout America.

In 2021, O’Hare launched his marketing campaign for Tarrant County decide, squaring off within the GOP major in opposition to the extra reasonable five-term mayor of Fort Value, whom he painted as a RINO, or “Republican in name only.” O’Hare rode a wave fueled by backlash to COVID-19 mandates, baseless election fraud conspiracy theories and opposition to what he referred to as “diversity inclusion nonsense,” in line with the Fort Value Star-Telegram. O’Hare’s marketing campaign was condemned by reasonable Republicans, together with Whitley, the outgoing decide, who accused him of making an attempt to “divide and pit one group against another.” O’Hare gained the first by 23 proportion factors.

Whitley and different longtime Republican leaders declined to endorse O’Hare within the 2022 normal election. It didn’t matter; by then, he was backed by a coalition of far-right megadonors, pastors and church buildings. His high marketing campaign donors included a PAC funded by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. The 2 west Texas oil billionaires have given tens of tens of millions of {dollars} to candidates and teams that oppose LGBTQ+ rights, assist applications that may use public {dollars} to pay for personal colleges, and have led efforts to push moderates out of the Texas GOP.

O’Hare acquired one other $203,000 from the We Can Maintain It PAC. The PAC’s treasurer is an elder at Mercy Tradition Church in Fort Value, whose leaders have endorsed a number of GOP candidates, together with O’Hare. The church’s pastor has claimed Democrats can’t be Christian and dared critics to complain to the IRS that the church was flouting federal prohibitions on political exercise by nonprofits.

Remodeling elections

O’Hare took workplace in early 2023, as Republicans continued to query President Joe Biden’s razor-thin win in Tarrant County two years earlier. A 2022 audit by Texas’ Republican secretary of state discovered no proof of widespread fraud and that Tarrant County held “a quality, transparent election.”

Regardless of that — and whereas saying he had no proof of malfeasance — O’Hare instantly got down to forestall dishonest he claimed was answerable for Democrats’ regular rise within the long-purpling county. Quickly after taking workplace, he helped launch an “election integrity unit” that he’d lead with the county sheriff who had spoken at a “Stop the Steal” rally within the days after the 2020 presidential election.

No Democrats had been initially on the unit. Nor was the county’s elections administrator, Heider Garcia, who by then had confronted three years of harassment, dying threats and accusations of being a undercover agent for Venezuela’s socialist authorities by election fraud conspiracy theorists. Garcia opted for radical transparency — making himself accessible to reply questions in regards to the election course of and incomes reward from throughout the political aisle for his affected person public service.

However Garcia lasted only some months below O’Hare: In April 2023, he resigned his place, citing his relationship with O’Hare in his resignation letter. “Judge O’Hare, my formula to ‘administer a quality transparent election’ stands on respect and zero politics; compromising on these values is not an option for me,” Garcia wrote. “You made it clear in our last meeting that your formula is different, thus, my decision is to leave.”

Garcia, now the Dallas County elections administrator, didn’t reply to an interview request.

At some point after Garcia resigned, O’Hare advised members of True Texas Undertaking — a bunch whose leaders have sympathized with a white nationalist mass shooter and endorsed Christian nationalism — that he was inspired by the potential for low turnout in that 12 months’s upcoming elections, which he stated would assist Republicans win extra native seats. (O’Hare beforehand served on True Texas Undertaking’s advisory workforce, in line with a 2021 social media submit by the group’s CEO, Julie McCarty).

In June 2024, the election integrity unit reported that, over the earlier 15 months, it acquired 82 complaints of voter fraud — or about 0.009% of all votes forged within the 2020 presidential election in Tarrant County — and that none had resulted in legal fees. In the meantime, O’Hare has proposed quite a few modifications to the election system that Tarrant County GOP leaders have stated had been supposed to assist Republicans or damage Democrats.

In February, O’Hare and fellow Republicans lower $10,000 in county funding to supply free bus rides to low-income residents, a program that Tarrant GOP leaders decried as a scheme to “bus Democrats to the polls.”

O’Hare stated he opposed the funding on fiscal grounds. “I don’t believe it’s the county government’s responsibility to try to get more people out to the polls,” he stated earlier than the vote.

A couple of months later, commissioners prohibited outdoors organizations from registering voters inside county buildings after Tarrant County GOP leaders raised considerations about left-leaning organizations holding registration drives. Democrats and voting rights teams assailed the strikes as makes an attempt to decrease voter turnout.

In September, O’Hare proposed eliminating voting areas on some school campuses that he referred to as a “waste of money and manpower.” However this time, his Republican allies on the Commissioners Court docket stated they might not go alongside with the vote and joined Democrats to defeat the measure. Tarrant County Republican leaders condemned the recalcitrant commissioners in a public decision that made it clear they noticed the hassle to shut polls on school campuses as a transfer that would assist them in November. The GOP commissioners, the decision claimed, “voted with Democrats on a key election vote that undermines the ability of Republicans to win the general election in Tarrant County.”

Manny Ramirez, a kind of Republican commissioners, stated in an interview he thinks the GOP ought to attempt to win school college students with their conservative concepts fairly than restrict on-campus voting.

“We’ve been providing those same exact sites for nearly two decades,” Ramirez stated. His position as commissioner, he added, is to supply “equal access to all of our citizens.”

Concentrating on youth applications

Lower than a 12 months into his time period, O’Hare started concentrating on long-established nonprofits whose web sites and social media accounts contained language the county decide thought of politically objectionable on problems with gender and race.

In October 2023, he moved to dam a $115,000 state grant to Ladies Inc. of Tarrant County, for its Woman Energy program providing summer time camps and mentoring to assist members give attention to stress administration, hygiene and vanity.

About 90% of the youth served by Ladies Inc. of Tarrant County are individuals of shade and are available from households making lower than $30,000 a 12 months, in line with the group’s web site.

4 months earlier, the nationwide Ladies Inc. group, which has chapters throughout the nation, had tweeted out its assist for abortion rights and LGBTQ+ delight, which conservative media and activists seized upon.

“Girls Inc. is an extremist political indoctrination machine advocating for divisive liberal politics,” Leigh Wambsganss, the chief communications officer of Patriot Cell, advised commissioners. Patriot Cell is a Christian nationalist cellphone firm whose PAC has spent tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} in assist of far-right candidates throughout Tarrant County, together with O’Hare.

Native leaders of Ladies Inc., who didn’t reply to requests for remark, stated on the time their chapter is unbiased of the nationwide group. They advised commissioners they had been reviewing their affiliation with the dad or mum group.

In denying the funds, O’Hare advised the Commissioners Court docket the federal government shouldn’t assist “an organization that is so deeply ideological and encourages the children that they are teaching to go advocate for social change.”

Commissioners killed the contract on a 3-2 party-line vote.

Six months later, O’Hare raised questions on one other native nonprofit, Massive Thought. It supplies youth within the Tarrant County juvenile detention system with summer time and after-school applications aimed toward serving to them get their lives again on monitor by music, appearing and efficiency arts. Massive Thought has had a contract with the county for the previous three years and says on its web site that youth who undergo its applications reoffend at a decrease price than those that don’t, probably saving taxpayers tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} in juvenile detention prices.

At an April assembly of the Tarrant County Juvenile Board, O’Hare raised questions on this system’s advocacy for “racial equity” after studying the group’s web site, in line with the Fort Value Star-Telegram. (The board’s conferences will not be streamed or recorded).

Requested about O’Hare’s considerations, a Massive Thought spokesperson stated in an e-mail that the group focuses on the realities dealing with at-risk youth in Tarrant County. “Young people in our communities experience challenges like economic inequality, racism, and more, and it is our responsibility to provide a safe place to build the skills they need so they can thrive,” stated Evan Cleveland, Massive Thought’s senior director of applications.

The county’s juvenile probation director, Bennie Medlin, who has not responded to requests for remark, advised board members this system had not had any “negative results” through the partnership, in line with minutes of the assembly. Members of the board weren’t swayed and voted to not renew this system.

Three months later, on the juvenile board’s July assembly, O’Hare and a district decide proposed ending a contract with the Pennsylvania nonprofit Youth Advocate Applications after probing the nonprofit in regards to the place it had taken in briefs to the Supreme Court docket, its opinion on faculty alternative and police in colleges, and whether or not “they work to eliminate systemic racism,” in line with minutes of the assembly.

Board members voted to chop ties with the nonprofit, which had labored with the county for over three a long time to supply mentoring, job coaching and substance abuse counseling as alternate options to detention.

Gary Ivory, the group’s president, stated {that a} week after the July vote, he met with O’Hare for a couple of half-hour in O’Hare’s workplace. He stated O’Hare questioned him about his private views on the LGBTQ+ group and “hot-button cultural struggle points.” Additionally throughout that assembly, O’Hare pulled up Youth Advocate Applications’ web site, Ivory stated, and requested him why the group takes funding from Everytown for Gun Security, a nonprofit that advocates for gun management.

“They are saying if anybody is too woke in Tarrant County, we are going to put them in the dustbin of history and they won’t exist anymore,” Ivory stated.

On Oct. 1, Tarrant County commissioners voted to signal the same contract with one other nonprofit. On the assembly, O’Hare denied pushing to kill Youth Advocate Applications’ contract “because of a phrase on a website.” As a substitute, he claimed Ivory advised the juvenile board that 15% of the cash Tarrant County offers this system goes to lobbyists and to “law firms to file amicus briefs against many of the things the people in that room that voted disagree with.”

Ivory stated that’s incorrect. “I said generally 85 cents on a dollar stays in Tarrant County and 15 cents goes to overhead,” he stated. “And I made it clear that YAP doesn’t spend any of that 15 cents on the dollar for lobbying.”

Phil Sawyer, a longtime juvenile probation officer in Tarrant County who retired two years in the past, stated this system was properly revered inside the division and helped give badly wanted providers that the division couldn’t present. “It’s a shocker,” he stated of the county’s resolution to chop ties with the group. “Without them, it would just be insanity. There are things we can do as probation officers, but it’s not the same.”

Stifling dissent 

In current months, O’Hare has taken goal at personal residents who disagree with him, ordering a number of political opponents faraway from Commissioners Court docket conferences and calling for the firing of a neighborhood school professor.

As Ryon Value’s allotted three minutes of public remark through the July 2 Commissioners Court docket assembly expired, O’Hare issued a pointy warning to the person, a neighborhood Baptist minister who was a frequent antagonist of O’Hare’s at such conferences: “Your time is up.”

It’s not unusual for residents to go over their allotted time throughout public remark periods. However after Value continued criticizing situations within the Tarrant County Jail for an additional eight seconds, O’Hare ordered sheriff’s deputies to step in: “He’s now held in contempt. Remove him.”

As Value was escorted out of the assembly, somebody within the viewers booed. “Was that you?” O’Hare snapped. “Well, try me.”

Value stated that within the foyer, sheriff’s deputies handed him a trespassing warning that banned him from the premises. “I think it’s symbolic of a broader, more authoritarian shift” in Tarrant County authorities, Value stated of his removing. “And I have to wonder if he really wants to govern this place, a place that splits red and blue evenly, or just please some higher-ups in his own party.”

Value appealed his ban to the Tarrant County sheriff’s division and stated the attraction was granted in August, permitting him to renew addressing the court docket throughout public remark periods.

Minutes after Value was escorted from that July assembly, Lon Burnam, a Democrat who served 9 phrases within the Texas Home, approached O’Hare to confront him about his resolution to chop off one other commissioner who was requesting details about sheriff division insurance policies. Burnam later acquired a trespass warning from sheriff’s deputies and stated he’s banned from public conferences till Jan. 1.

At their assembly two weeks later, commissioners amended public talking guidelines as O’Hare warned residents that “refusal to abide by the Commissioners Court’s order or my order as the presiding judge or continued disruption of the meeting may result in arrest and prosecution under the laws of the state of Texas.”

O’Hare stated the modifications had been wanted to make sure civility within the assembly room. “This is not in any way shape or form attempting to stifle free speech,” he stated through the assembly.

Additionally in August, O’Hare referred to as for the firing of a Texas Christian College professor over social media posts from 2021 that referred to as for police to be abolished. The professor, Alexandra Edwards, drew the ire of native right-wing activists after writing about them and the pro-Christian nationalism convention that O’Hare attended in July. Not lengthy after, a neighborhood right-wing web site revealed an article about her “antifa” views during which O’Hare referred to as her a “radical” and stated Edwards needs to be fired.

“The full force of the repression of the Tarrant County GOP and the various right-wing extremists kind of came down upon me,” Edwards stated in an interview, including that she was inundated with threats and harassment.

Such crackdowns are an indication that the native GOP has been taken over by extremists, stated Whitley, the county’s Republican former decide.

“They’ve gone so far to the right that most folks who used to be adamant Republicans are not so much anymore,” he stated, including that some within the GOP are too afraid of retaliation by O’Hare to talk out publicly.

O’Hare’s time period doesn’t finish till 2027. However this 12 months’s elections will resolve which occasion controls the highly effective commissioners court docket and, in some methods, will probably be a referendum on the primary two years of his tenure in county authorities.

Whitley stated he hopes will probably be a unifying second for voters from throughout the political spectrum. “I want us to be Americans, to be Texans and to not just care about parties,” he stated. “I hope people will vote for the best person and not just vote for the party.”

Jodi S. Cohen of ProPublica and Juan Salinas II of The Texas Tribune contributed reporting. Dan Keemahill of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune contributed analysis.

Disclosure: Everytown for Gun Security and Texas Christian College have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full listing of them right here.