UPDATED December 8.
In the wake of failed attempts to block Tarrant County’s new redistricting map, Democrat Commissioner Alisa Simmons intends to challenge Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare in 2026.
Simmons was an outspoken critic of the Republican redistricting plan championed by O’Hare, calling the new map and anybody who voted for it “racist.”
The commissioner announced Saturday that she is now running for the countywide judge position.
Simmons had previously announced plans to run for re-election in Tarrant County Commissioners Court Precinct 2, but that was before two challenges to the redistricting were dismissed—one dropped by the plaintiffs themselves—leaving the new map in place for 2026 and beyond.
Precinct 2 was redrawn in June to favor Republicans, giving the GOP a 4-1 partisan advantage on the county’s governing body.
Democrat-aligned plaintiffs sued in federal and state courts to block the new precinct boundaries, claiming the redistricting was racially motivated to disenfranchise minority voters.
O’Hare and election law attorneys with the Public Interest Legal Foundation defended the new map as a permissible partisan gerrymander. The redistricting fulfilled a commitment O’Hare made during his first campaign for county judge in 2022, as the previous administration had declined to redraw commissioner precincts following the 2020 census.
In September, a federal district court denied Democrats a preliminary injunction to block the map while the case was litigated, citing a “dearth of evidence” that the Republican redistricting was racially motivated.
In late October, the U.S Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s ruling, agreeing that the Democrats were unlikely to succeed on the merits of any of their claims.
On December 1, plaintiffs’ attorney Chad Dunn—longtime general counsel for the Texas Democrat Party until March—filed a notice to dismiss the federal lawsuit.
Days earlier, a state district court judge dismissed separate claims brought by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the League of Women Voters.
Facing a less favorable electorate in the new Precinct 2, Simmons opted for a countywide run—also an uphill fight. In 2022, O’Hare beat his Democrat opponent for the open county judge seat with 53 percent of the vote, a margin of about 35,000 votes.
Simmons was elected to the commissioners court in 2022. Before that, she served as president of the Arlington NAACP for more than a decade.
In her new county judge campaign announcement, Simmons touted her experience fighting to protect families, reform the Tarrant County Jail, and defend voting rights.
O’Hare responded that Simmons “carries the same political ideology that Tarrant County has spent years keeping on the other side of the county line in Dallas.”
“Judge O’Hare’s record couldn’t be clearer: he cut spending, reduced taxes, strengthened public safety, and delivered better results with less bureaucracy,” according to his campaign statement. “Simmons’ record is an embarrassing trail of outbursts, obstruction, and attempting to hike taxes that put taxpayers and law enforcement at risk.”
Democrats Lydia Bean and U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey and Republican Trevor Buker are also running for Tarrant County Judge. The winners of each party’s primary will face off in November.
Veasey has represented Texas’ 33rd Congressional District since it was drawn by a federal court in 2011 as a majority-minority district. But Veasey was cut out of CD-33 when Republican lawmakers redrew the state’s congressional boundaries earlier this year, prompting him to file late Monday for the county judge position.
O’Hare’s campaign responded that Veasey “brings a consistently liberal Washington record of being soft on crime, weak on border security, and supportive of higher taxes. Tarrant County families do not need a 20-year Washington, D.C. politician as County Judge.”
Commissioner Precincts 2 and 4 are also on the ballot in 2026. Former State Rep. Tony Tinderholt is running in the Republican primary for Precinct 2, while former Simmons staffer Gabe Rivas is running in the Democrat primary. Republican incumbent Manny Ramirez is seeking re-election to Precinct 4.
The candidate filing deadline for the March 2026 primary elections is December 8.
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