At least as far as Mayoral races go.
The mayors of some of Texas’ largest cities are cruising toward reelection.
The incumbents in San Antonio and Fort Worth face little opposition after the deadline to run for mayor in the May 6 election passed Friday. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson faces no challengers.
It’s a political boon for the mayors. But for nearly 3.7 million residents, there won’t be a real choice on the May mayoral ballot or high-profile debates about their cities’ future as their regions see massive growth and deal with the resulting challenges of housing, transportation and policing. Texas municipal elections often see low voter turnout — a trend that will likely worsen this year without competition at the top of the ticket.
A similar story will play out in Arlington, Texas’ seventh-most-populous city, where Mayor Jim Ross has just one challenger in May.
The blockbuster Texas mayoral race of the year will come in November, when Houston voters will elect a new leader for the state’s most populous city. The incumbent, Sylvester Turner, is term-limited, and several credible candidates have announced plans to run for the open seat, with Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire viewed as the frontrunner.
Municipal offices in Texas are nonpartisan, and mayors often try to govern that way but they can bring political backgrounds to the job that color their job performances. Johnson is a former Democratic member of the Texas House, while Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker has identified as a Republican, though she has expressed disillusionment with the current state of the GOP.
Johnson, Parker and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg have been navigating strong political crosscurrents in their backyards in recent years. Last year, Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, elected a new leader who promised to take the county in a more conservative direction than the Republican he replaced. And in San Antonio, Nirenberg has governed amid a progressive resurgence in the city, with two members of the Democratic Socialists of America winning City Council seats in 2021.
The rest of the article is a closer look at the careers of the three featured Mayors, which I encourage you to read since as I have said before I consider people like these three to be potentially strong future statewide candidates. I would quibble with the story’s assertion that the Arlington Mayor’s race is similar to these other three as its incumbent just has one opponent. Plenty of two-candidate races are high in drama and competitiveness – see, for example the 2022 Harris County Judge race. It’s about the quality of the candidate and the strength of their campaign. I don’t doubt that Arlington Mayor Ross has an easy path to re-election, just that the number of challengers he faces isn’t the right measure for that. Be that as it may, read it and see what you think. And leave a comment about your Mayor if you’re in one of those cities.
I’ve been really disappointed in Johnson as Mayor. People say he’s improved in the last year but I don’t see it.