In this year’s Republican primary for Tarrant County judge, incumbent Tim O’Hare, 56, is defending his position against challenger Robert Trevor Buker, 42. Neither candidate gets our nod.
We wish O’Hare, elected county judge in 2022, was willing to lead strongly from the middle and represent all of Tarrant County’s residents, not just the ones who align with his extreme politics. But he seems uninterested in constructive leadership.
For one, he can be rude and hostile to people who disagree with him, from colleagues to constituents. In one recent instance, he blocked a pastor from speaking after the pastor made a critical comment about O’Hare shushing the audience.
His record on elections is not encouraging either. O’Hare started an elections integrity task force after far-right groups suggested without evidence that there was widespread fraud in Tarrant County and beyond. Politicized election processes helped drive out the county’s elections administrator. O’Hare also proposed removing early voting sites from college campuses, though the measure failed.
Opinion
O’Hare also helped engineer a mid-decade redistricting effort that will have the effect of diluting Black and Latino votes in Tarrant County.
His tendency to land in the spotlight over hard-line policies is nothing new. In 2006, as a Farmers Branch City Council member, he was behind rules requiring prospective renters to prove their legal status in the country. The measure cast a shadow over Farmers Branch for years after.
Buker, a former corrections officer who now works in behavioral health security, ran unsuccessfully against O’Hare in 2022 and is challenging him again. We are concerned about Buker’s conduct related to a criminal case involving his son and cannot recommend him as a result.
We can only hope that, in the future, a stronger, more moderate Republican will stand up to O’Hare and give voters a better choice.
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