Eye on Politics: The candidates for Tarrant County Judge share their priorities
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - The candidates for Texas Governor argue over defunding the police, two polls from different groups show potentially different outcomes for the November elections and Jack Fink is chatting one-on-one with the candidates for Tarrant County Judge.
We cover these stories and more in this week's episode of Eye on Politics.
Every week, CBS 11 political reporter Jack Fink breaks down some of the biggest political stories grabbing headlines in North Texas and beyond. Watch the latest episode of Eye on Politics in the video player above and stream new episodes live every Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. on CBS News DFW.
Race for Tarrant County Judge
It's one of the key political races in North Texas this year: Tarrant County Judge.
Republican Tim O'Hare and Democrat Deborah Peoples are vying to succeed Republican Glen Whitley, who's retiring this year. Both candidates sat down with Jack to explain why they think voters should take a chance on them.
Peoples points to her experience as Vice President of AT&T, where she worked for 30 years.
"This is an administrative job," she said. "It's about managing a budget."
She also said she's qualified, committed and concerned about all the residents in Tarrant County, not just a certain group.
O'Hare, meanwhile, said the position needs a disciplined leader, which is something he believes he can be.
"We also need people who will speak the truth and speak up on issues," he said. "Not worried about is it going to affect the reelection, is the media going to come after them, is the mob going to come after them."
As far as priorities, the candidates do have some overlap on what they say needs to be addressed.
Peoples lists economic development, infrastructure and health as her top priorities. She said she wants to encourage continued growth, but also invest in infrastructure to support it.
"We need good roads, good bridges, good transportation options," she said.
She also wants to focus on affordable housing. She said it's necessary to reimagine housing to be able to make home ownership more accessible for people -- in the form of condominiums, town houses , an apartment.
"We have to look at what housing looks like," she said. "For too long we have have felt like it's only a single-family home on a half acre and that's just not going to be possible in the future."
O'Hare said he wants to lower property taxes. One of his ideas to cut taxes includes cutting government costs. He said when someone leaves a government job, the government shouldn't be quick to just rehire for that same position.
"What I want to do is make everybody in the county that loses an employee bring to the commissioners court a request to fill that position," he said. "They're going to have to tell us why we need to fill it, why it can't be combined with another job."
O'Hare said this goes back to one of his campaign messages to seek to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.
Peoples said she's also in favor of lowering property taxes. But her plan includes encouraging lawmakers in Austin to fully fund public schools to bring down school district property taxes.
"If you go and look at your tax bill, the majority of your tax bill are school taxes," she said.
O'Hare also wants to create an elections integrity officer.
"There are a lot of people that have lost faith in our elections," he said. "What this person will do is they will act like an auditor. And they're going to go look at our processes, look at our procedures, independent from elections administration, independent from the commissioners court."
He also said part of the elections integrity officer's job would be to actively look for people committing voter fraud.
O'Hare said his path to victory is to get Republicans out to vote and win over people in the middle -- including undecided voters and Democratic voters unhappy with the party.
"People need to know that I'm someone that can work with everyone," he said. "I'm someone that will listen to everyone.
Peoples said her path to victory is talking to everybody.
"You cannot talk to just one group of people," she said. "You can't talk to just Democrats. You can't talk to just Republicans, or Libertarians or Green Party. You have to talk to every resident.
Race for Texas Governor
A new poll by the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project shows Republican Gov. Greg Abbott with a five percentage point lead over his Democrat opponent Beto O'Rourke -- 45% to 40%.
Eleven percent said they either want someone else or don't have an opinion.
Meanwhile, this week, Gov. Abbott brought his re-election campaign to Fort Worth, where he sharply criticized O'Rourke's past comments, claiming they show he supports efforts to defund the police.
Recent polling from two different groups
Two different groups' recent polls point to different possible outcomes for the upcoming elections.
NextGen America, a progressive organization that seeks to empower young voters, recently polled young voters across Texas and other states. Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, the group's president and executive director, said the youth vote is incredibly important and is expected to be record-breaking this election cycle.
"They overwhelmingly are going to break for Democrats," she said.
In Texas at least, that's an assessment Luke Macias, the director of the Defend Texas Liberty PAC doesn't believe will pan out. The conservative political action committee polled recently registered voters in Texas.
"What we ultimately found is that there is a 20-point advantage for Republicans amongst these new voters," he said.
According to this poll, 44% of these new voters identify as Republicans, 24% identify as Democrats and 32% said they're independent.
Macias said the goal for this poll was to understand where these newly registered voters fall on cultural issues: issues like abortion, immigration and gun control. He believes the polling shows that this group aligns as conservative. But there is one issue that could give Democrats an edge.
"Abortion is definitely the issue that's giving Democrats the energy on their side," he said. "They're more unified behind one singular issue."
The impact of the abortion issue is one that both Macias and Ramirez had similar views on.
Macias said the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn of Roe v. Wade back in June was "driving thousands of young people to register" to vote.
"Thirty-seven percent of all new registrations post the Dobbs decision in Texas are from young people," she said.
Two in three of the young people NextGen America surveyed said they believed abortion is on the ballot this election.
Watch Jack's full interviews with both Macias and Ramirez in this week's episode of Eye on Politics in the video player at the top of this page.
Also on this episode of Eye on Politics:
- A proposed school safety bill by Senator Ted Cruz didn't pass this week
- A conversation with CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nikole Killian about this week's news on inflation