In Mansfield, re-elected Mayor says voters sent a message: "People are tired of the uber partisanship"
Mansfield Mayor Michael Evans won re-election over the weekend by defeating challenger Julie Short, who was backed by the Tarrant County Republican Party and other groups.
Evans said voters in this non-partisan race like the direction of the city and pushed back against partisan politics being a part of the campaign.
"People are tired of the uber partisanship," said Evans. "We won with a cross section of voters, and the people want to make sure that they send a message. That partisan politics on the local level is bad for business. We have to serve everybody."
Shift in school board membership
It's not just at City Hall. Partisan politics also entered local school board races in Mansfield.
The Tarrant County GOP also backed the three incumbent school board members on the ballot. All the challengers won: Ana-Alicia Horn beat the board president, Keziah Valdes Farrar. Jason Thomas unseated Board secretary Craig Tipping. Jesse Cannon II defeated incumbent Bianca Benavides Anderson.
"When you have individuals who were saying that they want to keep Tarrant red, or individuals who are saying that, you know, 'Mansfield is turning too blue,'" Evans said. "They did not understand, I don't think, the makeup or the demographics of our city, of our locale. I mean, we've got people that come from everywhere. They have different ideologies."
Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French said he believes his party needs to do a better job motivating Republican voters to get involved in local elections. He said the party backed the candidates after asking them if they wanted their endorsement.
"We spent a little money trying to alert people to what was going on in Mansfield," said French. "We always want to help candidates that are going to be for lower taxes, lowering your property taxes, you know, not having the craziness in our school systems with the LGTBQ nonsense and the DEI nonsense."
Voter motivation and key issues
In a phone interview, school board member-elect Jason Thomas said he believes he and the other challengers won because their opponents didn't attend community forums and that voters disagreed with the school district's policies surrounding reviews of school library books and students using pronouns.
Crystal Gayden, Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair, said that voters pushed back against the new school choice education savings accounts law signed by Gov. Greg Abbott over the weekend.
French disagreed and said school choice has been a Republican priority and that his party is being falsely accused.
"We're the ones who get accused of being partisan," said French. "No, this is a response to the partisanship that Democrats have already injected into the process."
Evans feels differently about the message voters sent.
"I'm hoping that the actual message that went out is saying, 'Stay out of local matters,'" said Evans.
Both party chairs, French and Gayden, agree, there is no such thing as non-partisan races anymore — the only difference is that school board, mayoral and city council races don't go through the primaries.
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