State Rep. Tony Tinderholt of House District 94 is taking a run at Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons’ seat. Simmons’ district was redrawn to favor a Republican, and she is now trying to unseat County Judge Tim O’Hare. In this game of electoral musical chairs, two candidates are vying to take Tinderholt’s place.
On the Republican side, business owner Cheryl Bean is touting her party’s record on affordability and fiscal conservatism. On the Democratic side, marketing executive Katie O’Brien Duzan told us she’s focused first on her district and that she isn’t “a culture wars person.”
In this race, we recommend O’Brien Duzan.
District 94 encompasses parts of Hurst, Bedford, Arlington and Euless. Its borders were redrawn in 2021. Tinderholt has won by a comfortable margin in two general elections since then.
In an effort to flip the district blue, O’Brien Duzan, 44, said she has been knocking on doors, asking people in District 94 what their priorities are. She said most are chiefly concerned about affordability and public education.
O’Brien Duzan favors reforms to the commercial property tax appeals system so that “large corporations can’t game their appraisals down while homeowners absorb the difference,” she wrote in the Voter Guide. She wants to ease the burden on local property taxes by raising the basic allotment for schools using the state’s surplus.
O’Brien Duzan said she is against an expansion of the state’s voucher-like Education Savings Account program that pays private school tuition for some Texas students. On teacher pay-for-performance, though, she broke slightly from what we usually hear from her party. O’Brien Duzan said she thought the program could be beneficial, though reserved judgement since it is still early in implementation across the state.
Bean, 69, did not fill out our Voter Guide questionnaire but participated in an interview. She described her pitch to voters: Republicans have voted to reduce property taxes. Her party has brought competitiveness to the education market with ESAs and raised pay for teachers, she said.
Bean aligns with conservative ideas we support, but we expect she would represent District 94 as a lockstep vote with the style-over-substance Texas GOP. And on Shariah and the influence of Islam, Bean pointed to a problem but did not speak to any specific legislative solutions to it.
“Some are coming, whether it’s Shariah law or something else, to do harm and to fundamentally change and disrupt what America believes,” she said.
Bean struck us as personable and good-natured. However, we think O’Brien Duzan offered stronger, more nuanced answers and we recommend voters choose her.