{"id":141274,"date":"2026-01-28T15:30:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T15:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/141274\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T15:30:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T15:30:06","slug":"no-recommendation-in-the-republican-primary-for-tarrant-county-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/141274\/","title":{"rendered":"No recommendation in the Republican primary for Tarrant County Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this year\u2019s Republican primary for Tarrant County judge, incumbent Tim O\u2019Hare<\/a>, 56, is defending his position against challenger Robert Trevor Buker, 42. Neither candidate gets our nod. <\/p>\n

We wish O\u2019Hare, elected county judge in 2022, was willing to lead strongly from the middle and represent all of Tarrant County\u2019s residents, not just the ones who align with his extreme politics. But he seems uninterested in constructive leadership. <\/p>\n

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\u2019Hare shushing the audience. <\/p>\n

His record on elections is not encouraging either. O\u2019Hare started an elections integrity task force<\/a> 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\u2019s elections administrator<\/a>. O\u2019Hare also proposed removing early voting sites from college campuses, though the measure failed. <\/p>\n

Opinion<\/p>\n

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O\u2019Hare also helped engineer a mid-decade redistricting effort that will have the effect of diluting Black and Latino votes<\/a> in Tarrant County. <\/p>\n

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<\/a> for years after.<\/p>\n

Buker, a former corrections officer who now works in behavioral health security, ran unsuccessfully<\/a> against O\u2019Hare in 2022 and is challenging him again. We are concerned about Buker\u2019s conduct related to a criminal case involving his son and cannot recommend him as a result.<\/p>\n

We can only hope that, in the future, a stronger, more moderate Republican will stand up to O\u2019Hare and give voters a better choice.<\/p>\n

We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this year\u2019s Republican primary for Tarrant County judge, incumbent Tim O\u2019Hare, 56, is defending his position against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,112,288,122,9483],"class_list":{"0":"post-141274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arlington","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-arlington-headlines","10":"tag-arlington-news","11":"tag-editorials","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-tarrant-county","14":"tag-we-recommend"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}