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Election cabinets are stored Tarrant County Elections Warehouse on Monday, Aug. 31, 2026.<\/p>\n
Amanda McCoy<\/p>\n
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM<\/p>\n
In Tarrant County, the district attorney race is between Republican Phil Sorrells and Democrat challenger Tiffany Burks. This is the second time the two have faced off for the seat, but this time Sorrells is the incumbent.<\/p>\n
The district attorney\u2019s office is responsible for litigating on behalf of the state in criminal cases. According to the county website, over 45,000 cases are filed in Tarrant County per year.<\/p>\n
Election Day is Nov. 3 and early voting runs from Oct. 19-30.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how both candidates responded to the Star-Telegram\u2019s questionnaire ahead of the election.<\/p>\n
Phil Sorrells<\/p>\n
City of residence: Fort Worth<\/p>\n
Campaign website: PhilSorrells.com<\/a><\/p>\n Best way for voters to reach you: info@PhilSorrells.com<\/a>; 817-405-0006<\/a>; PhilSorrellsTX<\/p>\n Occupation: District Attorney<\/p>\n Education: I earned a B.A. in Political Science from Texas Tech University and a J.D. from Texas Tech School of Law.<\/p>\n Have you run for elected office before? Yes. I was first elected Judge of Tarrant County Criminal Court No. 10 and served for 25 years. I resigned from the bench in November 2021 to run for Tarrant County District Attorney. I was elected District Attorney in 2022 and took office January 1, 2023. I am now seeking reelection.<\/p>\n Please list the highlights of your civic involvement\/activism in Tarrant County.<\/p>\n For more than three decades, my professional and civic life has centered on Tarrant County. I served 25 years as Judge of County Criminal Court No. 10 and now serve as Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney. I have worked with law enforcement, victim advocates, community organizations, and other local leaders on issues affecting public safety. My wife, Susan, and I are longtime members of Cross Church NRH campus, where we have been actively involved in our church community. I also regularly speak to civic, professional, and community organizations throughout Tarrant County.<\/p>\n Have you ever been arrested, charged with a crime or otherwise been part of a criminal proceeding? If yes, please explain. No<\/p>\n Have you been involved in a civil lawsuit or bankruptcy proceeding? If yes, please explain. I have been involved in two lawsuits, one regarding a car crash over 30 years ago and another dispute concerning a defective car engine. Both cases settled prior to trial. As District Attorney, I am involved in several civil law suits.<\/p>\n Who are your top three campaign contributors?<\/p>\n Bobby Patton; Cody Campbell; John Sellers<\/p>\n Why are you seeking this office?<\/p>\n I am seeking reelection because public safety matters, and the work we began in 2023 is not finished. During my first term, we have substantially reduced the criminal-case backlog, held violent offenders accountable, strengthened our work for victims, pursued fugitives around the world, and confronted emerging threats such as fentanyl. I was a prosecutor and a criminal court judge before becoming District Attorney. That experience has reinforced my belief that the DA\u2019s responsibility is clear: follow the law, seek justice, protect the public, and never forget victims. I want to continue building on the progress we have made.<\/p>\n If elected, what would your top 3 policy priorities be?<\/p>\n My three priorities are:<\/p>\n 1. Keep Tarrant County safe. My first responsibility as District Attorney is to protect our community by holding criminals accountable, especially those who commit violent crimes.<\/p>\n 2. Stand with victims and their families. Victims deserve someone who listens, takes their concerns seriously, and follows through. I will keep victims safe and pursue justice on their behalf.<\/p>\n 3. Support law enforcement. In Tarrant County, we do not defund the police\u2014we support the police. I work alongside our officers to build strong cases, enforce the law, and make sure they have a District Attorney who will stand beside them.<\/p>\n How will you measure your success as district attorney?<\/p>\n I measure success by results. Is Tarrant County safer? Are violent offenders being held accountable? Are victims being heard and supported? Are cases moving efficiently and fairly? And are we working effectively with law enforcement?<\/p>\n By those measures, my office is succeeding. Crime, including violent crime, is down in Tarrant County. Since I began serving as the District Attorney, the criminal case backlog has decreased significantly; therefore, victims do not have to wait years to see justice. Tarrant County juries have imposed over 100 life sentences during my term. We have strengthened victim services and brought fugitives back from Mexico, India, Australia, and Armenia to face justice.<\/p>\n Success is not just a future promise\u2014my office shows it now.<\/p>\n Why should voters choose you over your opponent?<\/p>\n Voters do not have to guess how I will serve as District Attorney\u2014they can look at my record. I was a prosecutor, served 25 years as a criminal court judge and have led the DA\u2019s office since 2023. We have reduced the backlog, prosecuted violent offenders, strengthened services for victims, pursued fugitives around the world, and worked alongside law enforcement to protect Tarrant County. A District Attorney enforces the law, seeks justice, protects the public, and stands with victims. I have a record of doing exactly that.<\/p>\n How do you plan to lower the number of cases in the district attorney\u2019s backlog?<\/p>\n We are not merely planning to lower the backlog\u2014we have already substantially reduced it. When I took office, approximately 39,000 criminal cases were pending, while the office continued receiving approximately 50,000 new cases each year. The backlog is down to approximately 30,000 pending criminal cases. We attacked the backlog through active case management\u2014moving cases toward appropriate resolutions rather than allowing them to sit. I brought the same approach to the DA\u2019s office that I used as a judge, when I took a court with one of the largest backlogs and reduced it to one of the smallest. We will continue that work without sacrificing the quality or fairness of our prosecutions.<\/p>\n Tiffany Burks<\/p>\n City of residence: Mansfield<\/p>\n Campaign website: tiffanyburksforda.com<\/a><\/p>\n Best way for voters to reach you: info@tiffanyburksforda.com<\/a><\/p>\n Occupation: Partner, Varghese Summersett, leading the firm\u2019s criminal division.<\/p>\n Education: The University of Texas at Austin, B.A. in Sociology and Government, 1993. Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, Juris Doctor, 1997. Licensed to practice law in Texas since 1997.<\/p>\n Have you run for elected office before? Yes. Candidate for Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney, 2022.<\/p>\n Please list the highlights of your civic involvement\/activism in Tarrant County.<\/p>\n I was elected a Director of the Tarrant County Bar Association in 2024, and I am a past president of the L. Clifford Davis Legal Association. I am a member of the Criminal Justice Section of the State Bar of Texas, and I have served on the Board of Regents of Midwestern State University.<\/p>\n I have been recognized with the L. Clifford Davis Legal Excellence Award, the Trailblazer Award, and Extraordinary Minorities in Law from Texas Lawyer Magazine.<\/p>\n Most of my service in this county has been inside its courthouse. I spent 22 years prosecuting in Tarrant County, rose to deputy chief over the criminal division supervising roughly 150 lawyers, and tried more than 150 cases to a jury. I sat in victims\u2019 homes after the worst day of their lives, again and again. I teach, I mentor younger lawyers, and I give back to the community that raised my career.<\/p>\n Have you ever been arrested, charged with a crime or otherwise been part of a criminal proceeding? If yes, please explain. No.<\/p>\n Have you been involved in a civil lawsuit or bankruptcy proceeding? If yes, please explain. No.<\/p>\n Who are your top three campaign contributors?<\/p>\n Patty Quillin, Anne Swenson, James Luster<\/p>\n Why are you seeking this office?<\/p>\n Because I have sat in victims\u2019 homes after the worst day of their lives, and I know what it does to a family to be left waiting.<\/p>\n There are thirty thousand cases waiting in this county right now. Behind every one is somebody who has not gotten an answer, and a lot of them have never heard from a prosecutor at all.<\/p>\n I spent 24 years doing that work, 22 of them in the Tarrant County courthouse. I learned the standard in that building from Tim Curry: do the right things for the right reasons. That is not what this office is doing now.<\/p>\n I know this job can be done better because I did it. Victims will be the first call, not the last. That is why I am running, and it is the first thing that changes on my first day.<\/p>\n If elected, what would your top 3 policy priorities be?<\/p>\n Victims first. Every victim hears from a prosecutor before the first court setting, and no plea offer is made without talking to the victim first. Victims learn about a possible dismissal or plea before it happens, not after. That is policy in my office, not a preference.<\/p>\n Smart on crime, not soft on crime. Violent crime sits at the top of the charging priority list \u2014 murder, sexual assault, aggravated assault, family violence causing injury \u2014 tried by the experienced lawyers those cases deserve. At the same time, we stop using a jail cell as this county\u2019s answer to addiction and mental illness. It is the most expensive answer there is and it does not work.<\/p>\n Kids. I would rather meet a young person at a graduation than at an arraignment. Certification as an adult only for murder, and only after every juvenile resource is exhausted. A family preservation unit connecting family violence cases to the children who witness them.<\/p>\n How will you measure your success as district attorney?<\/p>\n By whether cases get resolved, whether victims are heard, and whether anyone outside this office can check my work.<\/p>\n I have committed to publishing this office\u2019s charging decisions, bail requests, plea outcomes, and sentencing recommendations every year, broken out so they actually mean something, and to inviting outside review. Open file discovery. A comprehensive Brady policy.<\/p>\n That is the real measure. Any district attorney can tell you crime is down. Far fewer will show you their own numbers and let you decide. I expect to be judged on whether cases move faster than they do today, whether the backlog is smaller than the thirty thousand I would inherit, and whether the people this system touches say it treated them fairly.<\/p>\n If those numbers are not better, I will have failed.<\/p>\n Why should voters choose you over your opponent?<\/p>\n I care about the people. He cares about the office. That is the whole race.<\/p>\n I spent 24 years prosecuting, 22 of them in the Tarrant County courthouse. I tried more than 150 cases to a jury and rose to deputy chief over the criminal division, supervising roughly 150 lawyers. I have spent the last four years on the defense side, so I have seen where this system fails people from both chairs.<\/p>\n Here is the difference in practice. This office reviewed 193 election complaints and found two violations while thirty thousand cases sat waiting and victims never got a phone call. That was a choice about what matters. I would make a different one.<\/p>\n You do not have to choose between justice and public safety. We can have both.<\/p>\n How do you plan to lower the number of cases in the district attorney\u2019s backlog?<\/p>\n It starts at intake, before a case is ever filed.<\/p>\n A well-run office decides which cases belong in a courtroom. This one does not decide \u2014 it files, and then everything waits behind everything else, including the cases attorneys flagged as questionable before they were ever filed. That is a management failure, not a court-capacity problem, and it is the mechanism behind the thirty thousand.<\/p>\n So: real discretion at intake. Divert the low-level drug and possession cases that never needed a courtroom. Move people in mental health crisis to services instead of a docket. Then put this office\u2019s experienced trial lawyers on the violent and family violence cases that have waited longest, instead of spreading them across everything.<\/p>\n A fully staffed, efficiently run office is the commitment. I am not going to promise you a date, because anyone who does is guessing.<\/p>\n
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