Three Democrats are vying for their party’s nomination to represent the northwest area of Tarrant County on the commissioners court in the March 3 primary race.
The winner of the race faces Republican incumbent Manny Ramirez, who was elected in 2022 and is running unopposed for the GOP nomination. Precinct 4 covers Fort Worth’s northside up through Lake Worth, Saginaw and Azle.
The Democratic ballot sees Perla Bojorquez, an educator and community organizer; Nydia Cardenas, a leadership coach and grassroots activist; and Cedric Kanyinda, who owns a consulting business.
While the three candidates differ slightly in priorities, they broadly support investing in the county’s infrastructure and re-funding county-run programs that were trimmed down or eliminated by the commissioners court’s Republican majority.
Bojorquez and Cardenas spoke respectfully of one another and said they’re running a friendly primary race. Neither has met Kanyinda, who was unable to attend the Report’s candidate forum.
Read the three candidates’ responses to the Fort Worth Report’s survey at our election guide.
What’s at stake for Democrats?
Precinct 4 historically votes red, with Ramirez winning the seat by about 18 percentage points in 2022. Democrats hope they can flip the seat by mobilizing more voters, particularly in Hispanic and Latino communities, and carrying forward momentum from Taylor Rehmet’s Texas Senate District 9 upset win on Jan. 31.
Senate District 9 covers much of north and west Tarrant County and overlaps with Precinct 4.
However, that Democrat’s ability to influence the policies of the court would significantly depend on whether their party can also hold on to the hotly contested Precinct 2 seat — currently held by Alissa Simmons — or flip the county judge seat that Simmons is now seeking.
Voters can find who represents them and who will be on the ballot at vote411.org, and they can check their registration status on the Texas Secretary of State’s website.
Ramirez, who reported having $244,688 in cash on hand in the latest campaign finance reports, said he’s looking forward to running in November. He said he “welcome(s) anybody who wants to introduce ideas into a campaign.”
“For me, it’s not about politics. It’s about principled leadership that gets results for our communities,” he said. “I’m very proud that the voters in Precinct 4 and the folks in Tarrant County have seen the leadership that I provided and put their faith in me to serve another four years.”
Improving the county’s infrastructure
All three Democratic candidates said they want to better invest in northwest Tarrant County’s infrastructure, especially roadways. The county is responsible for constructing, maintaining and repairing roads, particularly in unincorporated areas that lie outside of city limits.
As Fort Worth’s population boom ripples into surrounding cities and unincorporated areas, new subdivisions, schools and stores are quickly filling the once sprawling ranchland. Increased traffic can now create hourlong logjams like those along Bonds Ranch Road.
“The way we’ve seen development happen is it’s very centered around the developers and what they need and special interests,” said Cardenas, a lifelong Fort Worth resident. “The taxpayers are taking on the burden of a lot of the infrastructure.”
Cardenas’ sentiments were echoed by both Bojorquez, who moved to Fort Worth eight years ago, and Kanyinda, who has lived in Precinct 4 the past seven years.
“I’m highly invested in fixing the roads. It’s something that I know affects tons of communities on a day-to-day basis,” Bojorquez said. “I’m not going into this as partisan games at all. I’m not in the agenda to twist the court more left. I’m gonna go so we can stop the bleeding of taxpayer dollars.”
Kanyinda said in a Fort Worth Report survey that he plans to “redirect wasted spending toward infrastructure needs” in new developments and require developers to demonstrate that an area can handle their traffic before the county helps them lay foundations.
“With 15-plus municipalities in Precinct 4, we need unified planning — not each city approving projects without considering regional impacts on roads, water and emergency services,” he said.
Road improvements and economic development were two items Ramirez mentioned as points of pride in his four-year tenure.
“We’ve built roads in less time than anybody ever thought was possible, and we’ve secured hundreds of millions of dollars in economic development in our precinct, and we’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs,” he said.
Candidates’ experiences, qualifications
The three Democratic candidates bring a mix of qualifications and histories to the table, with each arguing their own makes them the most qualified to sit on the commissioners court.
Bojorquez touted that she’s spent the past year organizing and mobilizing community activism through the Indivisible 12 group, which she co-founded. The group, while nonpartisan, has been a primary organizer of Fort Worth protests against President Donald Trump, including two No Kings protests.
She said her background as a paralegal prepared her to do legal research and contract reviews on court agenda items.
Cardenas argued that her career in both leadership coaching and education in mechanical engineering honed her critical thinking skills. She said she’s able to both solve precinct problems and find their underlying causes.
Cardenas frequently speaks at Tarrant County Commissioners Court and Fort Worth City Council meetings.
She is backed by both the 817 Podcast — a progressive grassroots organization focused on Tarrant County — and See It Name It Fight It, a local organization formed to understand and fight “the ideology of Christian nationalism.”
Kanyinda, who ran against Ramirez in 2022, said his ability to mobilize voters in the past has proven that he can build a strong enough coalition to win in November. Four years ago, Kanyinda got about 53,100 votes to Ramirez’s nearly 76,800, according to Tarrant County’s elections office.
“I’m running because my family’s future, like every family’s future in Precinct 4, depends on having a commissioner who fixes roads, manages taxpayer dollars responsibly, works collaboratively across party lines, and actually delivers results,” Kanyinda said.
Building multiracial coalitions
Cardenas said building multiracial coalitions will be important to flipping Precinct 4 in November, as the area covers both historically Black communities, such as Lake Como, and Hispanic communities, like Fort Worth’s Northside.
She said she’s translated all her campaign materials into Spanish, as education is key to mobilizing all Precinct 4 voters. People she meets across the precinct often are politically disengaged and don’t know who their commissioners are, she said.
Door-knocking has been central to both Cardenas’ and Bojorquez’s campaigns, they said.
Bojorquez said she feels that the county’s Hispanic voters often fall into two broad categories. The first are naturalized citizens — first- or second-generation immigrants — some of whom, despite their citizenship, may be discouraged from voting out of fear of Trump’s emphasis on deportations. The second are families who have lived in the United States for multiple generations and tend to lean Republican.
To flip Precinct 4, Bojorquez said, the Democratic candidate must win over both camps in November.
“A lot of Fort Worth natives who are Hispanic, they want Hispanic representation,” Bojorquez said. “They want somebody who understands their families, their communities.”
In the Jan. 31 Senate District 9 race, Hispanic voters played a major role in Rehmet’s win. VoteHub estimated that Rehmet captured about 79% of the Hispanic vote.
Changing the court
In the past year, the Republican-controlled court made several high-profile changes to Tarrant County, including redistricting precinct maps to better favor the GOP in Precinct 2; cutting voting locations; limiting how many times residents can address commissioners during meetings; and reducing how often they meet to once a month.
These decisions and others have led to routine party-line votes and arguments flaring up across the dais.
The three Democratic primary candidates all said they want to change the court’s culture, but their priorities differ.
Kanyinda said he wants to focus on shared goals between commissioners — “safe roads, fiscal responsibility, quality services” — rather than partisan differences. He mentioned O’Hare’s recent cutting of Democratic commissioners’ office budgets and staff as a practice of cross-court “retaliation” that he’ll push back against.
Cardenas also mentioned O’Hare cutting Democratic commissioners’ budgets as a catalyst motivating her own candidacy. She said she’s watched the court’s Republicans become increasingly divisive over “culture war topics” and partisan issues, and she wants to refocus the court on “the actual functioning of the government.”
“If we take a step back: How do we create policy that’s informed by people who are impacted by the decisions? I think that looks different than just like a monthly meeting,” she said.
Bojorquez said she wants to push back on future partisan-line decisions, specifically to reduce how much the county is spending to defend itself in lawsuits.
“If anything, I want to protect Tarrant County from getting sued in these lawsuits because of the gerrymandering and jail deaths,” she said.
All three candidates mentioned that more accountability and transparency are needed in the Tarrant County jail, which has undergone scrutiny for having more than 70 in-custody deaths since 2017.
Early voting opened Tuesday and runs until Feb. 27. Election Day is March 3.
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
