Nydia Cárdenas appeared to secure the Democratic nomination to face Republican incumbent Manny Ramirez in the race to represent the northwest area of Tarrant County on the commissioners court, according to unofficial results from Tarrant County.
As of 12:30 a.m., Cárdenas, a leadership coach and grassroots activist, had about 59% of the votes in the three-way primary race for Precinct 4. Cedric Kanyinda, who owns a consulting business, followed with 24% of the vote, leaving Perla Bojorquez, an educator and community organizer, with about 18%.
The race to represent Precinct 4, which covers Fort Worth’s northside up through Lake Worth, Saginaw and Azle, will be decided in November. Ramirez, who was elected in 2022, ran unopposed for the GOP nomination.
“Let’s call this the easy part,” said Cárdenas, surrounded by bright balloons and colorful campaign graphics in front of a room of about 75 people at 9 p.m. Tuesday night.
Cárdenas, a Fort Worth native, told the Report that she plans to scale up the strong momentum she and her team have built heading toward November. She said she’s excited to expand her base through continued voting engagement efforts and events.
To her, the primary win signals that Democratic voters want to support an openly progressive campaign.
“Our strategy is not to try to get Republicans to vote for us in November,” Cárdenas said. “Our goal is to get the people who are already aligned with us but aren’t active voters out to vote in November. And I think that the only way to do that is to be very clear about what our values are.”
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 upset win on Jan. 31 in Senate District 9, which covers much of north and west Tarrant County and overlaps with Precinct 4.
In a trend that mirrors one statewide, unofficial results show Tuesday’s Tarrant County Democratic primary saw historic turnout during early voting. Over 122,000 people voted early in the Democratic primary — nearly 3.5 times the 35,337 that voted early in the 2022 primary. The GOP saw nearly 91,700 early voters compared to 67,557 in 2022.
After Cárdenas took the lead, Kanyinda told the Report that he supports her moving forward. He feels he had a “strong base” of voters and will “continue to fight the good fight” he started when he first ran for election in 2021.
Bojorquez did not respond to requests for comment on election night. She previously told the Report she was not “going into this as partisan games” or to “twist the court more left.” Rather, her priority was to save taxpayer dollars by pushing back against what she sees as mismanagement from the Republicans on the court.
Cárdenas previously said at the Fort Worth Report’s Feb. 12 Democratic Primary Election forum that her deep connections to Tarrant County’s communities will help mobilize and win over enough voters to flip the seat in November. She noted her campaign’s proven ability to fundraise, arguing that money will be necessary in the lead-up to November.
She reported raising and spending far more than her opponents in the Democratic primary race, with small individual donations making up most of her funds.
Ramirez, the incumbent, reported having $244,688 in cash on hand in the most recent 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.”
“Taylor Rehmet showed us that we don’t have to outraise, but we have to at least have enough money to really combat,” Cárdenas said Feb. 12.
While the three Democrats differed slightly in priorities over their campaigns, they broadly supported investing in the county’s infrastructure and re-funding county-run programs that have been trimmed down or eliminated by the commissioners court’s Republican majority.
Cárdenas argued that her career in leadership coaching and education in mechanical engineering honed her critical thinking skills. Her campaign was advised and backed by members of prominent local progressive groups, including the 817 Podcast — a 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.”
“A year ago, I started attending commissioners court meetings and seeing absolutely the decision-making that does not lead to good decisions, that doesn’t follow good research practices around decision-making,” Cárdenas said at the Report’s forum.
Changing the court’s culture was also top of mind for the primary candidates, after a year of high-profile, Republican-led 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 meetings to once a month.
These decisions and others have led to routine party-line votes and arguments flaring up across the dais.
On the campaign trail, Cárdenas said Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare’s recent cutting of Democratic commissioners’ office budgets and staff was a catalyst triggering her 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.”
Improving northwest Tarrant County’s infrastructure, especially roadways, was another shared priority of the candidates. 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.
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.
Cárdenas said her campaign has and will continue to focus on voter engagement, primarily through phone-banking, door-knocking and public events.
“We just have to keep earning people’s trust, proving that what we’re talking about is actually possible if you have the right leaders in place,” she said. “I think sometimes what feels like a progressive agenda feels out of reach, but it’s only out of reach because we don’t have the people on the dais to make those to vote in that way.”
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
