Tarrant County’s Republican and Democratic party chairs differ on whether high turnout in the March primaries forecasts a coming “blue wave,” but they agree that there will be a hard-fought battle for voters in November.
GOP chair Tim Davis and Democratic chair Allison Campolo sat down for an hourlong conversation during a Fort Worth Report Newsmaker Q&A.
Government accountability reporter Cecilia Lenzen interviewed the two party leaders about a range of issues facing the county, from the current political climate to hand-counting ballots.
The conversation took place hours before the two chairs officially canvassed the results of the March 3 primaries, which saw local Democratic voters surpass their statewide turnout rates and outpace Tarrant Republican voters for the second time in recent years.
Campolo said she feels that Democrats are poised for wins in the county that they haven’t seen in three decades.
She said her party is building momentum over Donald Trump’s presidency, as Democrats are more invigorated for change. That energy, Campolo said, was evident in the March voter turnout, state Sen. Taylor Rehmet’s upset win in the District 9 special election, and victories in last May’s municipal elections.
Tarrant County Democrat Chair Allison Campolo joins the Fort Worth Report for a Newsmaker Q&A in the Fort Worth Report office on March 12, 2026. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America) Davis disagrees, arguing that the upcoming Nov. 3 election will draw more local Republican voters to the polls than the primaries, which typically attract the more passionate and engaged members of the parties.
“We’re up against some historical precedent,” Davis said. “We’re not seeing the structural things that we would expect if there was going to be this big crashing blue wave in Tarrant County.”
Davis pointed to the three-way Democratic primary for county judge, which saw Commissioner Alisa Simmons win 62% of the vote in her race for the party’s nomination against Congressman Marc Veasey, who dropped out of the race in December yet still took 26% of votes, and Millennium Anton Woods Jr., who led a small-dollar campaign and took 12% of votes.
If Democrats were poised for victory, Simmons would have seen stronger support, Davis said, noting that no local GOP primary race went into a runoff — which he views as a sign of Republican unity.
One local Democratic race going to a runoff to decide the party’s nominee is for county commissioner over Precinct 2.
Tarrant County Republican chair Tim Davis talks to Democratic chair Allison Campolo during a Fort Worth Report Newsmaker Q&A on March 12, 2026, in the Report’s newsroom. (Maria Crane | Fort Worth Report/CatchLight Local/Report for America) To Campolo, primary runoffs, which happen when no candidate gets over 50% of the vote, don’t equate to a fractured party. Rather, they are a testament to the quality of the Democratic candidates, she said.
“Even if they’re on slightly different parts of the Democratic spectrum, more progressive or more centrist, they found a way to work together for the greater good,” Campolo said. “We’re going to really be bringing that forward in May and in November to get our candidates elected.”
Debate over hand-counting ballots continues
Davis said he’s open to hand-counting ballots in the future, as long as that process proves to be secure, accurate, fair, understandable and timely.
A full hand-counted audit of the March primary results, for example, could instill confidence in Tarrant County’s election security across his party, he said.
The county recently completed a full hand-count audit of the Texas Senate District 9 runoff results. Normally, elections only see a fraction of polling locations’ audited by hand, but a county elections administrator can call for a full audit.
Davis said that there is local Republican interest in hand-counting, even if it takes — according to some estimates — 6,000 people to hand-count a primary.
“There’s enthusiasm to get those folks there and to do that, and I think we’d be able to do it,” he said. “We’ve gotta do it, though, in a way that still meets those other requirements.”
The District 9 audit took 11 days and found no errors, other than those introduced by the hand-counters. The runoff had about 95,000 voters while the March primary saw about 337,000 voters.
Campolo opposed hand-counting ballots, saying she was “flabbergasted” that anyone would try to do so in a county as big — and proven secure — as Tarrant. She added that the parties already struggled to employ the nearly 2,000 poll workers needed for the primary. Hand-counting would demand even more.
“Not only will it cost insane amounts of money and require enormous human cost, it will be riddled with errors,” Campolo said. “We’re literally not machines.”
Still, she said she was grateful for that District 9 audit as it proved local voting machines are reliable and hand-counting is too difficult logistically.
Campolo was outspoken against the measures over the winter, as the Tarrant County GOP considered hand-counting their primary election. Local Republican officials ultimately decided it would be too much of a logistical challenge in too short a time, but they committed to exploring it for future elections.
Davis said conversations about hand-counting will always see tension between finding the right manpower and remaining accurate and efficient.
Both party chairs took up their roles in 2025, as previous leadership stepped down in the middle of their two-year terms. Davis and Campolo ran for reelection unopposed in the March 3 primaries.
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.orgor @shawlings601.
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