Democratic Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons has released what she says are five proposals for Tarrant County’s new political map, which she’s criticizing as an attempt to draw her out of her seat.
Republicans voted to start an unusual mid-decade redistricting process last month, over the protests of Democrats. Republicans on the Commissioners Court said redistricting was overdue, and the four commissioners precincts need to be redrawn.
The maps Simmons shared in a press release Friday afternoon would largely reshape her Precinct 2 and Precinct 1, which is represented by the court's only other Democrat, Roderick Miles Jr.
Miles was recently elected, and Simmons is up for reelection next year.
“Let’s be clear: this is a calculated attempt to strip representation from the very communities that I was elected to represent,” Simmons wrote in the press release.
In the current map, each of the four commissioners’ precincts is mostly contained in one corner of square-shaped Tarrant County. Each of the proposed maps, shared by Simmons, would nearly flip the positions of Precincts 1 and 2.
Instead of encompassing southwest Tarrant County, Precinct 1 would cover parts of south Fort Worth, go north through neighborhoods like the Historic Southside, snake east along I-30 and end with a part of Arlington.
Precinct 2 would lose some of Arlington and stretch west through Fort Worth's southern suburbs, like Crowley and part of Burleson. The proposed maps would also put Benbrook or White Settlement in Precinct 2.
Simmons and Miles represent majority-minority precincts. The new maps would silence the voters of Precinct 2 — particularly voters of color — and that’s by design, Simmons said in her press release.
“I will not stand by while my colleagues manipulate this process to rig the 2026 election,” she said. “The people of Precinct 2 deserve to choose their commissioner—not have that choice taken from them through racial gerrymandering. I stand with my community, and I will fight this with everything I have.”
KERA News has reached out to Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare for comment. The judge represents the entire county, not a particular precinct. He presented the redistricting effort to Commissioners Court, which passed 3-2 with the support of his fellow conservatives.
Republican County Commissioner Manny Ramirez, who represents Precinct 4 in northwest Tarrant County, previously said redistricting is necessary because the precincts are unbalanced by population.
The precincts were balanced after the 2020 Census, according to Bob Heath, the attorney who led Tarrant County’s last redistricting process.
Redistricting usually happens at the beginning of every decade, after the Census. In 2021, a previous Commissioners Court did not redraw the map at all. At the time, Heath’s firm found the precincts deviated from the ideal precinct size by just under 2% overall. The overall deviation limit is 10%, Heath said.
It’s not clear how much the proposed maps would change the overall population deviation between precincts, but Ramirez previously told KERA News he’s looking for a map that brings the precincts as close to even as possible.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), the conservative law firm hired to start the redistricting process, is scheduled to give a briefing about redistricting at Tuesday’s Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting, according to the agenda.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org.
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