Mia Hall will be the newest member on Fort Worth City Council, filling the open District 6 seat to represent southwestern areas of the city and Como neighborhood.
The Fort Worth ISD executive took 57% of the vote on June 7 in a runoff against Daryl Davis II, an executive at UpSpire, according to unofficial voting results.
The runoff saw 5.7% of the district’s 56,753 registered voters cast ballots.
In the May 3 election, four candidates ran for the seat left open by council member Jared Williams, vice president of Tarrant Area Food Bank, who unexpectedly rescinded his bid for reelection in January. Williams has held the seat since 2021.
The runoff was triggered because no candidate secured over 50% of the vote in the May 3 election.
On May 3, Hall, a Crowley ISD board member, took the lead with 46.8% of votes. Davis, the former Crowley ISD school board president, trailed Hall with 28.5% of votes.
Both candidates ran campaigns emphasizing proactive infrastructure development, investing city dollars in public safety improvements and building on their predecessors’ accomplishments and community engagement.
Hall will enter her seat as City Hall wrestles with potential budget cuts, booming growth, an $800 million bond, a new city manager and massive changes to the EMS system.
She received the endorsements of City Council members Elizabeth Beck, Carlos Flores and Chris Nettles as well as former Mayor Betsy Price.
The candidate also was endorsed by the Fort Worth Police Officers Association, the Firefighters Committee for Responsible Government, the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors and the Black Women’s PAC. Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Democrat, also endorsed Hall.
Davis garnered endorsements from Williams and Democrats including Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. and state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie. Organizations that supported Davis include the Tarrant County Central Labor Council, the Sierra Club, Young Tarrant County Dems and the Texas Progressive Caucus.
Both candidates were expected to contribute to the six-person Democratic majority on the 11-member dais. City Council positions are traditionally nonpartisan but recently members have lamented the growing prominence of partisan politics in local decisions.
Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at Texas Christian University, said the candidate who takes the lead in a first round naturally has the upper hand in a runoff because they tend to better mobilize their voters back to the polls.
“If you’re the front-runner and you break 40% of the vote in the first round, and you lead by at least 5 percentage points, 19 times in 20 you’re going to win the runoff,” said Gaddie, who has published studies on runoff elections.
In the May 3 election, 4,992 of 89,197 eligible voters in District 6 participated.
The candidates saw an uptick in fundraising in the lead-up to the runoff. Between April 24 and May 28, Hall raised $31,970 — $10,000 of which came from the Fort Worth Firefighters Committee for Responsible Government — and Davis raised $14,896, according to campaign finance reports.
Both candidates received $5,000 from the Accountable Government Fund, a political action committee almost entirely funded by members of the Bass family.
Over the four months before the May 3 election, Davis and Hall ran neck and neck in fundraising. Davis raised $26,135 and Hall garnered $25,080 between the start of their campaigns and April 24.
Hall spent $22,804 in the lead-up to the runoff on campaign costs such as political consulting, advertising and marketing. This was in addition to the $39,503 she spent leading up to May.
Davis spent $24,216 in his runoff campaign — significantly more than the $14,949 he reported spending before May 3.
District 6 is home to more than 94,000 people, most of whom are families, according to the area’s most recent demographic profile, which uses census data ranging from 2019 to 2023. About 54% of homes are owner-occupied rather than rented.
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
