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Election Results: Dallas Upsets Clouded By Fraud Inquiry; Several North Texas Mayors Decided

Erik Hersman
/
Flickr

In Dallas, big changes are coming to the City Council after Saturday’s runoff elections. Three incumbents have lost their seats, which represents a big shift on the 15-member body.

Mayor Pro Tem lost her West Dallas seat to , who overcame the lead held by Alonzo in the May 6 election.

In southern Dallas, voters returned to the District 8 seat that he stepped down from because of term limits in 2015, displacing Deputy Mayor Pro Tem .

In District 7, Councilwoman is out of the seat representing parts of South Dallas, Fair Park and Buckner Terrace, and will be replaced by .

As The Dallas Morning News reports, the  until mail-in ballots Sunday night. The cause for delay was an ongoing investigation into in the election. Several hundred runoff mail-in ballots in the three council races were sequestered as part of that inquiry. 

The election also settled unfinished school board races. In a race for the District 2 seat on the Dallas ISD board, which represents the North Dallas area around Park Cities, incumbent trustee overcame the lead held by in the three-way May election.

Marshall won by nearly 3,000 votes, though 89 mail-in ballots were sequestered by a court order as part of a larger voter fraud investigation.

Tarrant County

Fort Worth City Council will have a new face when aerospace engineer replaces retiring Councilman . Flores, who was endorsed by Espino as well as Mayor Betsy Price and former Mayor Mike Moncrief, beat retired firefighter , who’d campaigned as an outsider ready to shake things up in city hall.

The race brought in big money for relatively few votes. Each candidate controlled well over $100,000 in campaign contributions. According to the unofficial results, just 97 votes separated the two candidates, out of just over 2,600 or about 6 percent of registered voters in the district picked their representative on the council.

Just three votes separated the candidates vying for Arlington City Council District 3, putting IT consultant ahead of air traffic controller . They’ll replace Councilman , who is stepping down when his term ends.

“We knew it was going to be close. I wasn’t expecting three votes,” Thalman told the . “I was looking forward to it being over tonight, but we’ll have several more days before we have an official vote.”

In District 5, Councilwoman handily thwarted a challenge from UTA student . Wolff has held the seat since 2003.

Other North Texas races

New mayors in North Texas were minted by the Saturday elections. In Carrollton, won a runoff election to become the city’s next mayor, beating out . Farmers Branch also picked a new mayor: beat for that title. Keller voters decided to return a former mayor to the seat: beat for the top spot in city government.

The Saturday election also settled a handful of suburban council elections in  and .

Christopher Connelly is a reporter covering issues related to financial instability and poverty for ĻӰԺ’s One Crisis Away series. In 2015, he joined ĻӰԺ to report on Fort Worth and Tarrant County. From Fort Worth, he also focused on politics and criminal justice stories.