Saturday's municipal elections feature bruising mayoral races, tight city council tilts and tough school board tussles.
For this week鈥檚 Friday Conversation a pair of North Texas election experts, Bud Kennedy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Gromer Jeffers of The Dallas Morning News, help sort through what's on the ballot.
Mayor鈥檚 races
Jeffers: 鈥淢arcos Ronquillo, the challenger, has made opposition to the Trinity Toll Road his number one issue [in the Dallas race]. It鈥檚 the backbone of his campaign. But when you look at it, he鈥檚 not really getting the traction he needs to beat Mayor [Mike] Rawlings, a popular incumbent.鈥�
Kennedy: 鈥淎rlington has this real 50/50 mayor鈥檚 race. Bob Cluck, who鈥檚 been there a long time, brought the Cowboys to Arlington. He originally signaled he might not be coming back for another term and so a lot of the community, business groups, former mayors all coalesced behind Jeff Williams, who is like the mayor-in-waiting. Well, Jeff puts together this big campaign and then Mayor Cluck decides that he鈥檚 feeling pretty good after all and his hip surgery came out okay, so he decides he鈥檇 like to stay. Now you have people who are loyal to Mayor Cluck and you have people who are ready to move on and feel like he鈥檚 been mayor too long.鈥�
The Tarrant County Water Board
Kennedy: 鈥淭here鈥檚 this Dallas water pipeline that鈥檚 at stake in the Tarrant water district race. It鈥檚 a $2 billion water project that will bring water from Lake Palestine and it is water that will be for Dallas and Fort Worth, but it is more important to Dallas. The Tarrant Regional Water District is doing construction and maintenance on the project. It鈥檚 this eight-foot wide pipeline the size of a tractor-trailer rig.
The campaign is 鈥榙on鈥檛 let a Dallas man control Fort Worth鈥檚 water.鈥� What it鈥檚 really about is whether there will be a regional approach to bringing water to North Texas, or whether Fort Worth should go off on its own and pull out of the pipeline.鈥�
School board elections
Kennedy: 鈥淚n general, this is an election with a real anti-incumbent sentiment. who can鈥檛 get a superintendent hired and now they have to run for re-election. I think a couple of them have pretty tough challenges and one of them may be forced into a runoff.鈥�
Jeffers: 鈥淭he incumbents who have questions about [Dallas Superintendent Mike Miles] will probably remain on the board. Miles鈥� problems are with the existing board and his support has been eroding for quite some time. Even though he survived a vote recently, the trustees have agreed to pursue some sort of succession plan or at least look at life after Mike Miles.鈥�
Kennedy: 鈥淚t鈥檚 been an extremely high turnout and as a result, these races are unpredictable. There are a lot of people voting who have no history of voting in local elections. We don鈥檛 know who they鈥檒l elect.鈥�
Jeffers: 鈥淏ud hit on a couple of things that are nonexistent in Dallas County. One, there鈥檚 not a lot of money in the races. The mayoral race is not all that contested and we don鈥檛 have a Tea Party presence so not a lot of activists out there pushing people to the polls.鈥�
Kennedy: 鈥淭he Arlington election is also driven by a proposition about red lights, whether to keep or drop red light cameras. That鈥檚 bringing out a lot of people who don鈥檛 know any of the names on the ballot.鈥�
Jeffers: 鈥淭here are no juicy issues like that in Dallas County, so that鈥檚 why we鈥檙e going to have a 5 to 8 percent turnout, which is pretty poor.
Polls open tomorrow morning at 7 across North Texas. Find your polling place .
