U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, is running for Tarrant County judge, according to a source with knowledge of his plans, marking a surprise last-minute pivot for the seven-term congressman who was expected to run for the seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Instead, shortly before Monday’s 6 p.m. filing deadline, Veasey decided to seek the Democratic nomination for Tarrant County’s top elected office, bringing an end to his tenure in Congress that began in 2013.
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“This decision is about where I can best serve the people of Tarrant County,” Veasey said in a statement. “It’s about strengthening our party, opening the door for new leadership and ensuring that our community continues to thrive.”
The Fort Worth Democrat has represented Texas’ 33rd Congressional District since its creation by court order, becoming the first Black member of Congress from Texas’ third-largest county. But the district, anchored in Veasey’s hometown of Fort Worth, was redrawn by Republicans this summer to cut out all of Tarrant County. The new 33rd District was drawn entirely in Dallas County and contains only about a third of Veasey’s current constituents.
Rep. Julie Johnson, a Democrat from Farmers Branch who represents a neighboring district, is now running for the 33rd District, as is Johnson’s predecessor in Congress, Colin Allred. Veasey had previously signalled he would run in Crockett’s 30th Congressional District, which includes a piece of Tarrant County, as Crockett geared up to run for U.S. Senate and vacate her seat.
Instead, Veasey will take on Republican Judge Tim O’Hare, who narrowly won his first campaign in 2022 with 53% of the vote and has taken the swing county on a more right-wing path, inserting it into the forefront of various culture wars.
“Tarrant County is at a crossroads,” Veasey said. “I’ve seen firsthand how racially gerrymandered maps were designed to weaken the power of Black and Latino voters in North Texas — communities I have spent my entire career fighting for. The people here deserve leadership grounded in truth, service and respect — not division, extremism and political stunts.
“I refuse to sit on the sidelines while Tim O’Hare drags this community backward,” Veasey continued. “I’m not running away from a fight — I’m running toward the next battle.”
O’Hare, a former Farmers Branch mayor and Tarrant County GOP chair, is closely tied to prominent evangelical church leaders in the region and has forged a high profile through battles with schools to end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, as well as cracking down on nonprofits that he says are pushing radical ideologies around race and gender.
In a statement, O’Hare campaign spokesperson Nick Maddux said Veasey has been “soft on crime, weak on border security and supportive of higher taxes” and that his record does not stand up to O’Hare’s.
“Tarrant County deserves results, not partisan politics,” Maddux said. “That’s why we welcome a clear contrast between Judge O’Hare’s record of delivering lower taxes, safer communities and keeping his promises, and not Congressman Veasey’s 20-year radical Washington record.”
Tarrant County, once among the largest solidly GOP counties in the nation, has shifted between the two political parties in recent elections as it has become larger and more diverse. In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly became the first Democrat to win it in a presidential election in nearly 50 years. The county then shifted back to the Republican column in 2024, with Trump winning by less than 5 percentage points. In the Senate race that year, Allred, then a Dallas congressman, edged out Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, underscoring the county’s swingy nature.
Veasey has represented parts of Fort Worth since 2005, when he first took office as a member of the Texas House. Upon his election to the U.S. House in 2012 — in a majority-minority district that combines heavily Hispanic areas of Dallas with majority-Black and majority-Hispanic precincts of Tarrant County — Veasey became the newly created district’s first-ever representative.
The congressman said serving in the House has been a “profound honor”, but that he wants to bring his fight back to his home county.
Democratic Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, whose precinct was dismantled in a rare mid-decade redistricting of the county commissioners court in April, is also running for county judge. Simmons has clashed frequently with O’Hare since filling the Precinct 2 seat in 2022.
Meanwhile, Frederick Haynes III, the senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, filed to run for Crockett’s 30th Congressional District on Monday. Haynes is Crockett’s pastor and introduced her at her Senate announcement event Monday.