City Councilman Omar Narvaez

In local politics, Dallas City Council chooses its 4th out mayor pro tem

The year 2021 was an off-year for elections in Texas, with just some local elections held in May. In 2022, though, all state-wide positions are up for grabs, as well as all state representative and state senator seats and all U.S. representative seats.

Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Adam Medrano hit term limits this year and left office in July. Gay councilmen Omar Narvaez and Chad West were both re-elected, and West replaced Medrano as mayor pro tem, becoming at least the fourth gay man to serve in that position.

The person filling the council’s No. 2 position is selected by other members of the council, and usually that person is chosen for a two-year period. But in a compromise, West was appointed mayor pro tem for one year. He said he hoped to prove he was worthy of the title and would be re-appointed for the second year.

City Councilman Omar Narvaez called West “one of the hardest-working council members, and I was proud to support him to be mayor pro tem.”

West is serving his second term on the council. He was a member of the U.S. Army and is a combat veteran who served in Hungary and Bosnia. After his military tour, he attended law school at Texas Tech School of law.

Mayor Pro Tem Chad West

Before running for office, he served as a member of the city Plan Commission.

West is the fourth LGBTQ Mayor Pro Tem and immediately follows Medrano in that position. Former council members Chris Luna and John Loza also served in the number 2 position in Dallas city government.

But while Medrano, Luna and Loza all represented District 2, West is the first gay man to serve as mayor pro tem from another district. He is also the first out city council member from south of the Trinity.

In Fort Worth, Mayor Betsy Price decided not to seek re-election after a decade in office. LGBTQ ally and councilwoman Ann Zedah ran for the position but lost. Mattie Parker came in second place in the May voting for Fort Worth mayor, then faced off against Deborah Peoples in the run-off election on June 5. Parker won with 54 percent of the vote.

Earlier this month, Price announced she would run for Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court Judge. The primary is March 1, and the general election is Nov. 8, 2022.

In a local congressional race, Jake Ellzey, a Republican, won a special election in July to fill a seat left vacant when Rep. Ron Wright died in office from COVID-19. Despite Donald Trump’s endorsement of Wright’s widow, Susan, Ellzey, also a Republican, won with more than a 6-point margin.

The balance of the U.S. Senate was left up in the air in last November’s election. Georgia was electing both senators, but Georgia law requires a runoff if one candidate doesn’t receive more than 50 percent of the vote.

The races were decided in January when Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, won their runoffs, leaving the Senate with a 50-50 partisan split, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking any tie, which supposedly gives Democrats a 1-vote majority. Still, “moderate” Joe Manchin from West Virginia and, surprisingly, Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, have proven to be as much of a roadblock as the GOP.

Over the summer, the LGBT Victory Fund announced that the number of LGBT people in office was about to hit a milestone: 1,000 LGBTQ people hold public office in the U.S., spread across every state except Mississippi. Between 2020 and 2021, the number of LGBTQ elected officials increased by 17 percent.

By the summer, LGBTQ elected officials included: two governors, two U.S. senators, nine U.S. representatives, 189 state legislators, 56 mayors, 601 local officials and 121 judicial officials.

That was before the November election when 184 LGBTQ candidates were elected.

By party affiliation, about 73 percent of the openly LGBTQ elected officials are Democrats. Of those in office in 2021, 26 officials are Republican. The rest are independent or their party affiliation is unknown. Those LGBTQ officials elected to local positions in Texas would come under unknown or independent, because local elections in Texas are non-partisan.

Victory Institute notes that transgender men and women are making electoral gains. Just a few years ago, Jess Herbst, former mayor of New Hope in Collin County, was the highest elected trans official in the country. Today, there are more trans people holding office than ever before. As of 2021, 23 states have at least one transgender elected official.

— David Taffet