Betsy Price
Current Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief chose not to run for re-election this year after four terms, and he has kept very quiet throughout the 2011 campaign about who he believes should replace him as mayor of Cowtown — until today.
According to this report on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s PoliTex blog, Moncrief broke his silence to publicly endorse former Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector Betsy Price for mayor.
Moncrief, who said his wife Rosie is also backing Price, released a short statement that said, “Her [Price’s] love of Fort Worth and her ideas about our community’s quality of life are both appealing and visionary. We wish her the best in this election.”
Price was the frontrunner in the May 14 general election, pulling in 43 percent of the vote out of five candidates. Runner-up Jim Lane, who spent 12 years on the Fort Worth City Council, won 26 percent to make it to the runoff against Price.
Both candidates have reached out to Fort Worth’s LGBT community, including participating in a June 1 forum on LGBT issues that was presented by the LGBT advocacy group Fairness Fort Worth and the North Texas GLBT Chamber of Commerce. For complete coverage of that forum, go here.
And on an interesting side note, if you do click through to the Star-telegram’s post on Moncrief’s endorsement, take a minute to look at the small photos of each of the candidates included in the post. Yep, that’s the GLBT Chamber’s logo you see on the screen behind them! The photos were taken during the LGBT forum.
It should be noted that Jim Lane was supposed to attend the 11 o’clock worship service at Celebration Community Church last Sunday, but he was a no-show. A big deal was made about moving people out of a pew and marking it off so Lane and his entourage could attend. No show.