Farmers Branch Mayoral Election Could Solidify the City's Intolerant Backwater Ways

Farmers Branch's May 10 election poses a pivotal question: Will the suburb known nationwide for its efforts to expel illegal immigrants push forward on the same path, or will its some 26,000 residents chart a new course?

Yet O'Hare's detractors—including his mayoral opponent Gene Bledsoe—contend the 38-year-old attorney and his supporters have remade the town into an intolerant backwater. Critics point not only to the immigration efforts but also to strict code enforcement (no visible empty flower pots, for example), the removal of foreign language materials and cultural-themed art from the library and what's perceived as a pattern of taking actions without adequate public input.

Bledsoe, a businessman who has lived in Farmers Branch for 28 years, says that the three lawsuits that accuse the council of deliberating the immigrant rental ban behind closed doors in violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act, and measures such as pulling the Spanish television channel from the recreation center, show a level of pomposity and condescension that doesn't reflect the community's small-town history or growing diversity.

"It all stems from the same roots," Bledsoe said recently while at the polls during early voting. "You have meetings behind closed doors because you're arrogant, and you think you have the right to decide what the citizens want, that you have the right to control what's in the library and in the rec center. It's all the same mentality."

O'Hare and Tim Scott, a close supporter and fellow councilman, did not return calls seeking comment. Harold Froelich, their camp's candidate for city council Place 2, agreed to an interview but then backed out. "I'm having second thoughts," he said when reached by phone. "When you called yesterday I guess I didn't have a chance to think about the fact that it's the Observer." His supporters, he explained, just wouldn't approve of the Observer's back-page advertisements. "If you move to The Dallas Morning News or the Star-Telegram," he concluded, "I'll be happy to talk to you." All righty then.

A federal lawsuit filed by three Hispanic Farmers Branch residents and set to go to trial later this month charges that the city's at-large election system dilutes Latino voting strength and maintains the council's all-white status quo despite the suburb's nearly 40-percent Hispanic population. The outcome of the case may depend on whether Ruben Rendon, a Hispanic school psychologist who's lived in Farmers Branch for 36 years, can beat Froehlich and become the council's only minority member.

Rendon, who served on the planning and zoning board for 10 years, says he was motivated to run by what he views as a backlash against the town's changing demographics. "The [rental] ordinance came as a shock to me," he says. "I work out at the rec center, and all of a sudden you can't have the Spanish channel on. It was just over the top." Instead of using "politics of hate" and spending city money fending off lawsuits, he says, Farmers Branch should be spending money on redevelopment.

"There's an environment of hate and suspicion," he says, mentioning that during early voting, a woman complained to him that because restaurant staffs are mostly Mexican, servers give their Latino patrons larger portions than Anglos. The woman also parroted false claims that immigrants commit more crimes than American citizens (widely publicized studies in California and the United Kingdom recently found that the foreign-born are substantially less likely to commit crimes than natives).

"If you know your history, any time the dominant group is being threatened by a minority, they lash out," Rendon says. "And that's what's happening here. They're afraid they won't be the majority anymore, and that's going to happen no matter what—the housing stock is older, you're not going to be able to tear down all the homes and make them mansions. You have to deal with it."

O'Hare has expressed annoyance that his town continues to be associated largely with immigration, recently telling Texas Monthly's Karen Olsson that the topic "is important to our council, but we are about so much more than that, and that's all media folks want to talk about."