Deborah Peoples
2025 - Present
2027
0
Deborah Peoples is a member of the Fort Worth City Council in Texas, representing District 5. She assumed office on May 13, 2025. Her current term ends in 2027.
Peoples ran for election to the Fort Worth City Council to represent District 5 in Texas. She won in the general election on May 3, 2025.
Biography
Peoples' professional experience includes serving as Tarrant County Democratic chairwoman.[1]
Elections
2025
See also: City elections in Fort Worth, Texas (2025)
General election
General election for Fort Worth City Council District 5
The following candidates ran in the general election for Fort Worth City Council District 5 on May 3, 2025.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Deborah Peoples (Nonpartisan) | 54.3 | 2,526 |
 | Mary Kelleher (Nonpartisan)  | 23.9 | 1,110 | |
 | Michael Moore (Nonpartisan) | 17.5 | 814 | |
 | Ken Bowens Jr. (Nonpartisan) | 1.7 | 80 | |
 | Bob Willoughby (Nonpartisan) | 1.4 | 67 | |
 | Marvin Jose Diaz (Nonpartisan) | 1.2 | 57 | |
| Total votes: 4,654 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
Peoples received the following endorsements.
2022
See also: Municipal elections in Tarrant County, Texas (2022)
General election
General election for Tarrant County Judge
Tim O'Hare defeated Deborah Peoples in the general election for Tarrant County Judge on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Tim O'Hare (R) | 53.0 | 309,176 |
| Deborah Peoples (D) | 47.0 | 274,326 | |
| Total votes: 583,502 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Tarrant County Judge
Deborah Peoples defeated Marvin Sutton in the Democratic primary for Tarrant County Judge on March 1, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Deborah Peoples | 82.7 | 59,383 |
 | Marvin Sutton | 17.3 | 12,464 | |
| Total votes: 71,847 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Republican primary election
Republican primary for Tarrant County Judge
Tim O'Hare defeated Betsy Price, Byron Bradford, Kristen Collins, and Robert Trevor Buker in the Republican primary for Tarrant County Judge on March 1, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Tim O'Hare | 56.9 | 72,402 |
 | Betsy Price | 34.3 | 43,651 | |
 | Byron Bradford | 3.4 | 4,308 | |
| Kristen Collins | 2.8 | 3,531 | ||
| Robert Trevor Buker | 2.6 | 3,296 | ||
| Total votes: 127,188 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
2021
See also: Mayoral election in Fort Worth, Texas (2021)
General runoff election
General runoff election for Mayor of Fort Worth
Mattie Parker defeated Deborah Peoples in the general runoff election for Mayor of Fort Worth on June 5, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Mattie Parker (Nonpartisan) | 53.5 | 47,325 |
| Deborah Peoples (Nonpartisan) | 46.5 | 41,055 | |
| Total votes: 88,380 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
General election
General election for Mayor of Fort Worth
The following candidates ran in the general election for Mayor of Fort Worth on May 1, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Deborah Peoples (Nonpartisan) | 33.6 | 22,395 |
| ✔ | | Mattie Parker (Nonpartisan) | 30.8 | 20,551 |
 | Brian Byrd (Nonpartisan) | 14.8 | 9,835 | |
 | Steve Penate (Nonpartisan) | 9.4 | 6,248 | |
 | Ann Zadeh (Nonpartisan) | 8.6 | 5,760 | |
 | Mike Haynes (Nonpartisan) | 1.3 | 892 | |
 | Cedric Kanyinda (Nonpartisan) | 0.5 | 329 | |
 | Daniel Caldwell (Nonpartisan) | 0.5 | 306 | |
 | Chris Rector (Nonpartisan) | 0.4 | 293 | |
| Mylene George (Nonpartisan) | 0.1 | 49 | ||
| Total votes: 66,658 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Leroy Scott (Nonpartisan)
2019
See also: Mayoral election in Fort Worth, Texas (2019)
General election
General election for Mayor of Fort Worth
Incumbent Betsy Price defeated Deborah Peoples, James McBride, and Mike Haynes in the general election for Mayor of Fort Worth on May 4, 2019.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Betsy Price (Nonpartisan) | 55.7 | 21,629 |
| Deborah Peoples (Nonpartisan) | 41.9 | 16,261 | |
 | James McBride (Nonpartisan) | 2.3 | 873 | |
| Mike Haynes (Nonpartisan) (Write-in) | 0.1 | 35 | |
| Total votes: 38,798 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2025
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Deborah Peoples did not complete Ballotpedia's 2025 Candidate Connection survey.
2022
Deborah Peoples did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.
2021
Deborah Peoples did not complete Ballotpedia's 2021 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign website
Peoples' campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Our city has so much untapped potential, but previous leadership has overlooked the changes and growth that have taken place in Fort Worth. We can’t afford to continue to be a city for only the wealthy and well-connected. This historic crisis has made it painfully clear that our city suffers when leaders prioritize one group over another. Now more than ever, we need a mayor who will listen to community members of all backgrounds and unite us into One Fort Worth.
Especially in a pandemic, we must approach healthcare with the mindset that we’re only as strong as our weakest link. We’re only as healthy as our sickest neighborhood. Long before the public health crisis, Fort Worth passed on simple, cost-effective solutions that would have dramatically improved the baseline health and wellness of its residents. Past leaders even eliminated the city’s health department. As a result, Fort Worth has long been home to the zip code with the lowest life expectancy in all of Texas. That same zip code now has one of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in the country, which leads to increased infection rates all across our city. As a city, we must prioritize increasing access to healthcare in a way that avoids skyrocketing costs. Too many of our neighborhoods lack access to a nearby pharmacy or community health center. By targeting these pharmacy deserts, we can increase the standard of care for our most vulnerable communities and build the necessary infrastructure for COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots to make our whole city more healthy. In these times, the most vulnerable among us are marked not only by zip code, but also by age. Our children are living through an incredibly stressful period in American history. From the global uncertainty brought by the pandemic to repeated acts of violence brought by a failing criminal justice system, caring for the mental health of our children must be a priority. I support working with area school boards to increase funding for mental health care and counseling in schools. With summer approaching, the city must create new, pandemic-safe summer volunteering and job-training programs to provide additional social support systems for our children.
This past year has brought renewed attention to long-standing inequities in our criminal justice system. To have a city that truly aims to provide equal treatment under the law, we must achieve equal treatment by law enforcement. It is critical that we have a properly funded police department with top-notch training. However, it is concerning that city leaders in the past have ignored the will of the voters who specifically voted for a half-cent tax increase to fund police training as well as intervention and prevention programs. Unfortunately, city leaders have not respected residents’ desire to fund intervention and prevention programs, which is why we must have greater accountability and oversight into taxpayer-funded programs such as the CCPD half-cent tax. The goal of our criminal justice system should be to promote public safety. This goes beyond community policing and de-escalation training. Many of our city’s problems with public safety can be attributed to an imbalanced approach in promoting public safety. Crime intervention and prevention programs in the community can prevent many potential safety issues before a police officer is called. Unfortunately, our city has not allocated proper resources to these programs, which puts an unnecessarily heavy burden on our overextended police force. Too often our city leaders turn a blind eye to accountability once an issue has left the headlines. Our goal should be to have a high-quality police force, which means we cannot time and time again allow back repeat offenders with no real consequences.
As a year living with the pandemic drags on, we must do everything possible to prevent this from being a lost year for our schoolchildren. Bringing parents, teachers, and scientific experts to the table is the only way we can move forward in a way that’s best for all of our children. It is key that parents are informed of CDC guidelines to keep schools safe and repeatedly invited to see how those safety recommendations are implemented in all our classrooms. We have work to do in re-establishing trust between trust between parents and schools in all our neighborhoods. It should never be the case that a parent has reason to doubt a school’s ability to keep students safe. The city should prioritize vaccinations for teachers and establish an oversight body to ensure all schools have the proper resources and have successfully implemented safety measures. In the past, our city’s leadership has been too aggressive and adversarial toward our popularly elected school boards. Instead, our mayor needs to be an effective partner in progress with our school boards to ensure our city fulfills its responsibility to offer a high-quality education for all our students. Given the needs of our city’s workforce, we have a responsibility to equip our high schools with top-notch job training and apprenticeship programs. We are lucky to have such a broad array of employers in our city, and it is incumbent upon the city and its school boards to partner with these employers to help create specialized, accredited job training programs that put students on a path to starting quality jobs after graduation.
Fort Worth is America’s 13th largest city because of our incredibly high growth rate. This creates a wealth of opportunity that past leaders have failed to fully utilize. Leaning on three decades as a senior executive in the business world, we must look to proven tools for economic growth: targeted business incentives, investments in previously ignored communities, and economic relief based on need instead of insider connections. Too many of our attempts to attract new businesses to Fort Worth have resulted in the city giving away the store without assurances that companies will create jobs where we need them most. By clarifying priority areas for new businesses and working with other localities to avoid abatement bidding wars, we can raise the level of economic prosperity in all our city’s neighborhoods. It is a shame that the city ignored free federal dollars for coronavirus relief. In this time of profound financial pain, city leaders need to follow the guidance of top economists and institute large-scale relief efforts now to prevent worse economic pain in the future. Any sort of relief application process that prioritizes the wealthy and well-connected cannot be tolerated. Finally, our leaders need to recognize that cities are at a disadvantage in attracting new businesses when they turn a blind eye to systemic racial and social inequities. All across the country, we are seeing big job creators boycott states and areas that do not embrace diversity. With so many people of so many backgrounds calling Fort Worth home, we need to break with the old ways and recognize this diversity for the strength that it is for our city.
Throughout Texas and the South, we see cautionary tales of awful traffic in fast-growing cities that do not properly address their infrastructure needs. Adding lanes and widening roads is not enough to handle traffic in a city that’s growing as fast as Fort Worth is. Investing in public transit—particularly light rail—must be a priority to prevent major congestion, just as it has in cities across the country. Fort Worth cannot be a city that’s impossible to access without a vehicle, especially the airport and major economic centers. The concept of infrastructure must go beyond trains, roads, and bridges. We need to take a holistic approach to infrastructure investment that focuses on issues like eliminating food deserts and broadband dead zones. As vaccine distribution continues to be a priority for our nation and our city, we need to look to success stories across the country to meet people where they are with vaccine distribution. Fort Worth’s mayor needs to be a more proactive partner with state and federal officials to ensure our city doesn’t continue to be underserved. Exploring the use of vaccine supersites and mobile distribution units will help our city get back on track to safely and fully reopen as fast as possible. |
” |
| —Deborah Peoples' campaign website (2021)[3] | ||
2019
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Deborah Peoples did not complete Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey.
Ballotpedia biographical submission form
The candidate completed Ballotpedia's biographical information submission form:
| “ | What is your political philosophy?
Make Fort Worth Texas a better city for all peopleI believe all people are equal Is there anything you would like to add? I believe all people are equal[2] |
” |
| —Deborah Peoples[1] | ||
See also
2025 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Information submitted on Ballotpedia’s biographical information submission form on March 25, 2019
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Deborah Peoples' campaign website, “Priorities,” accessed March 25, 2021
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Gyna Bivens |
Fort Worth City Council District 5 2025-Present |
Succeeded by - |
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