4 September 18 - 24, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents As North Texas’ first Muslim mayor, Richardson’s Amir Omar won because of his ability to connect with others, not because of what makes him different. by Christian McPhate A mir Omar didn’t like that he and his Richardson City Council colleagues were se- lecting the next mayor of Richardson in 2009 and again in 2011. If he hadn’t won his race for the Place 7 council seat, he would have had no say in who the city’s mayor was. No one outside the council’s closed executive ses- sion had cast a vote for mayor in nearly 60 years. This type of election was rare outside the Dallas suburb of more than 100,000 people. Other North Texas cities, such as Allen, Dal- las, Plano, Garland and Denton, had the same council-manager system of govern- ment, yet allowed voters to elect their may- ors directly. As Omar told council members in 2011, the Texas Municipal League re- ported that only 6% of Texas cities weren’t doing it that way. None of those cities, except Richardson, was in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. “Everything about it felt wrong,” says Omar, who’s in his early 50s. “First, the act of making a decision to select the mayor, who is the face of the city, behind closed doors gave the city a feeling that literal back- room deals were being made. True or not, it was a sentiment I heard often. Second, resi- dents were all but electing council members they thought would pick their preferred person to be mayor, versus electing a council member based on their individual positions or experience. “This stood out in a nondemocratic way, and that was not helpful to our image.” Omar made a campaign promise during his second run for council in 2011: He would fight to give voters the power to select their mayor. Omar pushed for a charter amendment in late January 2012 to allow for direct mayoral elections and proposed placing it on the May 2012 ballot for voters to decide. He argued that voters deserved to vote for a council member based on their priorities, not on who they plan to select as mayor. He called the charter amendment a minor tweak to the language and offered his coun- cil seat as a sacrifice to create the mayor’s seat. “Some of the people voted for me and voted against me based on who I thought I was going to select as mayor,” he told coun- cil members. Mayor Pro Tem Laura Maczka, who later faced a very different battle with the Depart- ment of Justice, shut down Omar’s efforts to get the charter amendment. “The way I view us is as a board of trustees,” Maczka said at the meeting. “I think that at the level of the board of trustees, most corporations, most boards elect their chairman from within.” Other council members agreed with her. They thought the old system was fine and didn’t think there was enough time to imple- ment a new one. Newly elected council member Scott Dunn warned that dysfunc- tion could follow if voters were allowed to elect their mayor. “You look at the surrounding cities that do have a direct-elect mayor,” Dunn said at the time. “And I’m glad that I live in Rich- ardson.” Richardson voters disagreed and suc- cessfully petitioned to put the charter amendment on the November 2012 ballot. More than 70% voted to allow for direct mayoral elections. Omar and Maczka ran for mayor in May 2013. It was the hometown girl vs. the up- start political outsider, who faced pushback because of his religion and the fact that he was twice divorced and single and had only lived in Richardson for a short time. Twelve years would pass before he would finally secure the mayoral seat to become the first mayor of Muslim faith in North Texas and also the first of Palestinian and Iranian descent. “It was a different time in our world,” Omar says of his 2013 mayoral run. “A lot more fear and uncertainty and a lot more concern for people of another faith, partic- ularly the Muslim faith. There was just so much that people didn’t know or weren’t comfortable with, and that made being a political official and running for office dif- ficult.” | UNFAIR PARK | Nathan Hunsinger AN OUTSIDER NO MORE Richardson Mayor Amir Omar was once dubbed an outsider.
