5 September 18 - 24, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents The Outsider I n a 2013 profile, D Magazine hailed Omar as “an outsider” taking on “Richardson’s old guard.” With his head cleanly shaven and slightly smiling, Omar looked like a CEO from the cover of D CEO Magazine. But he didn’t look like an outsider in his pinstripe dark blue blazer, light blue button-down shirt and red tie. By that point, Omar had only lived in Richardson for about five years after moving there because his children were attending schools there. He also attended a mosque there. Omar was born in Milwaukee in 1972 and grew up in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Omar’s father, a Palestinian Sunni, was a professor at what is now known as Texas State Technical College. His mother, an Iranian Shi’ite, was a hostess who intro- duced people to their family’s Middle East- ern culture and crossed what Omar calls a culture chasm, in part due to the Iran hos- tage crisis in the late 1970s, when a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage. “It was a very difficult and consuming time period for our country, so it was not an easy task or a nothing effort to make yourself be approachable and open-minded,” Omar says. “My mom just did this amazing job making people love her by way of food, mu- sic and dance.” Omar’s former school teacher, Lupita Muniz, still recalls Omar and his mother as charismatic, positive and a “great force” in his life. “Amir is a shining example of what we wanted to instill in our kids and make sure that they knew that they could change their environment,” Muniz says. “That is what we promoted.” Omar’s mother died of cancer in 1988 at the age of 47, shortly before his senior year of high school. The mayor credits her for in- stilling a desire to connect with his constitu- ents and make them feel comfortable and heard. In the 2013 magazine profile, Omar re- called a threat he had received from a prom- inent figure in Richardson who belonged to the “old guard,” also known as the Richard- son Coalition. With its endorsement, this well-financed group of city leaders had a 14-election winning streak for council can- didates. It had supported him during his council runs in 2009 and 2011, but things had changed. “I was told bluntly that if I pushed for a direct election of the mayor, I would no lon- ger have their support,” Omar recalls. “For a political person and someone who is mind- ful of the powerbrokers, that is the kind of thing that creates a chilling effect. But I told them at the time that my goal was never to be reelected forever. My goal was to make the biggest difference. It comes from the fact that I lost my mom at a fairly young age. It left multiple impressions on me for years to come, and many cases till this day. “Life is short,” he says. ”It ends when we oftentimes don’t want it to or expect it to. We have limited opportunity to make a difference. It was far more important for me to do what I thought was the right thing to do, things that would make a difference for decades.” The Richardson Coalition dropped its support of Omar. Instead, it supported Mac- zka in Richardson’s first direct election may- oral race, who, according to reports, was initially supposed to take over as mayor if the charter hadn’t been changed. A home- town woman and Texas A&M grad, Maczka was described as “a real All-American, Girl Next Door, Texas Lady,” who baked cookies “every Monday for her husband of 24 years and their three sons,” according to a 2013 political advertisement. She was the estab- lishment. Though Omar was attracting more do- nors, Mackzka had the endorsement of ev- ery sitting council member. She campaigned on a buzzy “no new apartments” promise to appeal to the upper-middle-class homeown- ers in town. But she would break that cam- paign promise after she met Mark Jordan, an apartment developer seeking council ap- proval to develop property along U.S. 75. Eventually, the two began a romance, and he showered her with gifts. Maczka received nearly 71% of the ap- proximately 14,000 ballots cast for mayor in May 2013. She became not only the second woman to serve as Richardson’s mayor but also the first to be elected by popular vote. She ran unopposed in 2015, but declined to take the oath of office for several reasons, in- cluding her job with the developer behind a controversial mixed-use development, a project she had supported as mayor. Three years later, Maczka would become the first Richardson mayor ever to face a federal indictment for bribery, tax and wire fraud after her relationship with Jordan was exposed. Coffee Klatch E arlier this year, Omar met with voters over coffee to discuss their concerns. He’d been meeting with voters for several months at various local coffee shops to determine whether he should seek the mayor’s office. He says he wanted to make sure he had something to offer and decided to follow his mother’s example of connect- ing with people. Omar began hosting coffee meetings and ice cream socials to speak directly with pro- spective voters and their families. He esti- mates that he has held 400 coffee meetings, and about 50 to 80 people would show up for the ice cream socials on Sundays to ask him questions. This time, in 2025, Omar was married, unlike during previous campaigns. He met his third wife, actress and model Alika Ray, in 2019 via an online dating site. He says she knew he was politically active and still mar- ried him three years later. Ray says she had never dated someone like Omar before, but she was looking for someone who was proactive, willing to meet with people — even those who disagreed with him — and engage in discussion. She knew politics could again be in his future. “That is the energy that makes him a great man, father and a mayor,” she says. “He is full of persistence, passion and occa- sional debate. He is such an amazing person who is too nice for politics, yet means so well. That is why I’m protective of him.” Richardson had also gotten more diverse, with a large Asian population and a large portion of the estimated 275,000 Arab Americans in Dallas County. Regardless of the voter’s background, Omar began noticing that people felt that Richardson deserved better, on top of a re- curring theme of being ignored. “I was hear- ing over and over again that elected officials weren’t listening to the neighborhoods,” he says. “There was a constant frustration over the lack of progress in certain parts of our city.” Elected officials in Richardson who did not listen to their constituents could be traced back to Maczka, who pushed un- wanted multifamily zoning changes for Jor- dan in exchange for more than $92,000 in cash, checks and home renovations, accord- ing to the U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern Dis- trict of Texas in 2022. According to reports, in 2019, Maczka and Jordan’s defense attorneys argued that the couple “were motivated by love and af- fection” to take a dozen trips to exotic loca- tions. Both faced 25 years in prison but were sentenced in 2022 to six years each for brib- ery and tax fraud. While Maczka dealt with legal issues, Omar built trust with Richardson residents after losing the 2013 election. He became president of his neighborhood association for a couple of years. He brought back his “Tree the Town” initiative, which aimed to plant 50,000 trees. He says he used his own money to plant trees for people who lost ma- ture trees in the 2019 tornado that damaged or destroyed 671 properties in Richardson. “It was devastating to those impacted and not only destroyed many homes but tore apart the beautiful tree canopy in those neighborhoods,” Omar says. “It was the feel- ing that I wanted to do something once the flood of support was done helping that led me to bring back Tree the Town and begin planting free trees for those homeowners who desired them. These trees were over- whelmingly planted by just myself and my son, Anson, as the pandemic made it impos- sible to do larger volunteer events. “We planted nearly all trees in front yards where they could impact the greatest num- ber of people and bring a tiny amount of hope and joy to those who lost so much.” Using the master’s degree in business ad- ministration he earned in 2013 from the University of Texas at Dallas, Omar began working in the water conservation sector for more than a decade before he decided to challenge the incumbent mayor — Bob Dubey — earlier this year. A former council member, Dubey was a one-term mayor elected after Nathan Hunsinger Omar won in 2025 by building trust in his community through in-person meetings. >> p6
