Mattie Parker

Mattie Parker (born November 9, 1983) is an American politician, businesswoman, and attorney serving as the 45th Mayor of Fort Worth, Texas. She was elected in 2021 after serving as Chief of Staff for the Mayor and the Fort Worth City Council for five years.

After coming in second place in the first round of voting in May 2021, Parker faced off against Deborah Peoples, the Tarrant County Democratic Party chair, in the run-off election on June 5, 2021. Parker received 53.5% of the vote in the nominally non-partisan election.

In Fort Worth, mayors are elected to two-year terms. Parker succeeded Betsy Price, who served five consecutive terms as mayor, including the 2019 election. Price opted to not run for a sixth term in 2021 and endorsed Parker, her former chief of staff. Parker won the 2021 election and was re-elected in 2023 and 2025. Although Fort Worth's mayoral election is nonpartisan, Parker is affiliated with the Republican Party.

Early life and education Parker was born Mattie Jean Pearcy in Hico, Texas, about 80 miles southwest of Fort Worth. She graduated from Hico High School in 2002. She graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. In 2012, Parker graduated from the Texas Wesleyan University School of Law with a Juris Doctor and, in 2013, was admitted to the State Bar of Texas. Parker was in Texas Wesleyan's final graduating class before the law school was sold and became the Texas A&M University School of Law in 2013. As a law student, she was awarded the MacLean & Boulware Endowed Law Scholarship.

Family Parker is married to David Parker, a registered lobbyist and director at Longbow Partners, and has two sons and one daughter.

Career During her junior year at the University of Texas, Parker became a press assistant in then-Texas House of Representatives Speaker Tom Craddick's office. Between 2007 and 2010, Parker worked as legislative director and chief of staff to Texas Rep. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford. where she remained until April 2020. Parker then became the founding chief executive officer of Fort Worth Cradle to Career, a nonprofit organization, and the Tarrant To & Through (T3) Partnership, a coalition of organizations focused on increasing the number of Tarrant County students who obtained a postsecondary credential before entering the workforce. She left the position in July 2021 following her victory in the mayor's race, but remains on the board of directors.

Mayor of Fort Worth Elections

In January 2021, shortly after Price announced her decision not to run for another term, Parker went public with her campaign for mayor. She received endorsements from the previous mayor of Fort Worth, Betsy Price, and other prominent members of Fort Worth's business and philanthropic communities, including billionaire Sid Bass. During Parker's mayoral campaign she chose to follow the strategy of the former mayor and her prior boss, Betsy Price, to uphold a nonpartisan campaign even though she has a long history with the Republican Party.

In the general election on May 1, Parker earned 30.82% of the vote and a combined total of 55% with a few of the other Republican candidates in the race. Parker and Peoples competed in a June 5 runoff election, which attracted the highest early voter turnout in a Fort Worth mayor's race in at least a decade. In addition to attracting many young voters, this race grabbed the attention of many major leaders across the state, due to Fort Worth's standing as one of the few large cities in Texas with Republican representation in the mayor's office. Parker obtained many more endorsements from political leaders and managed to obtain support from a few Democratic politicians, such as former U.S. Representative Pete Geren. Parker won the runoff with 53.5%, becoming Fort Worth's first millennial mayor and the youngest mayor among the 25 largest cities in the U.S. She was sworn in alongside four new city council members on June 14, 2021.

Tenure

Mattie Parker has repeatedly stated that education and school reform was a priority for her term as mayor of Fort Worth. She claims that not all students have an equitable chance at a quality education in Fort Worth. In the twelve school districts that service Fort Worth, Parker's "number one priority" is that every student has an equal chance at success. She has contributed to education nonprofits and aided in the hiring of a new Fort Worth ISD Schools Superintendent.

As Mayor of Fort Worth, Parker in association with the Texas Blockchain Council, helped Fort Worth to become the first city in the U.S. to mine bitcoin.

Controversy regarding data centers The 2026 fillings with the Texas Ethics Commission shows the mayor's husband, David Parker, as a registered lobbyist for Data Center Coalition, which has been advocating for data centers in Texas. While both the mayor and her husband have strongly denied any conflict of interest, David Parker reported compensation income of at least one penny in 2026. This has come under further scrutiny as Fort Worth lacks a formal independent ethics committee. Community and ethics scholars are asking the Mayor to recuse herself from data center votes.