Last month, we recommended that voters return incumbent Tammy Meinershagen to her Place 2 seat on the Frisco City Council. When the votes were counted, she trailed Burt Thakur by 387 votes. The two will face off in a runoff on June 7.
Typically, this editorial board weighs in on runoff elections only when the candidate we initially recommended isn’t in the race. But recent events have forced us to reconsider. A series of recordings were posted to a local blog earlier this month in which Meinershagen makes disparaging remarks about candidates, council and residents.
As a result, we cannot recommend either candidate in the coming runoff.
In the recordings, Meinershagen referred to one of her opponents, Sai Krishnarajanagar, as “idiot Sai.” She criticized council member Angelia Pelham and disparaged council member John Keating and his fiancée. Meinershagen also made cutting remarks in the recordings about former council Shona Sowell and Scott Johnson, and two candidates for another open council seat, Jared Elad and outgoing Frisco Independent School District trustee Gopal Ponangi.
In her most scrutinized comments, Meinershagen complained that the city’s Indian community has too many festivals and is not sufficiently integrated into the wider community, which some Indian American residents in Frisco said they found insulting.
In fairness, the recordings were cut together to hide the identity of others in the conversation, which also hides what prompted Meinershagen’s comments. And let’s be honest, all of us have made comments in a private setting that could easily be misconstrued without context.
Meinershagen said her statements about the Indian community were misrepresented. She said her comments were a reaction to her friend, who told Meinershagen that she felt the council didn’t the Indian community. Meinershagen said she was surprised by the comment and referenced her efforts to attend events, but that she couldn’t make it to all of them.
“If I can’t make it to all of them, that doesn’t mean I don’t you,” she told us.
Most people don’t expect to have a private conversation in a friend’s home only to find out they’d been recorded. That’s exactly what happened in this case, Meinershagen said. She would not directly name the person she was talking to, but said “this person was running for City Council Place 4 and The Dallas Morning News endorsed her,” effectively naming candidate Sangita Datta.
Datta declined to comment. She previously told WFAA-TV (Channel 8) that she did not make the recordings.
The underhanded nature of how the recordings were made and publicized raises questions about the integrity of whoever made them.
All the same, Meinershagen’s many disparaging remarks do not meet the standard elected officials must be held to. It’s hard to see how she will be able to work effectively with her council colleagues and residents after generating so much distrust.
Meinershagen said she has had “open, authentic conversations” with each of her colleagues and believes she can continue working with them. But Pelham previously told this newspaper that Meinershagen’s comments show “a lack of judgment and a lack of integrity.” Council member Brian Livingston endorsed Meinershagen’s runoff opponent.
Thakur is the other option voters have. We are unwilling to recommend him in part due to his lack of experience and the short length of his residency in Frisco. He ran for Congress in California in 2022, but later moved to Frisco. He ran for Congress in Texas last year. He did not answer questions about length of residency, past offices sought or held and past civic involvement on our Voter Guide questionnaire this year or last.
We are also concerned about Thakur’s hyperpartisan social media presence and a generally negative attitude about government that we don’t think will lead to the sort of forward-looking service Frisco needs.
It’s sad to see this sort of nonsense muddy a local election that ought to be about who has the best ideas for Frisco. Residents will ultimately have to make a choice, but we cannot either candidate.