817 Podcast - Fort Worth's Monday Morning Show
Aug 17, 2026 · 32 min · 11 segments
**BIG STORY:** We spoke with Nathan Smith, the Democratic candidate for Tarrant County District Clerk, who will unseat 30-year incumbent Republican Tom Wilder…
EJ CarrionHost
Ann ZadehHost
Something that we talked about is like this whole, we are Tarrant kind of concept of like showcasing how it's all collaborative.
When we talk about this ticket purpose with, yes, you can get a new DA, but without a new district clerk yet without the judge, you know, having the Lisa, uh, Do you have a case study workflow of how things are stopped between y'all? And if we had the full slate, I guess how that flow would allow us to maybe move quicker to justice? Oh, I have such a good story about that one.
When I worked in the county, one of Elise's big... initiatives that she was trying to get going again trying to kind of get to what is causing these jail deaths or solving them is she wanted to create to recreate what's called a criminal justice coordinating committee and all it is is it's a group of a bunch of stakeholders in county government that would get together once a month and sit around a table and talk about processes because The thing that a lot of people don't understand about county government that makes it unique is you have like, I don't, it's like 50 or 60 or something like that, or I think it's more than that, independently elected positions.
But that makes it really important, especially when it comes to criminal justice system, to make sure that everybody's communicating and working together and And so a criminal justice coordinating committee once a month makes sense where you have the DA, the district clerk, the judges, you know, the county clerk, commissioners court folks all there to say, OK, where are some friction points? And like, why are people getting stuck in jail so long pretrial that, you know, why is it taking so long to get to their trials, et cetera, et cetera? We tried really hard to get this back up.
And then for some reason around the pandemic time, I believe it kind of tapered off and nobody could really tell me why.
And we got it to where we had a couple of these just through outside pressure too, which is really important.
And we had a couple of these and we did get some of the key players around the table.
Like the DA's rep was, Phil Soros never showed up for one, but he sent a representative.
What I will say though was at that, and so that is an example of what could be going forward.
If you have me there, Tiffany Burks there, Elisa there, and Lydia there, We're going to have productive conversations and solve these problems.
I will say quickly, though, at one of those meetings, Tom Wilder walks in and there's a guy trailing him.
And I'm like, who is this? Is this somebody from his office? Like, is this his chief of staff or something? And then I was like, I kind of texted somebody in the room.
Something that we talked about is like this whole, we are Tarrant kind of concept of like showcasing how it's all collaborative.
When we talk about this ticket purpose with, yes, you can get a new DA, but without a new district clerk yet without the judge, you know, having the Lisa, uh, Do you have a case study workflow of how things are stopped between y'all? And if we had the full slate, I guess how that flow would allow us to maybe move quicker to justice? Oh, I have such a good story about that one.
When I worked in the county, one of Elise's big... initiatives that she was trying to get going again trying to kind of get to what is causing these jail deaths or solving them is she wanted to create to recreate what's called a criminal justice coordinating committee and all it is is it's a group of a bunch of stakeholders in county government that would get together once a month and sit around a table and talk about processes because The thing that a lot of people don't understand about county government that makes it unique is you have like, I don't, it's like 50 or 60 or something like that, or I think it's more than that, independently elected positions.
But that makes it really important, especially when it comes to criminal justice system, to make sure that everybody's communicating and working together and And so a criminal justice coordinating committee once a month makes sense where you have the DA, the district clerk, the judges, you know, the county clerk, commissioners court folks all there to say, OK, where are some friction points? And like, why are people getting stuck in jail so long pretrial that, you know, why is it taking so long to get to their trials, et cetera, et cetera? We tried really hard to get this back up.
And then for some reason around the pandemic time, I believe it kind of tapered off and nobody could really tell me why.
And we got it to where we had a couple of these just through outside pressure too, which is really important.
And we had a couple of these and we did get some of the key players around the table.
Like the DA's rep was, Phil Soros never showed up for one, but he sent a representative.
What I will say though was at that, and so that is an example of what could be going forward.
If you have me there, Tiffany Burks there, Elisa there, and Lydia there, We're going to have productive conversations and solve these problems.
I will say quickly, though, at one of those meetings, Tom Wilder walks in and there's a guy trailing him.
And I'm like, who is this? Is this somebody from his office? Like, is this his chief of staff or something? And then I was like, I kind of texted somebody in the room.
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