Tammy Nakamura’s political stock appears to be rising in northeastern Tarrant County.
“You can rest a little easier knowing … [she] is working for free for three more years [as a Grapevine Colleyville Independent School District Trustee],” Colleyville Mayor Bobby Lindamood said after taking the stage at Nakamura’s re-election launch party in Colleyville on January 30.
Lindamood was not alone in his sentiments.
“She gets stuff done like nobody’s business,” Grapevine Colleyville Independent School District (GCISD) School Board President Shannon Braun concurred.
When Nakamura spoke, she noted that GCISD has been correcting decades of “fiscal insanity” and will soon have a balanced budget. She described her vision for the future as “grades up, taxes down.” The cheers of the party attendees, so numerous that some stood in rain-soaked grass to hear her speaking from inside a tent, indicated that they believed she could pull it off.
But who is Tammy Nakamura? The Dallas Express recently sat down with her to find out.
To the surprise of some who do not know her well, Nakamura is not Asian. Tammy is blonde and from a blue-collar family in Louisville, Kentucky. Her surname is from her almost 40-year marriage to Japanese-born surgeon Yukihiro “Yuki” Nakamura.
Regarding elections, the candidate says, “If I never get elected again, so be it. You know where I stand.”
Taking strong stands has been a feature of the several campaigns she has run for office. Nakamura started her political career when she was elected to the Colleyville City Council in a landslide in 2016. She and other council members, including Lindamood, Chris Putnam, and Mayor Richard Newton, brought major reforms to the small North Texas town. They imposed term limits on mayors and city council members, cut taxes, and reformed the water department.
When Newton decided to become the first mayor in the country to reopen his town, despite restrictive COVID-19 mandates issued by the federal health agencies and Governor Greg Abbott in the early spring of 2020, Nakamura was still on the city council. Nakamura was a strong supporter of reopening the city, according to her, Putnam, and Newton.
DX asked Nakamura how she made the choice to support an action that was, at the time, so heavily attacked by the local and international press. Nakamura said she suspected the restrictive approach embraced by then-County Judge Glenn Whitley and the various local and federal health officials was incorrect.
“I just had a gut feeling that it wasn’t what they said it was. That there was a lot more to it,” Nakamura said.
Fortunately, there was a doctor in her home whom she could consult. During his residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans in the early 80s, her husband gained experience with attempts to control the AIDS virus during a time when little was known about it.
“He doesn’t influence me when it comes to any other decisions — ever,” she said, but she heard Yuki out on this matter because of his scientific expertise. Yuki advised her that the path the various local and federal health agencies were pursuing, such as lockdowns, were not scientifically founded.
Ultimately, his advice was prescient. Several studies, including one from 2021, when many states still had COVID policies in effect, found that the lockdowns had little impact on death counts.
Pandemic-era education policies then influenced her choice to run for school board in 2022. She was outraged by the changes she saw being slipped into public education systems during the confusion of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact.
She was incensed by the efforts to turn parents protesting changes in their child’s education into “terrorists” in Loudon County, Virginia. Likewise, she saw that Grapevine-Colleyville ISD lacked what she viewed as common sense policies.
Nakamura believed that teachers should not be required to use a student’s preferred pronouns, that CRT [critical race theory] should be banned, and that parents should have more substantial parental rights to review library materials.
When she ran for school board, she recalled telling supporters that CRT and preferred pronouns were distractions from taking action on the fundamentals of learning.
“We are going to do reading, writing, and arithmetic, and we are going to do it well, and for less money [than other school districts],” Nakamura said.
Since she took office, the district has banned the mandatory use of preferred pronouns and CRT and established new policies that allow parents to review library materials.
Regarding the fundamentals, Nakamura said that during her tenure, GCISD has returned phonics to elementary education and reformed its elections to a plurality system where “whoever gets the most votes wins.”
Nakamura added, “We saved ourselves $35,000 a year [by doing that election reform].”
GCISD also sued the Biden administration to halt its interpretation of Title IX that would have allowed boys who claimed to be girls into female lockerrooms, DX reported. The Trump administration eventually reversed the policy.
However, not everything has been smooth sailing for Nakamura.
A $250,000 lawsuit was brought against the district by James Whitfield, a man formerly employed as the principal of Colleyville Heritage High School in 2020 and 2021. Whitfield gained attention in the district when he sent an email to stakeholders at GCISD concerning the “recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor” shortly after his appointment in 2020. The board moved to dismiss Whitfield the next year and entered into a non-disparagement agreement with him.
During an event at the Republican Party community center in 2021, Nakamura reportedly said that Whitfield was a “total activist” for “pushing a movement through” and that this was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” leading to his termination. Whitfield alleged in the lawsuit that these comments broke the non-disparagement agreement and entitled him to compensation.
However, Nakamura was not a board member at that time and was not a party to the agreement. Ultimately, the case was dismissed with prejudice, and the board authorized legal action against Whitfield to recoup legal fees.
Nakamura has faced opposition outside the courtroom as well.
After the death of George Floyd, Nakamura attended an unrelated protest against COVID restrictions. While taking photos with constituents, she was photographed with a voter in a mobility scooter. The scooter had a small battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, and other Americana affixed to its armrests. Nakamura and the friend who took the picture, who is Black, told DX that they did not notice the flag before she subsequently posted it, along with other photos in a Facebook album.
In short order, there was a barrage of media attacks against the councilwoman.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning (DMN) picked up the story and used nearly identical language to describe the photograph. While the DMN said she posed with the flag, a headline in the Star-Telegram read, “Fort Worth-area councilwoman poses with Confederate flag even as protests convulse Texas.”
A note at the bottom of the DMN story indicated that the Associated Press was involved in the production of the story, although it is not clear in what capacity.
Notably, neither publication showed a still image of Nakamura “posing” with the flag, and neither explained that she was not the one holding the Southern symbol. Likewise, neither story included balancing views defending Nakamura or the flag, despite some being available in the comments on her social media posts from that time.
Nevertheless, Nakamura resisted the attacks, and the photo remains on her social media page.
Despite these challenges, some constituents appear optimistic about her political future.
“I hope it is as productive and as long as her past political endeavors,” Larry Larenfield told DX during her event.
Early voting in the GCISD School Board Place 3 race will be from April 22 to 29. Election day is May 3.