Gears in Arrears but Wants to be Mayor
The once and future leader of Irving?
Herb Gears, our mayor from 2005 to 2011, has filed for the May 2026 mayoral election.
He released the video below. Spoiler alert: he makes it through and is still alive by the end.
The history on Gears is wild.
He won election for Mayor in 2005 and then in 2008, but lost in his bid for a third term in 2011 to council member Beth Van Duyne, 57% to 43%. In 2014 he attempted a comeback but was pounded even worse, 69% to 30%.
Why did he lose that third term in 2011? Partly because his cronies were burning through taxpayer dollars.
“Beth Van Duyne” wrote Texas Scorecard, always
“criticized Gears and his merry-band of rubber-stamping council members
for incurring excessive debt and wasting taxpayer money.”
The biggest offender was the plan for an entertainment center in Las Colinas. His crony Billy Bob Barnett (founder of Billy Bob’s Texas in the Fort Worth Stockyards) was supposed to develop a proposed Las Colinas entertainment center with heavy city subsidies, and with his group putting in $50 million. The only problem was he didn’t have $50 million. Dallas saw this immediately when Billy Bob pitched them, and gave him a hard pass.
Gears thought it was great though, and we went for it. When costs mounted, questions were raised about consultant spending, travel, and oversight. By mid-2011 Irving had spent approximately $22 million without any construction, just some planning and design documents and blueprints.
Where’d all the money go? Billy Bob spent it on things like liquor, steaks, and limo drivers. Unrelated junkets and even Billy Bob’s chauffeur were paid for with city money. Astonishingly, top consultants commuted from Las Vegas, costing thousands of dollars, and Gears did not even know who they were, as WFAA showed in this damning report.
“We have a $560 million debt on the city,”
Van Duyne said during the mayoral campaign,
“quadrupled from $150 million [with] very little development to show for it.”
With his reelection in the balance, Billy Bob turned around and gave Gears $500,000 (not a typo) for his reelection campaign. That record setting amount was an order of magnitude higher than what citywide races normally cost for a candidate all together. Gears lost the election nevertheless.
The coda to the story. In 2012, the development agreement expired without construction beginning, and Billy Bob’s group filed a $139 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the city. Billy Bob got $4 million in the settlement of that suit, after Irving had spent $37 million on the project before it collapsed.
What a boondoggle. What about since then?
Gears popped up during the 2017 Irving mayoral race, as the creator of what the Dallas Morning News called “one of the most dishonest political hit pieces ever circulated,” which smeared a woman running for mayor as a drug addict and thief, which was all untrue. She took him to court to clear her name, spent $15,000 on legal fees, but gave up due to the expense.
Not to worry, though, Gears promises not to do that this time around:
Gears acknowledged responsibility for the mailer and was fined $5,000 by the Texas Ethics Commission in 2019.
By 2020 he still hadn’t paid it, because he had declared bankruptcy. He hadn’t paid his rent, either. As his landlord put it, “I don’t care if you’re the mayor or the man in the moon. You owe me rent.”
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Great info... I remember that whole thing. That kind of craziness makes normal citizens stay away from politics at all.
Hmmm...regarding the woman who ran against Rick Stopfer, she only received 16% of the vote, and it had zero to do with that mailer and everything to do with her competency and the significant bridges she had burned in Irving. Trust me when I say that the people who knew her, knew her. And she didn't get their votes either. That mayoral race was one of the largest city election blowouts we've ever had for Mayor Stopfer.
It was also common knowledge that she and her family were living in a super large house on an incredibly large lot that was located at O'Connor and Sixth street that was a property owned by the City of Irving. This property was over 3k square foot on acreage, and she was paying the city $1k a month for rent. Her friend, former mayor Beth Van Duyne whose campaigns she volunteered on, let this go on for years even after this became public information. At one time, the city had used this large property for things like housing for disabled people, etc.
When Rick Stopfer took over as mayor, her family was evicted and the property sold. Many, many houses were built on that land there along Delaware Creek. But props to her for running for mayor, she knew her family had a peach of a deal, and they wanted to keep it.