The city of Frisco, in the northern suburbs of Dallas, has been a landing pad for transplants and immigrants for more than a decade, a prime example of how fast-growing and fast-changing Texas can be.
But in recent months, the booming suburb that once celebrated its diversity has been sharply divided by a tense mayoral runoff that has featured rhetorical attacks on the Muslim community and drawn the attention of hard-right activists.
On one side are supporters of Mark Hill, a lawyer and civic booster who has served on the local school board and the economic development council. On the other are those backing Rod Vilhauer, a retired owner of a major construction business and first-time candidate who has vowed to draw a line against “terrorists” and Shariah, or Islamic religious codes.
Opposition to Muslim religious practices has become a growing part of this year’s Republican primary contests, particularly in Texas. Now Frisco’s special runoff election for mayor offers an early test of whether such anti-Muslim rhetoric can win over a broader set of voters.
“It’s like Dwight D. Eisenhower said: Don’t ever let anyone come to America and use the Constitution to destroy the Constitution,” Mr. Vilhauer, 65, said in an interview with The New York Times at a Christian bookshop in Frisco.
“The terrorists here, the Shariah law folks, they’re hiding under the First Amendment,” he said. “You have to take a stand somewhere.”
At the same time, Mr. Vilhauer has engaged with some conservatives in Frisco’s Hindu community, looking to win over part of a critical voting bloc in the city.
Mr. Hill, 50, has cast the race as a referendum on the city’s future. In an interview before a campaign stop, he vowed to turn down the temperature and unite the city, and warned of dire consequences if Mr. Vilhauer were elected.
“What is the welcoming nature of Frisco in the years to come?” Mr. Hill said. “If you’re a strong family that is law-abiding, educated,” he said, “and you hear your leadership calling you names, stoking intimidation and other protests in your community, would you live here for long?”
Both candidates describe themselves as conservative Republicans. The position of mayor is nonpartisan.
The race could demonstrate the political limits of anti-Muslim sentiment — or hint at its potential viability in other races. Election Day is Saturday.
For years, Frisco was a gleaming success story, frequently listed among the best places to live in America. Corporations relocated. The Dallas Cowboys moved their headquarters and practice facility there in 2016.
The suburban city, about 30 miles north of Dallas, also attracted new residents and immigrants, particularly from India, Pakistan and other parts of South Asia. About a third of its 245,000 residents are Asian, roughly double the number from a decade ago, and about 45 percent are white, a declining portion, according to census figures. New communities have formed around an Islamic center and a large Hindu temple.
More recently, Frisco’s sizable South Asian and Muslim populations have drawn the attention of hard-right influencers and outside activists. Some have held street protests. Others have appeared at City Council meetings to berate city leaders and hurl anti-Muslim invective, including during discussions last month of plans for a new mosque and additional temples.
“The Hindus and the Muslims are teaming up to take over Texas,” Jake Lang, an anti-Muslim provocateur who lives in Florida, said at the meeting in May, at times shouting before being removed.
Outside conservative influencers have also focused on Frisco after a white teenager, Austin Metcalf, was killed by a Black teenager, Karmelo Anthony, during a track meet last year. This week, a jury convicted Mr. Anthony of murder. (Since speaking at the council, Mr. Lang has been arrested on charges of trespassing and, separately, of making a threat, both in relation to the killing.)
Some city residents, concerned over a rise in hate speech in Frisco, have thrown their support to Mr. Hill. Others, worried about the pace of change, have appeared to gravitate to Mr. Vilhauer, who has shared similar concerns.
In the interview, he described walking with his young granddaughters on a path through Frisco and contemplating the future. “These girls are 4 years old. When they’re 14, what’s it going to look like here?” Mr. Vilhauer recalled thinking.
Mr. Hill, whose campaign slogan is “Unite Frisco,” said that such rhetoric was being used to split communities that have long lived side by side.
“The demographics of this city did not change in the last three months,” he said.
During early voting last week, volunteers for each camp faced off in the parking lot of a fire station polling place amid rows of competing campaign signs. They called out to the handful of voters who had mostly arrived with their minds already made up.
“He’s not for all the outside coming in,” said Pam Daignault, 76, who moved to Frisco from Dallas three decades ago and had just cast her vote for Mr. Vilhauer. “I want to keep the old way,” she added. “You can’t go to Sam’s without feeling like you’re in another country.”
A short time later, Shamsuddin Ali and his wife arrived to cast their votes for Mr. Hill, saying they were motivated by their opposition to Mr. Vilhauer.
“Nothing for Mark, everything against Rod,” said Mr. Ali, the owner of a jewelry store who moved to Frisco from North Carolina six years ago. “He had a lot of hate speech, you know, everything against immigrants,” Mr. Ali added. “I’ve never heard anything like that until this election came.”
In addition to hostility directed at Muslims, some Indian Americans in Frisco have faced attacks from people on social media who have conflated Indian and Muslim identities.
Mr. Vilhauer acknowledged on a podcast in March that, as recently as last year, “I thought all Indians in Frisco were Muslims.” He said he was “introduced to the Hindu people” during the campaign and had since found supporters among them.
The race has exposed political and demographic fault lines within Frisco’s South Asian community, including between Hindu and Muslim residents.
In the interview with The Times, Mr. Vilhauer said he had been criticized by some conservatives for spending “too much time talking with the Hindu American people.”
“How else are you going to get to know them?” he said. While he has courted Hindu voters, Mr. Vilhauer also declined to participate at a candidate forum at the Islamic Center of Frisco earlier in the campaign.
Sai Krishna, a registered nurse, and one of Mr. Vilhauer’s most outspoken Hindu backers, said he worried that the Muslim community would try to create enclaves of the sort that had been proposed in a different Dallas suburb.
“If you look at the geographical area, they’re just slowly covering up the areas,” Mr. Krishna said, speaking in the shade of a tree outside a polling place. He said he believed that “Hindus are united, and we’re supporting Rod.”
That some Hindu residents would support Mr. Vilhauer was not a surprise to Sadaf Haq, who has organized political forums at the Islamic center. She said she was opposed by conservative Hindus when she ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 2020.
“During my election, they would say, ‘Oh, she’s pretending to be American,’” Ms. Haq said. “I was like, ‘Dude, I was born and raised in America.’”
Ms. Haq helped form the outgoing mayor’s multicultural committee, a first in Frisco. She said she did not regret relocating from New York more than a decade ago.
“Aside from the politics,” she said, “I’ve loved raising my family here.”
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