KENNEDALE, Texas — About six months ago, pastor Jim Norwood, of the Oakcrest Family Church in Kennedale, started a campaign to curtail business local sex shops. Late last month, he won the city’s mayoral post in a landslide vote.

Now, Norwood said he plans to continue the fight against sexually oriented businesses in Kennedale from the mayor’s office. He said his position as mayor allows him to make sure customers follow city laws and keep pressure on the business owners.

“We certainly want a stepped-up police effort,” Norwood told NBC 5 news. “Not just in regards to goings on inside those businesses, but also the fact that people are driving the wrong way on one-way streets and traffic violations and things like that.” Norwood’s “camera crusade” started during December. He would photograph licenses plates of vehicles parked in the lots of Kennedale sexually oriented businesses and send the registered owners a post car inviting them to attend his church.

Norwood said city residents approached him about a run for the mayor’s office after the camera crusade began. He credits his role as a civic and church leader with his landslide victory in the mayoral election.

Norwood also included issues such as lowering city taxes in his election platform. Sexually oriented businesses will remain a focal point of his administration.

“Legally, we cannot run businesses out of our community,” Norwood said. “We can regulate businesses, and that’s what I’ve asked the rest of the council members to support me.”

Owners of the businesses, however, believe they are singled out unfairly.

“Ever since he did this, the police come and sit in our parking lots and harass our customers as they come out the door,” Beverly Van Dusen, owner of New Video, said. “Somewhere between half and three-quarters of my business has died out. I’m a legal business. I have every right to be here.”

The new mayor said he knows his legal rights.

“The battle is not mine,” he said. “It’s the Lord’s, and I’m confident that I’m not going to be sued.”

Norwood defeated Kennedale’s incumbent mayor, who had been in office for 20 years,