Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog 3/8/2024
Now that the dust has settled a bit, here are some more election tidbits from Tuesday’s primary, most gleaned from The Texan’s tracking page.
• President Trump got more than twice as many primary votes as Joe Biden.
• Ted Cruz got more than twice as many votes (1,979,327) as all the Democratic Texas Senate candidates combined (964,250). And even more votes than Trump (1,808,823).
• Trump and Cruz both won all 254 Texas counties. Joe Biden lost sparsely populated Loving County to Frank Lozada one vote to zero, and King County (small and overwhelmingly Republican) either hasn’t reported Democratic votes or didn’t hold a Democratic primary. (Both Trump and Cruz got over 70 votes in Loving County.)
• Republican incumbent Christi Craddick won her Railroad Commissioner’s race without a runoff at 50.4%.
• If you compare the topline race primary results of 2022 (Texas Gubernatorial race) to the Presidential primary results of 2024, Republican votes are up just over 365,000 (2,323,754 in 2024 vs. 1,954,172 for 2022), but Democrats are down over 96,000 votes (979,179 for 2024 vs. 1,075,601 for 2022).
• The Ken Paxton slate for the Court of Criminal Appeals (David Schenck, Gina Parker, and Lee Finley) all won over their respective incumbents fairly handily.
• The previously reported Gonzalez/Herrera runoff was the only Texas U.S. House race where the Republican incumbent was pulled into a runoff; all the others won with ease.
• 2022 saw Republican Monica De La Cruz beat Democrat Michelle Vallejo in U.S. House District 15, the only swing district in Texas after redistricting, by nine points. November is going to see a rematch between the two, as both won their primaries. Given the ongoing border crisis (TX15 runs down to Rio Grande Valley) and both Texas Republican and Trump inroads into Hispanic voters, I would not expect Vallejo to improve on her previous showing.
• Harris County DA Kim Ogg lost her Democratic Party primary to the more radical, Soros-backed Sean Teare. “Although Ogg had financial support from billionaire donor and criminal justice reform activist George Soros during her first campaign in 2016, Soros did not assist Ogg in her 2020 re-election bid and threw his support to Teare this election cycle. The Soros-funded Texas Justice and Public Safety PAC spent over $1.5 million in the final weeks of the campaign to help Teare unseat Ogg.” Democrats also seethed that Ogg let investigations of corruption among Judge Lina Hidalgo’s staffers go forward. How dare she not treat Democrats as above the law? Teare will face Republican nominee Dan Simons, a former assistant district attorney and defense attorney, in November. Bonus: Ogg had trouble voting because her lesbian girlfriend already cast her ballot for her. As commentor Leland noted, does Harris County not follow Texas voter ID laws?
• Travis County residents are evidently delighted with more rapes and murders, as they just voted to keep Jose Garza DA.
• School choice was a big winner Tuesday.
More:
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=57403
