5/28 Primary Preview
Texas runoffs
SD-15 (Houston)
Molly Cook (i) vs. Jarvis Johnson
Round 1: Johnson 36.1%, Cook 20.65%
May 4 special: Cook 57.2%, Johnson 42.8%
Result: Cook 50.2%, Johnson 49.8% | Cook wins
Here’s what we said ahead of Round 1:
The field has no obvious frontrunner, and the wide roster of candidates includes state Rep. Jarvis Johnson, former congressional candidate Todd Litton, businessman and political organizer Karthik Soora, self-funding lawyer Beto Cardenas, nonprofit director Michelle Bonton, and nurse Molly Cook.
Of those, Cook is the most exciting. Though a few progressives in the state are supporting Soora, it’s Cook, a longtime activist and anti-highway expansion organizer, who is far and away the progressive choice, thanks to an impressive, scrappy campaign for this seat in 2022 that shocked the city when she held John Whitmire to a 58%-42% victory. Cook has support from many activists in the city, and this week two prominent LGBTQ organizations, the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and the Houston LGBTQ+ Caucus. Cook has yet to re-secure some big endorsements she had in 2022, such as the Working Families Party and DSA, and will be missing out on the volunteers from both groups, but she’ll retain the name recognition she established in that election, which will help her in a less-watched race like this one.
Since we wrote that ahead of Texas’s March primary, a few things have happened. First, Johnson and Cook (who had the WFP’s backing by the time the primary rolled around) advanced from the first round of the primary, with Black voters propelling Johnson to a strong 36% finish while the non-Black vote split between Cook and other candidates. Second, Cook won over some more Houston politicos and interest groups ahead of the runoff, including vanquished opponent Karthik Soora, the Houston Federation of Teachers, and state Rep. Christina Morales. Third, Cook won a low-turnout special election to serve out the remaining few months of Whitmire’s term, giving her a wave of positive headlines and a boost in name recognition. Cook appeared to win Republicans in the (all-party) special election, so Johnson could benefit from their absence, but she is arguably a favorite now; it’s a marked turnaround from March, and if Cook holds on to her seat it’ll be a huge victory for Houston progressives.
HD-77 (El Paso)
Vincent Perez vs. Norma Chávez
First round: Perez 38.0%, Chávez 32.2%
Result: Perez 63.9%, Chávez 36.1% | Perez wins
Norma Chávez held a predecessor to this seat from 1997 to 2011. Her tenure was ended by a primary loss in 2010 that resulted from a truly terrible 2009 for her that involved ethics scandals and pissing off Democrats by getting far too cozy with Republicans. Calling her opponent gay didn’t save her from losing a primary over that. A 2014 comeback attempt failed, and her entry into the 2018 Congressional primary resulted in a 7% showing that she nevertheless went full election denier over.
Of the normal candidates: Alexsandra Annello is an El Paso City Councilmember (called a City Representative in El Paso) with a progressive reputation and support from labor unions, while County Commissioner Vincent Perez is the candidate of business interests. Homer Reza hasn’t raised much money and is unlikely to make the runoff.
Well, Perez advanced to a runoff with Chávez, so there’s not much else to do but hope for Norma Chávez to lose.
HD-138 (North Houston)
Angeanette Thibodeaux vs. Charlene Ward Johnson
First round: Thibodeaux 33.4%, Johnson 24.0%
Result: Johnson 51.9%, Thibodeaux 48.1% | Johnson wins
Incumbent Jarvis Johnson is running for Senate (see TX-SD-15). After so many districts where it’s hard to find any sign any candidate is progressive, we have the opposite problem here. The Texas Progressive Caucus has endorsed adjunct criminal justice professor Rosalind Caesar and state house staffer Mo Jenkins. Labor is also supporting Jenkins, while Indivisible Houston is behind Caesar. Meanwhile, the local Our Revolution chapter is supporting a third candidate, bank executive and neighborhood council president Angeanette Thibodeaux. Picking one of the three is difficult since none of them really stands out in terms of supporting any progressive causes, or even fully coming out against charter schools, but at least they’re all on good terms with local progressives. Jenkins would be the first out trans member of the Texas legislature, and she’s also pretty young, so that’s pretty cool.
Business owner Jerry Ford (“backs the blue all the way”) and Houston Community College Trustee recently caught drinking during a meeting Charlene Ward Johnson are the only two candidates we can safely say we would prefer not to make the runoff. Johnson was previously married to Jarvis Johnson, though he’s not supporting her campaign.
Thibodeaux wound up making the runoff with Johnson, and we’d like to update the final sentence we wrote in for the March primary. Jarvis Johnson is now supporting Charlene, as is former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. Charlene Ward Johnson points to Turner’s support as often as possible now, but the centrist former mayor has repeatedly failed to elect allies in Houston politics.
HD-146 (South Houston)
Shawn Thierry (i) vs. Lauren Ashley Simmons
First round: Simmons 49.5%, Thierry 44.4%
Result: Simmons 64.6%, Thierry 35.4% | Simmons wins
Shawn Thierry is the other transphobe the Democrats haven’t kicked out of their caucus yet, alongside Harold Dutton (see above). The representative shocked Democrats when she voted to ban trans healthcare for minors. That vote, and her subsequent doubling down, caused a rift between her and the local party, who voted to censure her. That’s alright by Thierry, who has new friends: Republican donors, who are now funding her campaign. If anyone can displace her, it’s probably union organizer Lauren Ashley Simmons, who identifies as queer. Organized labor, progressive groups, LGBT groups, Beto O’Rourke, even the Houston Chronicle—everyone is backing her campaign, except for the local establishment, which is split at best. One big endorsement Thierry pulled in is the area’s Houston city council member, Carolyn Evans-Shabazz. Civil rights activist Ashton Woods is also running and may even be to the left of Simmons, but has been left behind by the consolidation for Simmons. If this race goes to a runoff, Thierry is in deep trouble since basically every Woods voter should go for Simmons.
After forcing Shawn Thierry into a runoff and winning the endorsement of third-place finisher Ashton Woods, Lauren Ashley Simmons is in a strong position to win today, but she’s not taking anything for granted. Simmons has called in endorsements from prominent area politicians like U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher and benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from unions and progressives; meanwhile, Thierry has gone even further off the rails, calling gender-affirming care a “genocide” of Black children and appealing to Houston churches with an explicitly anti-trans message. Thierry is clearly unwell and unfit for office, and we hope Houston voters send her packing.
Dallas County Sheriff
Marian Brown (i) vs. Lupe Valdez
First round: Brown 42.0%, Valdez 37.7%
Result: Brown 68.6%, Valdez 31.4% | Brown wins
Sheriff Marian Brown faces a primary from her predecessor, Lupe Valdez, who gave up the job for a disastrous 2018 gubernatorial campaign against Gov. Greg Abbott. Valdez claims Brown is insufficiently sensitive to the needs and concerns of the sheriff’s department rank-and-file; mostly it seems like she wants back in the game after six years in the wilderness.
Very little has changed about the race since Brown and Valdez moved on to a runoff.
El Paso DA
James Montoya vs. Alma Trejo
First round: Montoya 37.6%, Trejo 35.5%
Result: Montoya 52.0%, Trejo 48.0% | Montoya wins
Though all three candidates for this open DA contest either are or were prosecutors, James Montoya stands out slightly for promising to make drug possession the office’s lowest priority, and to establish a Public Integrity Unit to handle police misconduct cases.
It sure seems like residents of El Paso had as hard a time as we did parsing out the differences between their DA candidates. However, since the runoff began, it’s been nothing but intrigue. State Rep. Joe Moody, known in El Paso as a leading liberal, has been sending out campaign mailers accusing Montoya of being a bloodthirsty prosecutor, hounding an innocent teenager into multiple unnecessary trials. Montoya, in turn, has accused Moody of trying to boost Trejo as a stalking horse who will hand him the reigns on the office in 2028, and as evidence he points to a secretly recorded conversation between Moody, Trejo, and other figures in El Paso politics, where they agree that Moody should run for DA, while Trejo says she doesn’t want to.
Another wrinkle to this potential backdoor plot, which we’re still not even sure exists, is the next DA will be responsible for presiding over the death penalty case of Patrick Crusius, the white supremacist who carried out a mass shooting at a Walmart that left 23 dead. Crusius plead guilty and received 90 consecutive life sentences, but a separate trial will take place to determine whether the state will execute him. Crusius actually wants to win that trial and has retained three lawyers, all of whom donated to Trejo. Montoya is also claiming that Moody, a death penalty opponent, isn’t running this because he knows he would lose with the Crusius case still in the news, the implication of which might be that Moody is working with Trejo, he coordinated the contributions?
Maybe we’re reaching, but Montoya is spinning up a grand conspiratorial web towards the end of this campaign, possibly in response to just how damning the story behind that mailer is for him. After a teenager named Daniel Villegas was convicted of double homicide in the 90s based on little more than a coerced confession, a local businessman hired lawyers to appeal his conviction. It was overturned in 2013, after which the DA’s office decided to retry the case despite having essentially no evidence. Montoya was the prosecutor tapped in 2018 to run the retrial, and lost miserably. He’d be able to put that episode behind him in this election if it weren’t for the negative impression he made on Villegas and his lawyers, as well as Montoya’s own quiet public belief that Villegas is guilty.
Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector
Annette Ramirez vs. Desiree Broadnax
First round: Ramirez 40.6%, Broadnax 17.5%
Result: Ramirez 55.8%, Broadnax 44.2% | Ramirez wins
This one is likely headed to a runoff, and there are three people who have a good shot at making it. The first is Annette Ramirez, who’s backed by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the Texas Gulf Coast AFL-CIO, the Houston Chronicle, and Our Revolution Harris County. (Weird coalition, but only because the Chronicle is there—most of her endorsers are liberal to progressive.) According to a UH Hobby School poll, she’s the polling leader with 12% to 7% for the next in line, Danielle Keys Bess—a more moderate option backed by Mayor Sylvester Turner, some unions, and Black Democratic clubs. Keys Bess is fresh off a loss as the de facto Democrat in a Houston City Council At-Large race, giving her name recognition with Democratic primary voters. Finally, there’s former Houston City Councilor Jerry Davis, who has generally kept his name in the conversation over the years by running for stuff and could scrape through to the runoff on the strength of residual name recognition.
Harris County employee Desiree Broadnax making the runoff was such a surprise we dismissed the possibility ahead of Round 1. In all likelihood, Broadnax’s unexpected success was a boon to tax attorney Annette Ramirez, who could have faced a candidate with some establishment support like Keys Bess or a preexisting base like Davis but instead faces an anonymous public employee without much money.