Texas Primary Preview (Federal & State)
everything's bigger in texas even the primary previews
It’s here: our first preview of the 2022 election cycle. And it’s all Texas, baby. Three hotly-contested congressional primaries, and legislative primaries that’ll turn on issues ranging from Texas Democrats’ valiant but ill-fated quorum-breaking to trans rights to public education to basic party loyalty (and, in the case of one Houston state House race, maybe all of the above.)
Later today, paid subscribers will get a preview of the local and county offices up for grabs tonight, plus the State Board of Education (which is a partisan office.) There are races to watch all over Texas in that preview, too, from Houston to El Paso and from Dallas to the Rio Grande Valley.
Now that the obligatory plug for giving us money is out of the way, let’s dive right in with the biggest race of them all.
TX-28
Henry Cuellar (i) vs. Jessica Cisneros vs. Tannya Benavides
Two years ago, we sent out our first primary preview. And here we are still, thanks to our wonderful readers, writing about the first races of the 2022 cycle. But despite how much has changed since then, the marquee race hasn’t. Henry Cuellar is the white whale, the one that got away in 2020. He’s the last of his lineage—an anti-abortion, anti-labor, anti-immigrant, anti-everything Democrat. While most Democrats with bad voting records are performing moderation for an audience, he isn’t performing his conservatism—he believes in it. That type of Democrat has been on a precipitous decline since the 1980s (incidentally, when Cuellar entered politics), and while you can travel to various rural southern counties, insular Rust Belt cities, and struggling Appalachian towns to find other surviving examples of that particular specimen, Cuellar is your only opportunity to spot one in Washington. The rest of his cohort has been felled by their conservative base becoming Republicans, allowing them to get sent packing by a more Republican electorate in November or a more liberal electorate in a primary. In 2020, two of the last three reached the end of their political lives, Collin Peterson for the former reason and Dan Lipinski for the latter. Cuellar, though? He survived.
In a way, it’s almost a shame about the FBI raid. It would have been poetry to begin the 2022 primary season by tying up the largest loose end of 2020, with immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros winning her rematch on purely the same future-of-the-party lines that 2020 fell along—and we think she could have done it, too. Cisneros started as a total unknown in 2019 and progressive groups didn’t realize they had a competitive race on their hands until the last minute. But that FBI raid has defined the race now, and we’re not going to complain.
On January 19, FBI trucks parked outside of Cuellar’s house and office for hours, eventually taking out bags, boxes, and even a computer. In the following days, sources within the FBI told news agencies that this raid was at the behest of the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity unit, and related to a long-running investigation into the Azerbaijani government’s connections to oil businessmen. This has been, needless to say, a hand grenade dropped onto the race. Progressive groups are attacking Cuellar for his opposition to labor and reproductive rights, and Cisneros has been pushing for a bold policy agenda including a Green New Deal and Medicare for All. But the most common topic on the campaign trail, the thing everyone keeps coming back to, is that FBI raid.
It’s in ads from Jessica Cisneros, Justice Democrats, and J Street. In NARAL's otherwise entirely reproductive rights-themed ad, the B-roll they use for Cuellar is the first video he made responding to the FBI raid. It's in digital spots, mailers, and regular media coverage. Several national and local news organizations have sent reporters down to the district with a more or less single-minded task of figuring out what the FBI raid has done to the race. The conclusion is ambiguous, to say the least. Cuellar has been more than eager to claim his base is sticking with him, and Cisneros hasn't exactly disagreed—she's consistently said that the biggest impact is on new voters to the district who are hearing about Cuellar's legal troubles before they hear anything else about him. Most voters may be ideologically-minded after all.
The Cisneros camp has never presented the raid as an isolated incident; rather they want it to be seen as only one chapter in Cuellar's long history of corruption ranging from dirty money to dirty tactics. And they're not forgetting why Cisneros launched this campaign in the first place: Cuellar's abysmally conservative record. Reproductive choice has been a particularly common point of attack owing to his status as the only anti-choice member of the Democratic caucus and the increased salience of the issue after Texas passed its Roe v. Wade-shredding abortion bounty hunter bill. Cuellar was the only Democrat in Congress to support that bill, a fact not lost on Cisneros and her allies.
Cuellar has been running a better campaign this time around, which is in no small part a result of Cuellar realizing he needed a campaign before the last minute (ads that weren't clearly written, filmed, and edited on someone's laptop in a single afternoon—what a concept!). Cuellar is putting a lot more thought into this go-around. He's pushing back much harder on the most damaging charge leveled against him in 2020, that he's a disloyal Democrat, by touting his relatively high level of voting with the party in the most recent session, hoping he can spin his earlier record of voting with Trump most of the time as "working with both parties". Cuellar has also sharpened his attacks. Gone are the days of sending campaign manager Colin Strother out to clumsily make the claim that Cisneros's small donors should be counted as "dark money”; replacing them is a quite obviously poll-tested double-pronged focus on oil jobs and border security. Claiming Green New Deal advocates have it out for oil and gas jobs (because they want to replace them with something better) is not new behavior from centrist Democrats, and the border does indeed have a high concentration of those jobs. But the border control attacks are nothing like anything we've seen from a Democrat in the last decade, at minimum—naked, hysterical, right-wing fear mongering over defended police, drugs, crime, and immigrants. It's hard not to suspect that Cuellar sees his path forward as boosting border turnout and keeping conservative Trump voters in the Democratic primary, rather than holding onto any reasonable proportion of the vote in San Antonio.
It's not a terrible bet to make that this is going to be an intensely geographic contest. In 2020, Cuellar took the border counties 56%-44% while Cisneros took the San Antonio area 65%-35% (or 61%-39%, depending on how you classify Atascosa County). The divide is only going to grow after redistricting took out the only part of the border Cisneros won, Hidalgo County, leaving the rest of the border 59%-41% for Cuellar. The additional residents in the San Antonio area (55,000 in Bexar County and 104,000 in Guadalupe County) make the region even more important to this primary, and while it looks like Cuellar’s extensive political network on the border is sticking by him, no one wants to touch him in San Antonio. His consultants in the city fled not long after the FBI raid, and San Antonio’s political class seems to be firmly behind Cisneros, a change from two years ago (when organized labor was the main established entity behind Cisneros in San Antonio.)
TX-30
Jasmine Crockett vs. Jane Hope Hamilton vs. Abel Mulugheta vs. Jessica Mason vs. Barbara Mallory Caraway vs. Shenita Cleveland vs. Vonciel Jones Hill vs. Keisha Lankford
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson had been the subject of retirement rumors for a decade by the time she finally announced that she was retiring for real in 2022. When she retired, leftist veteran Jessica Mason had been running a spirited campaign for months, but the rest of the Dallas political world had been in a holding pattern as they waited to learn whether Johnson would be seeking another term. When she called it quits, a favorite instantly emerged in state Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a progressive who defeated an incumbent state representative in the 2020 primary; Crockett got Johnson’s early endorsement despite the latter being pretty moderate, seemingly because every more centrist Dallas Democrat with a shred of ambition had managed to annoy the congresswoman, leaving Crockett as something of a default for Johnson. But the center isn’t united in conceding to Crockett: state legislative staffer Abel Mulugheta and Biden primary campaign official Jane Hope Hamilton have both tried to make their mark here, and there’s also a scattering of other candidates (most notably former state Rep. Barbara Mallory Caraway, who is a perennial candidate but who has enough name recognition that she can’t be counted out.)
Crockett—who got a perplexing multimillion-dollar boost from cryptocurrency interests in the closing days of the campaign, despite little record to speak of on cryptocurrency—is the favorite; we’re mostly interested in whether she wins without a runoff, and who advances to a runoff with her if she doesn’t. (We think that Jessica Mason, Abel Mulugheta, Jane Hope Hamilton, and Barbara Mallory Caraway are the most likely runoff contenders.)
TX-33
Marc Veasey (i) vs. Carlos Quintanilla
We don’t expect this to be a competitive contest, but Marc Veasey is a perpetual underperformer. His 2020 victory, over an absolute nobody with no money, was only by a 64-36 margin, so we figure it’s best to keep an eye on this one.
TX-34
Vicente Gonzalez (i) vs. Laura Cisneros vs. William Thompson vs. Beatriz Reynoso vs. Filemon Meza vs. Osbert Rodriguez Haro vs. Diego Zavala
Congressman Vicente Gonzalez represents the current TX-15, based in Hidalgo County. Once it was redrawn to be a few points redder, and the much more Democratic TX-34 opened up, Gonzalez switched districts, and Republicans even drew a little tendril from the 34th to put his home in that district, to technically make it so he wasn’t carpetbagging. (Though we should reiterate that it absolutely is.) Vicente Gonzalez, lifelong Blue Dog, is switching districts, and progressives didn't find anyone to run against him. Rochelle Garza, who had been running as one before Gonzalez hopped in, is now running for state AG, and in her place is a collection of nobodies: the most notable opponent he has is Laura Cisneros, a doctor running on a $75K self-loan. It's unclear if she's even to Gonzalez's left. Aside from her, no one has any campaign money to speak of. Despite that, Gonzalez has been campaigning hard in the primary, even running ads with outgoing Rep. Filemon Vela. He clearly doesn't want to be forced into a runoff.
TX-35
Greg Casar vs. Eddie Rodriguez vs. Rebecca Viagrán
Greg Casar has been a star among Texas progressives—and a boogeyman to Texas moderates and conservatives in both parties—for years. He’s a DSA member, a Bernie endorser, and the architect of many policies on the Austin City Council that prompted backlash from the Republican state government. He’s also the overwhelming favorite for a seat in Congress; the main question is not whether he’ll win, but whether he’ll do it tonight or in a May runoff. But that hasn’t stopped state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez from reaching deep into the gutter, happily lifting attack lines (and campaign cash) from the muckiest depths of the Austin right-wing fever swamp in a desperate attempt to put a dent in Casar’s advantage. Rodriguez, formerly seen as one of the most progressive voices in the Texas Capitol, has abandoned all his former progressive allies, and it might not even get him a runoff spot. Not just because Casar might get a majority, but because even if he doesn’t, former San Antonio City Councilor Rebecca Viagrán (who’s barely campaigning) might still eke out a second-place finish; all publicly-available polling has Viagrán only a few points behind Rodriguez.
TX-37
Lloyd Doggett (i) vs. Donna Imam vs. Chris Jones vs. Quinton Beaubouef
Just like Vicente Gonzalez, Lloyd Doggett is attempting to district-hop, and justifying it by a small overlap between his old and new constituency. In his case it's more justifiable, since he's always been an Austin politician (some would argue the Austin politician), so an all-Austin district suits him in a way the majority Hispanic, Austin-to-San Antonio TX-35 didn't. While there was talk of Wendy Davis competing with him for this seat, she stayed out, leaving Doggett with only one other serious candidate to face: anti-establishment progressive Donna Imam, the 2020 nominee for suburban TX-30, which has a small overlap with the new TX-37. Imam is badly underfunded compared to the hundreds of thousands Doggett is spending on ads, and local media has been dismissive of her campaign, when they bother to cover it at all.
SD-15
John Whitmire (i) vs. Molly Cook
John Whitmire has been clinging to this state Senate seat since the dawn of time (or at least the last 40 years) and absolutely needs to go. As chair of the Criminal Justice Committee, he’s been an integral part in constructing Texas’s notoriously cruel criminal justice system. You may remember him from this Last Week Tonight with John Oliver clip where he argues against allowing prisons to have air conditioning. In Texas. Unfortunately, the campaign to unseat him was scraped together at the last minute. Molly Cook, a nurse and activist, was recruited by the Houston DSA after no one else presented themselves. There are some cities where the DSA chapter can put together a campaign by themselves, but Houston is not one of them, especially in a district larger than a congressional seat. Cook has gotten late cavalry in the form of the Working Families Party and Texas Organizing Project, but neither are putting significant resources behind her, which she would need to have a real shot, given how badly she’s being outspent in a district this large. There is bad news though—John Whitmire has already announced a campaign for Houston mayor in 2023, which would open up the seat for a special election. Wait, did we say good news? We meant “a potential consolation prize for Houston suffering through a Whitmire mayoral tenure.” Keep an eye out for Cook’s performance, which if nothing else will at least serve as a rough gauge of Whitmire’s weakness or strength ahead of his mayoral campaign.
SD-27
Sara Stapleton Barrera vs. Alex Dominguez vs. Morgan Lamantia vs. Salomon Torres
A word of caution here: Republicans just reconfigured this district into something that would have voted only 52-47 Biden in 2020. We don’t love covering a competitive district like that, but the RGV tends to be more Democratic downballot, and this is a real heart-and-soul-of-the-party-type election that would be a shame not to mention. Eddie Lucio Jr, a state senator who makes Henry Cuellar look like a campus lefty, is retiring after barely making it through the 2020 primary. Huzzah.
The most conservative candidate is Salomon Torres, a local businessman with the politics most resembling Lucio’s. He’s the only one running to carry the banner of social conservatism that Lucio was best known for. But he isn’t Lucio’s candidate—that would be Morgan Lamantia, scion of a powerful local business family. Lucio isn’t alone in backing Lamantia. Most of the local Democratic establishment is supporting her, despite Lamantia’s support of Republican politicians in the past. Lucio, in order to defend his legacy, has decided to support someone closer to the mainstream of a Democrat in the Valley to prevent a more liberal Democrat from winning. That more liberal Democrat would be state Rep. Alex Dominguez, of Brownsville. Dominguez defeated a more conservative incumbent in 2018, and has never been on good terms with the local establishment because of it. He narrowly survived an attempt by them to unseat him in 2020. Dominguez has been pitching himself as the “real Democrat”, a contrast clearly aimed at Lamantia and the Lucio types supporting her. In the progressive lane is Sara Stapleton Barrera, the lawyer who very nearly took down Lucio in 2020. Her willingness to cross powerful oil and gas interests is one of the ways she sets herself apart. While she did very well in 2020, a lot of that was anti-Lucio sentiment, and she’s out-funded here.
HD-22
Manuel Hayes vs. Joseph Trahan vs. Lisa Weber
This Beaumont-Port Arthur district elects the only Democratic member of the legislature from East Texas. For 24 years, that Democrat was Joe Deshotel, but he’s retiring. His chief of staff, Manuel Hayes, is the favorite to replace him. But Joseph Trahan is also running, and he takes a more progressive tone despite being the county party chair (or maybe because of it—sometimes young partisan activist types have better politics than the politicians themselves). Teacher Lisa Weber is not expected to make the runoff.
HD-27
Ronald Reynolds (i) vs. Rodrigo Carreon
Ron Reynolds was convicted of a complicated kickback scheme he and other “ambulance chasing” lawyers were running in 2015. He pleaded down to a misdemeanor which allowed him to keep his state House seat. He narrowly survived a 2016 primary 53-47, then won his 2018 primary 61-39 and 2020 primary 66-34. He’s obviously past his period of maximum vulnerability from the scandal, but Rodrigo Carreon, something of a perennial candidate, is trying anyway. We expect Reynolds to win easily.
HD-38
Erin Elizabeth Gamez vs. Jonathan Gracia
This Brownsville seat is currently vacant, after Eddie Lucio III, son of Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., made what appears to be an early exit from public life after he couldn’t get the support he needed to run for daddy’s seat in the state Senate. The quiet race to replace him pits Erin Gamez against Jonathan Gracia. In a familiar theme for many RGV races, Gracia is an old political hand, currently serving as a Justice of the Peace, while Erin Gamez is a lawyer who attempted to unseat Lucio III in 2020 and nearly succeeded. She’s no progressive, but her labor support and her 2020 decision to take on the conservative Lucios has to mean something.
HD-42
Richard Peña Raymond (i) vs. JD Delgado
You could feel the old guard of Laredo beginning to crack in 2020. In addition to Henry Cuellar’s unexpectedly soft showing, his sister lost reelection for Tax Assessor, and his choice for county party chair was soundly defeated. If this is the year they finally crack, watch Richard Peña Raymond—he’s represented Laredo in the state House since the mid 90s, and is, despite being a happy partisan warrior, now, by some metrics, the most conservative Democrat in the state house after Ryan Guillen switched parties. His opponent, shipping and ambulance company owner JD Delgado, isn’t going to be that much better—he still brands himself as a “moderate Democrat” and endorsed Henry Cuellar for reelection—but he sounds like someone who’d be at least moderate like an average RGV Democrat. The Texas AFL-CIO took the unusual step of not endorsing in this race despite Raymond’s incumbency, and the Texas AFT even endorsed Delgado. If nothing else, Delgado is not who the people currently running Laredo politics want in that role, which is good enough.
HD-45
Erin Zwiener (i) vs. Jessica Mejía vs. Angela Villescaz
State Rep. Erin Zwiener has two primary challengers, and…there’s not much to say about them, really. Zwiener is likely to win by a lot. If she doesn’t, it’ll be because she failed to successfully reach out to Latino voters, who make up a much higher share of her district’s population after redistricting. (Zwiener is Anglo; Mejía and Villescaz are both Latina.)
HD-50
James Talarico (i) vs. David Alcorta
James Talarico was one of the four Democrats who ended the quorum-busting that Texas House Democrats had engaged in to prevent Texas Republicans from enacting a brutal gerrymander and voting restrictions; both ultimately passed, in part because of Talarico returning. Republicans collapsed the two Democratic districts north of Austin into one, forcing Talarico to run in a district that’s mostly new to him; fortunately for Talarico, the other incumbent isn’t running for reelection, so Talarico has the 50th mostly to himself. Progressive David Alcorta is also running, but calling him a longshot is being optimistic.
HD-51
Cody Arn vs. Bino Cadenas vs. Lulu Flores vs. Mike Hendrix vs. Claire Campos-O’Neal vs. Cynthia Valadez-Mata vs. Matt Worthington
Eddie Rodriguez is retiring from the state House to fulfill a lifelong dream of publicly embarrassing himself in a congressional race. He leaves behind a packed field fighting for his diverse southeast Austin district. The overwhelming favorite is Lulu Flores, a lawyer supported by labor and most elected officials in Travis County. She’s unfortunately on the moderate side for Austin (though she is still to Eddie Rodriguez’s left, given her lack of malice towards homeless people). A more progressive option is Matt Worthington, supported by Sunrise, Austin College Democrats, and a few other progressive groups. Worthington has raised a decent chunk of money (Flores outspent him $85K to $54K in the final stretch) but he’s facing an uphill battle. Also worth watching are Mike Hendrix, who would be the only gay man in the legislature, and has raised some money; and organizer Cynthia Valadez-Mata, who has put together a surprisingly strong grassroots effort on very little money.
HD-70
Cassandra Garcia Hernandez vs. Mihaela Elizabeth Plesa vs. Lorenzo Sanchez
HD-70 is a bizarre-looking gangly mess, a Democratic vote sink in the previously Republican stronghold of Collin County added to redistricting plans at the last minute to avoid every other district in the county flipping in four years. This is territory that is zooming left, going from 46-48 for Trump in 2016 to 55-44 for Biden in 2020. We just called it a “Democratic vote sink”, but that’s not entirely true. Republicans still harbor hope of this district moving back towards them, which is unlikely. But it’s more Republican downballot (only voting for Democratic Senate candidate MJ Hegar by 3% in 2020, though Hegar did run behind Biden statewide), and they could manage one last hurrah this year. But it’s a matter of when, not if, this district becomes safely Democratic, and in the meantime it’s not like it’s going to be deciding control of the chamber, so it would be a shame to give this seat to a moderate just for their ability to win this year in particular.
While none of the candidates are particularly moderate, there’s a clear gap between Cassandra Garcia, a light frontrunner who has the support of most of the Dallas establishment, and Lorenzo Sanchez, who was the nominee for an overlapping state house district in 2020. Sanchez supports single payer and Garcia doesn’t. He wants to abolish cash bail, and she puts endorsements from law enforcement groups on her website. Sanchez should have some name recognition (as well as the Dallas Morning News endorsement, for some reason), but little money, while Garcia benefits from the strongest fundraising of the three. Mihaela Plesa falls somewhere in between Garcia and Sanchez in both fundraising and ideology.
HD-75
Mary González (i) vs. Rene Rodriguez
Mary González, a fairly progressive state Rep. from El Paso, is facing a serious-ish challenge from her right by former Socorro (pop. 34,000) Alderman Rene Rodriguez, who has been critical of her decision to break quorum to stop the voting rights bill, and has conspicuously refused to take a position on the abortion bounty hunter bill. González is a strong favorite here, but Rodriguez could still surprise us.
HD-76
James Burnett vs. Sarah DeMerchant vs. Vanesia Johnson vs. Suleman Lalani
The 76th district had been in El Paso for decades, but was eliminated this decade after years of sluggish population growth in the city. Instead of renumbering other districts, the legislature just took a newly created, Democratic district in the Houston suburbs of Fort Bend County and numbered it the 76th. Much of the new 76th is made of the old 26th, the site of a close general election and a close Democratic primary, in which Sarah DeMerchant narrowly beat Suleman Lalani, in 2020. Both are now running again. Most Houston Democrats and extra-party organizations like Sierra Club are DeMerchant backers here. DeMerchant has more moderate supporters, though both candidates are so light on policy it’s hard to tell who falls where. Party activist James Burnett also has some support, but he’s also reticent to give off ideological signals.
HD-79
Art Fierro (i) vs. Claudia Ordaz Perez (i)
In redistricting, El Paso County had to lose a seat in the state House, meaning two of its five Democratic state representatives would have to square off for the same seat. The unlucky two were Art Fierro and Claudia Ordaz Perez, neither one a progressive. Ordaz Perez was a favorite of developers during her time on the El Paso City Council, and she was also a perpetual headache for the El Paso City Attorney because of all the ethics complaints against her. In fact, when Ordaz Perez was first elected in 2020, we bluntly said her opponent was the better choice in our primary preview. But Ordaz Perez has nonetheless convincingly staked out a position to Fierro’s left, attacking him for abandoning Texas Democrats’ voting rights quorum break earlier than most of his colleagues. Some Texas progressives, still quite sore over the Democrats in the state House who restored the body’s quorum, have jumped on this primary as a chance to enforce party discipline and send a message to the other quorum-break quitters; one PAC backed by the Communications Workers of America, the Working Families Party, and the progressive-leaning Texas Organizing Project decided to make Fierro one of their very first targets, committing to spend a sizable sum against him. (The PAC, Texans for Better Democrats, is spending in just one other state legislative race, aiming to unseat Houston state Rep. Harold Dutton—more on him later.)
HD-92
Salman Bhojani vs. Tracy Scott vs. Dinesh Sharma
Just like HD-70 above, this district was created out of whole cloth at the last minute to prevent the entire Tarrant County gerrymander from collapsing in on itself. This race is realistically between Euless (pop 61,000) City Councilor Salman Bhojani, and Tracy Scott, a longtime staffer and party activist. Bhojani is the choice of labor, while Tracy Scott is the choice of charter schools, making this an easy vote.
HD-100
Daniel Davis Clayton vs. Sandra Crenshaw vs. Marquis Hawkins vs. Venton Jones
Just two years after primarying a moderate incumbent out of office, state Rep. Jasmine Crockett is leaving this central Dallas district to run for Congress. The #3 and #4 candidates from that primary are back: Sandra Crenshaw, a perennial candidate with a troubled past who served one term on the Dallas City Council in the 90s, and Daniel Davis Clayton, an aide to state Sen. Royce West and mild establishment favorite. He is, of course, painfully moderate. Venton Jones, also supported by many in the city’s political elite, is at least anti-charter, and would be the only openly gay man in the state house. Marquis Hawkins, an airline lobbyist, is also running.
HD-113
Rhetta Andrews Bowers (i) vs. Uduak Nkanga
Rhetta Bowers unseated a Republican in 2018 and survived an expensive reelection race in 2020. When they got the chance to gerrymander the state legislature for another decade, Republicans conceded that they weren’t winning her district back—so they packed it full of Democrats to make other Dallas-area districts redder. Now in a deep-blue district, Bowers’s only obstacle to a third term is nonprofit leader Uduak Nkanga, who’s running a shoestring campaign with the support of the local Our Revolution chapter.
HD-114
John Bryant vs. Charlie Gearing vs. Alexandra Guio vs. Chris Leal vs. Kendall Scudder
This may be the wildest house race in the state. In one corner we have the hotshot lawyer Chris Gearing, who was originally planning on a quixotic congressional bid before this district opened up. In another we have John Bryant, an ex-congressman himself who came out of retirement after 25 years to run for this house seat, geographically similar to his old district, but a generation different in composition. In the next corner is Alexandra Guio, a Colombian immigrant supported by multiple members of Dallas’s legislative caucus, but who has had to defend her votes in multiple GOP primaries. The corner after that holds Kendall Scudder, the 2018 nominee for an overlapping Senate district. Finally, we come to Chris Leal, the progressive in the race, something he wants to let you know in big, bold letters. To the surprise of no one, most of the money in this race has gone to the lawyer (Gearing) and the ex-officeholder (Bryant), but what Leal lacks in money he makes up for in manpower from both labor unions and grassroots organizations like the Texas Organizing Project and Our Revolution.
HD-124
Josey Garcia vs. Steven Gilmore vs. Gerald Brian Lopez
Talk about left, right, and center. Left, here, is Steven Gilmore, a DSA member who is running a campaign on no budget and with no outside support. Well, almost no outside support: the AFL-CIO made a rare dual endorsement of him and Gerald Lopez. While that was likely an attempt to block Garcia more than anything, he did receive the lone endorsement of TSEU COPE, one of the unions under that umbrella. Speaking of Garcia, she would be the “right” in this race: bankrolled by charter schools, preaching the virtues of fiscal responsibility and “post 9/11 patriotism”. Center is Gerald Lopez, a former staffer to Councilman (now state Rep.) Ray Lopez and current Northside School Board member.
HD-125
Ray Lopez (i) vs. Eric Michael Garza
Local attorney Eric Michael Garza is challenging Ray Lopez, a state representative since 2019 and a fixture in San Antonio politics since the 2000s. There doesn’t seem to be any ideological divide or personal scandal involved. Lopez is a strong favorite.
HD-131
Alma Allen (i) vs. James Guillory vs. Crystal Dillard
State Rep. Alma Allen faces local hotelier and housing developer James Guillory. If “hotelier and housing developer” wasn’t bad enough for you, his biggest donor by far was the PAC Texans for Lawsuit Reform, and if that name is setting off “tort reform” alarm bells in your head, good job: they are in fact a conservative front group for corporate interests that usually gets involved in Republican primaries. They shelled out upwards of $10,000 on mailers backing Guillory. Local schoolteacher Crystal Dillard’s presence on the ballot could force a runoff if the race is close.
HD-142
Harold Dutton (i) vs. Candis Houston
Harold Dutton is simply awful. There’s no sugarcoating it. This is a man who revived a Republican ban on trans kids playing on the sports team matching their identities in retaliation for his fellow Democrats tanking a bill that would’ve given the conservative state government the authority to take over school districts at will. He never joined Texas Democrats’ first, shorter quorum break, and was the very first Democrat to abandon the second quorum break. Unions hate him, progressives hate him, LGBTQ advocates hate him, and even the Democratic establishment is lukewarm at best. This is all to say that there’s a pretty broad coalition behind Candis Houston, a local teachers’ union president who promises to be a reliable Democratic vote and a steadfast supporter of LGBTQ rights. And Dutton already appeared vulnerable: in 2020, he scraped past Houston City Councilor Jerry Davis in a close primary runoff election. Besides Henry Cuellar, Dutton might be the most satisfying incumbent defeat we could possibly see tonight.
HD-147
Danielle Keys Bess vs. Reagan Denise Flowers vs. Awkete Hines vs. Somtoochukwu Ik-Ejiofor vs. Jolanda Jones vs. Namrata “Nam” Subramanian vs. Aurelia Wagner
It’s the final state house race, and oh, look, at that, everybody in Houston is running for it. The progressives in this race are teachers Nam Subramanian and Aurelia Wagner. Subramanian has a decent amount of campaign cash, while Wagner has labor and progressive groups including the Texas Organizing Project. Danielle Keys Bess, Reagan Flowers, and Jolanda Jones each represent various elements of the Harris County establishment. Wagner making the runoff would be ideal here; if she doesn’t, hope that Subramanian does.