AG: In a statement, the Ken Paxton campaign said it raised “well over $1 million in political contributions” during the final dozen days of June and has nearly $5.3M on hand. At this point in 2013, Paxton raised $279K following the end of the legislative session and had $1.6M on hand for what would be an open-seat race for his current office.

CCA7: San Antonio criminal defense attorney Don Flanary established a campaign committee for a potential challenge of Judge Barbara Hervey (R). Past campaign contributions, endorsements and online activity suggests he would run as a Democrat.

CD2: Houston engineer Ali Khorasani established a federal campaign committee for a potential challenge of U.S. Rep. Ted Poe (R-Humble) as a Democrat. In May we reported he had launched ActBlue fundraising and Facebook pages for the race.

See our 2018 Challengers page for all 196 challengers and open seat candidates who we confirm have taken a formal step toward running for state and federal office from Texas in 2018.

San Angelo: Billie DeWitt edged out Steve Hampton by 29 votes in Saturday’s runoff election for the open D6 council seat. Hampton led DeWitt by 8 votes after early voting, which DeWitt overcame by winning 55% of the Election Day vote. In fact, DeWitt received 54% of the in-person vote but only 37% from voters mailing their ballots. Turnout was just north of 10%.

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