Jacksboro attorney David Spiller (R) defeated Craig Carter (R), 62%-38%, in today’s (Tuesday) special runoff election to serve the unexpired House term of Sen. Drew Springer (R-Muenster).
Spiller won all but three of the district’s 22 counties. He took 85% of the vote in Jack Co., his home county. He received nearly the same number of votes in the runoff (4,078) as in the January 23 special election (4,010). Carter received nearly 900 more votes in the runoff than in the special election.
Turnout was 6.6% of registered voters, down from 9.1% for the special election. Turnout was highest in Jack (17.4%), King (12.2%), Throckmorton (10.9%) and Motley (10.6%) Cos. Those same four counties had the highest turnout in the special election. Runoff turnout was lowest in Crosby (3.2%), Collingsworth (4.0%), Fisher (4.0%) and Garza (4.3%) Cos.
Spiller finished the special election 25.8 percentage points ahead of Carter. It was the third largest gap between runoff qualifiers for a congressional or legislative special election since 1996.
CD6 special: Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered a May 1 special election to succeed the late U.S. Rep. Ron Wright (R-Arlington). Candidates must file with the Secretary of State by March 3. Early voting will be April 19-27. At least 13 candidates have filed campaign paperwork, announced their candidacies or are believed to be considering the race, including Reps. Jake Ellzey (R-Waxahachie) and Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington).
Local Elections: Rep. Scott Sanford (R-McKinney) filed a bill that would require candidates for municipal office to run with partisan affiliations. House Bill 2092 does not appear to require primary elections or other nominating requirements for local office. Current law permits home-rule cities to have partisan elections, but none do.
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