Nov 10, 2021 | Campaign News
The filing period begins Saturday for candidates seeking partisan nomination or intending to run as an independent candidate for the 2022 general election. Partisan candidates seeking offices and districts with territories located entirely within a single county must...
Nov 8, 2020 | General Elections, House Race Analyses
This is the first in a series of periodic analyses of the 2020 general election. The signs pointed to further Democratic gains in the Texas House of Representatives. Entering Election Day, there were 83 Republican-held seats and 67 Democrat-held seats. Two years...
Nov 1, 2020 | House Race Analyses, Political Climate
Yesterday (Saturday), we posed two fundamental questions that will be answered Tuesday, or shortly thereafter. We gave our best guess on the first question, whether Joe Biden will become the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry Texas since 1976 (No, but...
Oct 28, 2020 | Campaign Finance
Yesterday’s report about campaign finance results for key House races was missing details about a number of Democratic candidates’ 8-day-out reports. To be clear, they filed their reports on time, but the contribution and expenditure details were not yet available...
Oct 27, 2020 | breaking-news, Campaign Finance
The battle for the Texas House got expensive. Candidates in competitive seats collectively raised $39.3M during the past month, much of through in-kind contributions from a handful of sources. Republicans, bolstered by huge spending by Texans for Lawsuit Reform...
Oct 13, 2020 | Campaign News
Early voting has begun across Texas for the November 3 general election and continues through October 30. By most accounts, turnout is off to a torrid start. The Harris Co. Clerk’s office tweeted that 128K people voted in person today, plus 41K absentee ballots...
Oct 6, 2020 | Campaign Finance
Statewide and legislative candidates facing general election opposition reported raising nearly $27M since July 1. Democrats accounted for $12.4M of that figure, and Republican candidates raised $14.6M. Sixteen challengers out-raised their incumbent opponents for the...
Sep 25, 2020 | Campaign News
Single-punch, straight-party voting is back … for now. With 17 days to go before voters will begin going to the polls (assuming that lawsuit fails), a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against enforcing a state law, enacted in 2017, that eliminated the...
Sep 18, 2020 | Campaign News
SD30 special (Safe Republican): The conservative online publication The Texan reported that Midland oil executive Tim Dunn has loaned the Shelley Luther campaign $1M. Dunn is one of the largest contributors to Empower Texans PAC. Candidates’ 8-day-out campaign finance...
Aug 23, 2020 | House Race Analyses
For much of the past decade-plus, Harris Co. experienced a phenomenon I called “partisan mood swings.” Democrats running countywide – potentially all of them – tended to win in presidential election years. Republicans running countywide – often all of them – tended to...
Aug 12, 2020 | Campaign News
SD30 special (Safe Republican): Term-limited Denton Mayor Chris Watts established a campaign committee for a potential run for the seat being vacated by Sen. Pat Fallon (R-Prosper). Watts was first elected in 2014 and re-elected twice. His final term was to have ended...
Aug 3, 2020 | Campaign News
Former President Barack Obama released his “first wave” of 2020 endorsements, which included 27 Texas House and U.S. House incumbents, challengers and open-seat candidates: House incumbents Erin Zwiener (HD45), James Talarico (HD52), Jessica González (HD104), Terry...