Election and Endorsement News for February 1

LTGOV: The Houston Chronicle’s Andrea Zelinski reported that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s (R) campaign has purchased more than $1M in air time for advertising in the Houston TV market and $840K in the Dallas/Fort Worth market. Ads are scheduled to run during the Olympics,...

Campaign News for January 25

TAB Endorsements: The Texas Assoc. of Business PAC released its list of endorsements for the 2018 primaries. The list is mostly comprised of incumbents, but the group also endorsed: Angela Paxton for open SD8 Cody Harris for open HD8 Cynthia Flores for open HD52...

Separation Seen in Some House Open-seat Races

January semiannual reports were due for state officeholders and candidates on Tuesday. They cover contributions received and expenditures made during the second half of 2017. For most primary challengers and open-seat candidates, they are the first window into their...

State and Local Election News for December 7

Filing for a place on the 2018 continues until 6 p.m. local time on Monday. So far, at least 377 candidates have filed for statewide, legislative and board of education offices, and at least 167 have filed to represent Texas in Congress. This means about 30% of all...

State Candidate Filing News for December 6

Filing for a place on the 2018 continues until 6 p.m. local time on Monday. Please see our Crib Sheets for candidates’ filing status. HD4 open: Gun Barrel City resident Earl Brunner established a campaign committee for a potential run for the seat being vacated by...

Early Voting Ends and Other Election News for November 3

Early voting in person concluded today. Turnout in the state’s 15 most populous counties creeped past 2% by the end of yesterday. Through the first 11 days of early voting, less than 200K people voted in those counties out of 9.8M registered voters. This is less than...

Candidate News and Announcements for October 23

Early Voting is underway for the November 6 general and constitutional amendment election. SD10: Democratic challenger Beverly Powell resigned her seat on the Burleson ISD Board of Trustees to “focus full-time on her race” for SD10. Powell will continue to serve until...

Campaign Announcements and News for September 27

HD54: At Billy Bob’s Burgers in Killeen, Salado veterinarian and former Killeen ISD trustee Brad Buckley announced he would challenge Rep. Scott Cosper (R-Killeen) in the Republican primary. We previously reported that Buckley had formed a campaign committee for the...

Hearings on Hold and Other Labor Day Election News

Redistricting: The federal court overseeing litigation over the state’s congressional and House maps has canceled hearings scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary stay. SD31: Amarillo restaurateur Victor Leal re-activated...

Laubenberg Retiring and Other Election News for August 31

Redistricting: As expected, the state has requested the U.S. Supreme Court stay a lower court ruling invalidating nine Texas House districts pending appeal. The high court has already granted a similar stay of a decision made by the same three-judge panel invalidating...

‘Trump Effect’ Limited to Trump in Collin Co.

At least in Collin Co., the so-called “Trump effect” was limited to Trump himself. Democrats gained some ground on Republicans in terms of straight-ticket voters, but full-ballot voters remained friendly to all Republicans not named Trump. All five House districts...

Other Campaign Finance Highlights

We previously covered the 30-day-out reports for most competitive and potentially competitive House races. Since we published it, we became aware of a mistake with HD144. We erroneously used Rep. Gilbert Peña’s (R-Pasadena) July semiannual report in our...