Democratic women did well in Texas yesterday: Veronica Escobar, Dayna Steele, Sylvia GarciaLet's start with this: among Texas' 15 most populated counties, which are the only ones the Secretary of State announces, early voting in the Democratic primaries-- so in places like Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio...-- spiked by 105% from the 2014 midterm. That means more than doubled. Over in crazyyown, there was an increase as well-- 15% That's called an enthusiasm gap.The weirdest congressional race decided last night was in west Houston (TX-07), whereLaura Moser was lagging in the absentee ballots. Then she was savagely attacked by the DCCC and everything turned around for her. People hate the DCCC and their vile tactics so much that she jumped ahead and wound up beating the other progressive candidate, Jason Westin, and the perceived DCCC fave Alex Triantaphyllis. So the runoff will be between Laura Moser and an anti-union EMILY's List corporate Dem named Lizzie Fletcher.Over in El Paso (TX-16), the progressive candidate, Veronica Escobar, beat a corporate Dem self-funder, Dori Fenenbock to replace Beto O'Rourke, who is taking on Ted Cruz for the U.S. Senate seat in November. Fenenbock put $350,030 of her own into the race and spent $743,041 to Escobar's $528,274. The district has a PVI of D+17 and there is no serious Republican challenge, which means that Texas has just elected to Congress, in effect, it's first Latina. (Escobar got more votes than both the Republicans and Fenenbock combined.) There will be no runoff in this one.Another district with no runoff is TX-36 (east of Houston), where progressive Dayna Steele trounced her Democratic opponent with over 70% of the vote and will face off against lunatic extremist Brian Babin in November. Please consider helping replenish Dayna's campaign war chest here.In the Austin-San Antonio corridor district (TX-21), three progressives battled conservative "ex"-Republican Joseph Kopser. The runoff will include one of the progressives, Mary Wilson, and Kopser, who came in second.The other essential race was in TX-23, which stretches from the San Antonio suburbs south along the Rio Grande to the suburbs east of El Paso. The DCCC candidate, a Blue Dog and New Dem pushed by the Castro Machine, Jay Hulings, failed to make the runoff, which will consist of Gina Jones and fierce Berniecrat, Rick Trevino. The winner of the runoff will face mainstream GOP incumbent Will Hurd.Chris Perry will battle Julie Oliver for the Democratic nomination to take on Roger Williams in TX-25, a gerrymandered district that stretches from the suburbs south of Ft. Worth all the way into Central Austin.Another heavily Democratic district, south Houston's 29th district, where Gene Green is retiring, in effect elected another Latina, Sylvia Garcia, who pulverized Tahir Javed, who spent $800,000 of his own money. There is no serious Republican challenge in this PVI D+19 district. So that's two Texas Latinas going to Congress in 2019. Garcia is more of a garden variety Democrat than Escobar but she'll probably be an upgrade over Green.And the last race we were following, north of Dallas (TX-32) had 7 Democrats vying to challenge Pete Sessions in a district that gets a little less red by the day. Hillary narrowly beat Trump. The top 2 vote-getters are Colin Allred and Lillian Salerno, the Blue America-backed candidate. Both worked in the Obama administration, although Salerno is more the progressive and Allred more of a moderate. Like with Dayna, please consider helping replenish Lillians campaign war chest here.
Source