Texas democrats surge to polls, in show of anti-trump sentiment

And more Democrats statewide voted early this year than even in 2016, the year that Donald Trump, a Republican, was elected to the White House.

Yet even as Democrats in the state’s biggest cities came out in large numbers, Republicans still cast more ballots overall thanks to their rural strength.

The most heavily anticipated contests were in three racially diverse House districts that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, won in 2016 but where incumbent Republican lawmakers are seeking re-election.

And none was more closely watched than the Democratic primary race in Houston to take on Rep. John Culberson.

The progressive Laura Moser made the May 22 runoff despite a late attempt by the House Democratic campaign arm to derail her candidacy. Moser, an author and an organizer, trailed Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a lawyer, but Fletcher failed to garner 50 percent of the vote, so they will face off again in a race that will be something of a proxy battle between the moderate and more liberal wings of the Democratic Party.

Fearing that Moser is too liberal to defeat Culberson in an affluent and historically Republican district, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took the rare step last month of publicly attacking her as “a Washington insider who begrudgingly moved to Houston to run for Congress.”

However, the broadside may have only lifted Moser — who grew up in Houston but lived in Washington while her husband worked in Democratic politics there — in a primary that featured seven candidates capturing votes.

In an even more Democratic-leaning seat, Gina Ortiz Jones, a lesbian and Iraq War veteran who would be the first openly gay member of Congress from Texas, was the top vote-getter in a district that stretches south from San Antonio to the Rio Grande and west to El Paso. The seat is held by Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican who has narrowly won twice, but Democrats argue that Hurd will have a more difficult time surviving the backlash to Trump.

“The excitement — you can feel it,” said Jones, a former Air Force officer who moved to San Antonio after serving in President Barack Obama’s administration. “Folks are hungry for a win in this district.”

Jones is part of a wave of Democratic women, African-American and Hispanic people, gays, lesbians and even journalists who are running for office for the first time in Texas, in large part in reaction to the Trump administration.

She will face either Judy Canales, who served in Obama’s Agriculture Department, or Rick Treviño, a high school teacher, in the May runoff.

And in a Dallas-area district, Rep. Pete Sessions, a veteran Republican, is facing an energized left. Colin Allred, a former Obama Housing and Urban Development Department official and an NFL veteran, advanced to the runoff and will compete against either Lillian Salerno, another official in Obama’s Agriculture Department, or a former television reporter, Brett Shipp, for the nomination.

In statewide races, George P. Bush, the state land commissioner and a son of former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, averted a runoff after a somewhat difficult primary campaign against Jerry Patterson, who previously held the job and accused Bush of mismanaging the General Land Office so badly that it brought him out of retirement.

Bush, one of the few members of his family to back Trump, was scared enough about the challenge that he produced fliers noting that he was “standing beside our president.” And he offered Trump a “MAGA” post last week on Twitter — invoking the president’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” — after Trump offered his support via tweet and noted that Bush had supported him “when it wasn’t the politically correct thing to do.”

Sen. Ted Cruz faced minimal opposition in the Republican primary, but his Democratic opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, won the nomination while losing a substantial number of votes to two little-known opponents, demonstrating that he is not well known yet among many of the state’s voters.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican with a $43 million war chest, was renominated and will face either Lupe Valdez, the former Dallas County sheriff, or Andrew White, the son of former Gov. Mark White, in the general election.

Yet even while Abbott is an overwhelming favorite for re-election, he proved that he did not have an iron grip on his party: Two of the three Republican state representatives he opposed as part of an unusual intervention against incumbents still managed to win.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Texas democrats surge to polls, in show of anti-trump sentiment

Nearly 886,000 Texans cast ballots early in the state’s 15 most populous counties, the highest early-vote turnout in a nonpresidential election year in state history.

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