District 118 special election looks like a toss-up

The special election for Texas House District 118 won’t be decided until Tuesday night, but I can already identify a couple of winners in this campaign.

First, there’s veteran South Side operative JoAnn Ramon, whose firm, Ramon & Associates, has received nearly

$40,000 from the campaign of local attorney Desi Martinez.

Then there’s Republican consultant Craig Murphy, whose firm, Murphy Nasica & Associates, has taken in nearly

$60,000 from the campaign of John Lujan, the retired firefighter who briefly represented District 118 after winning a special-election contest nearly six years ago.

It’s easy to find echoes of that election in the current race.

In November 2015, we had three Democrats and three Republicans competing for a House seat that normally falls pretty safely into the Democratic column. The current special election features three Democrats and two Republicans.

The previous special election ended in a runoff, with a Republican (Lujan) competing against a Democrat (Tomás Uresti) who was related to a former District 118 representative.

In the current special election, we’re almost certainly headed for another runoff. It also could feature a Republican squaring off against a Democratic relative of a former state rep, if Katie Farias, the daughter-in-law of former lawmaker Joe Farias, makes it past the first round.

Beyond the surface similarities with the last District 118 special election, however, everything is a mystery in this contest, which Gov. Greg Abbott called after Democratic incumbent Leo Pacheco stepped down to take a teaching position at San Antonio College.

Martinez has strong connections within the legal community and has loaned $60,000 of his own funds to his campaign, but we don’t know how all of that will translate into votes.

Frank Ramirez is a sharp, young former legislative and council aide who gives off 2011era Rey Saldaña vibes. He’s got the support of County Judge Nelson Wolff, the AFL-CIO and the Texas Organizing Project.

But he’s never run for office before.

Farias is a Southside Independent School District trustee and former staffer for state Sen. Roland Gutierrez. She’s driven by a passion for public education and has the backing of Gutierrez and Annie’s List.

On the Republican side, there’s Lujan, as affable a political candidate as you could hope to meet. He was recruited to run by Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, and Phelan’s campaign has contributed $21,400 in polling services to Lujan’s effort.

Finally, there’s Adam Salyer, a real-estate agent who is a fullfledged devotee of former Republican President Donald Trump.

On Friday morning, Salyer volunteers set up a white canopy tent outside the early-voting polling site at Julia Yates Semmes Library.

The tent displayed a photo of Trump as well as a huge banner that read: “Trump 2024: Take America Back.” Salyer also has promoted the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump by voter fraud.

While the district is anchored on the South Side, it winds its way up to the Northeast Side of Bexar County, where Semmes Library is located. The library appeared to be the most promising of the five early-voting sites for the Republican hopefuls and Salyer’s campaign had the strongest presence there.

While there’s barely been enough time for candidates to get their names out to voters, some of the nuances of this campaign have been fascinating.

For example, Farias has framed her candidacy as a fight against what she refers to as a Republican “war on women,” citing the recently enacted state law which bans abortions after six weeks.

In doing so, Farias has identified Lujan, an ardent opponent of legalized abortion, as a contributor to that war.

“Under Greg Abbott and John Lujan, women make 79 cents for every one dollar men make,” Farias says in a campaign video that includes an image of Lujan.

“Six thousand rape kits are untested. They’ve banned masks in schools, putting our children at risk. Now they take away a woman’s right to choose when we have children? I don’t think so.”

There’s also the way the Texas Organizing Project, a major grassroots presence in recent

San Antonio elections, has lent its canvassing and phone-banking muscle to Ramirez, which should boost his stature with progressive voters.

If you follow the money, it’s clear that Texas Republicans see Lujan as their best shot to flip the district.

That’s demonstrated not only by Phelan’s help, but by a finalweek, in-kind donation of $11,950 from Abbott’s campaign fund for advertising. Lujan has also received combined contributions of $85,000 from Texans for Lawsuit Reform and Texans for Responsible Government, a political action committee formed by deep-pocketed Hill Country megadonors Michael and Mary Porter.

To be sure, special elections are a law unto themselves. But they can give us hints about the barometric pressure that’s forming in our political system. Tuesday night we’ll get one of those hints.