Grieder: Abbott, others are taught a lesson
beads on his abacus and reported that the message had been sent. Davis defeated Dokupil by a 12point margin.
Davis’s victory wasn’t surprising. But it was one of the most straightforward results on an otherwise cryptic Election Day.
The Texas primary received more attention than usual this year, especially after early voting began. Although there have been a number of high-profile special elections since Donald Trump was elected president, ours was the first primary of the 2018 election cycle.
Two takeaways
As has become customary in Texas, there were a number of intramural contests on the Republican side of the aisle. But there was also more intrigue in the Democratic primary than usual. And after early voting began, the national media seemed to notice, belatedly, that Texas is having an unusual election cycle. It’s been a long year, and Trump is not popular here.
Thanks to all of this commotion, the results of this year’s primaries are subject to interpretation. For me, there are two main takeaways.
The first is that Texas is trending purple, at least. There were roughly a million votes cast in the Democratic primary, compared to 1.5 million on the Republican side; that’s a big gap. But it’s one that suggests that Republicans are treating 2018 as a typical midterm election cycle, and Democrats see it as something more important than that.
The second is that Texans are in the mood to vote, and they are not in the mood to be meddled with while doing so. The Republican primary in House District 134 illustrated this vividly, but voters across the state sent a similar message to the various individuals and interest groups who were hoping to wield some kind of influence over them.
Amusing results
Republicans in House District 122, for example, also rejected Abbott’s bid to unseat State Rep. Lyle Larson, who defeated the governor’s preferred candidate, Chris Fails, by nearly 20 points. And most of the incumbents targeted by right-wing groups like Empower Texans and Texas Right to Life prevailed.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the 2nd Congressional District, where longtime incumbent Ted Poe is retiring, produced one of the most amusing results. Kathaleen Wall poured nearly $6 million into her own campaign, to little avail. The nomination will be decided in a runoff between state Rep. Kevin Roberts, who placed first in the primary, and former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw, who edged Wall out of the runoff by about 100 votes.
A similarly maverick ethos was apparent in the Democratic primary in the 7th Congressional District. In February, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee weighed in with a statement urging voters to opt for any of the candidates other than Laura Moser. The result was that Moser will face Lizzie Fletcher in the May 22 runoff.
Right to vote
But perhaps the most dispositive statement of purpose came courtesy of the Texas Democratic Party, which asked voters in its primary to weigh in on a proposition concerning the right to vote.
“Should every eligible Texan have the right to vote, made easier by automatic voter registration, the option to vote by mail, a state election holiday, and no corporate campaign influence, foreign interference, or illegal gerrymandering?”
Right-wing activists might not want Texans to have so many rights. National Democrats might not trust us to exercise them to achieve their preferred ends. But more than a million Texas voters weighed in on the question, as posed by Proposition 9, and about 95 percent of them said yes.