Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Patrick, Paxton, Alameel, and... Hogan

Early returns show those four leading their races by wide margins.

Ryan Sitton is on the way to defeating the only statewide Tea Partier losing tonight, Wayne Christian, in the GOP runoff for the Texas Railroad Commission.

In the days to come, political analysts will try to explain how the Railroad Commission race became the only high profile Republican runoff in which the supposed Tea Party favorite lost. Jim Malewitz at the Texas Tribune notes that Sitton outspent Christian. Sitton appeared to be the favorite of the oil and gas industry. He had numerous personal endorsements from industry leaders and some established Republican figures (although more money and endorsements didn’t seem to help some other candidates the runoffs).

Sitton will now face Democrat Steve Brown and Libertarian Mark Miller in the general election.

"Sonogram" Sid Miller is beating Tommy Merritt for Republican ag commissioner by a 55-45 margin.

In the race to replace Steve Stockman in CD-36, Woodville dentist Brian Babin leads Tea Party-preferred Ben Streusand also by 55-45 (2% of precincts reporting).

Ralph Hall, the nation's oldest and longest-serving Congressman, became the first in the nation to lose his primary.  Like Dewhurst and many others, he got TeaBagged.

The Texas Tribune called the GOP lite gov race for Patrick at 7:40 p.m.  His lead then was more than 100,000 votes, 63-36% and climbing.

With a bit more than 3% of the state's precincts reporting, Jim Hogan -- no campaign, no donations -- is defeating Kinky Friedman to be the Democratic nominee for agriculture commissioner, 56-44.

Despite no advertising efforts, no website and only one campaign trip to meet with reporters in Austin, Hogan,a former dairy farm operator and current insurance agent, received 4,310 more votes than Friedman in March, making him the front-runner in tonight’s Democratic runoff.

Hogan has no campaign manager or staff and has received no campaign contributions.

Emails obtained by The Dallas Morning News in January revealed the Friedman campaign considered offering Hogan a meeting with Willie Nelson to entice him to drop out of the March primary. The offer was never presented to Hogan, and Friedman said both he and Nelson had no knowledge of the plan.

Shortly after 8 pm, the AP called the race for Hogan.

David Alameel is crushing Kesha Rogers, 72-28, for the right to be crushed by John Cornyn in November.

More postings in the morning.

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