Texas GOP Primary Legislative Results

The Texas GOP legislative primary results are a mix of good and bad for conservatives.

In CD-22, the conservative vote was split and Shelley Sekula-Gibbs and Pete Olson led the field. Of the two, Pete Olson would be the much better Representative. Gibbs was such a disaster in her 7 days in office prior, that she got the Congressional office staff to quit en masse.

In the SBOE, the incumbent Pat Hardy beat back a challenge from religious right Maddox.

The State Senate - Incumbents Williams and Estes both survived challenges.

The State House races - Most challenged incumbents were returned. Conservatives like Phil King and Frank Corte Jr won handily. Betty Brown beat Wade Gent by a small margin. Charles "Doc" Anderson beat back Jonathan Sibley. Bill Zedler. And RINOs Charlie Geren (challenged by Tom Annunziato) and Delwin Jones (challenged by Joe D. Hnatek) beat back conservative rivals.

But Pat Haggerty lost to Dee Margo.

One heartbreaking loss was Nathan Macias in HD73, who lost his primary to Doug Miller by just a 40 votes! Macias was attacked by dishonest ads that were actually declared illegal and pulled by a Judge because it was using corporate gambling money. The Early vote showed that Miller was ahead of Macias by 700 votes, then Macias gained most but not all of it on election day.

The only other notable incumbent loss was Corbin Van Arsdale losing to Dan Patrick-backed Allen Fletcher.

In open races: Here in Travis, Pam Waggoner won her primary handily for HD48. In HD52 Dee Hobbs and Bryan Daniel were the top vote-getters for the runoff. In HD55, Ralph Sheffield and Martha Tyroch will be in the runoff.

A decidedly mixed bag, as a lot of good conservative hopefuls were not promoted to the major league, and a lot of non-conservatives were. Where this leaves key initiatives in Texas lege will require further study.

UPDATE: Corrected HD52 runoff choices. It's Dee Hobbs and Bryan Daniel.