Texas Remains Red

Here are the Election Results, Texas-style...

Texas November 4, 2008 election night highlights

Early voting was the winner with 47 % of the voters casting their votes before Nov 4.
With 13,575,062 registered voters in Texas, 59% cast their ballots this election cycle.

At the top of the ticket, McCain carried TX with 55%.

US Congress – Texas picked up one Republican seat and kept Sen. Cornyn.

Sen. John Cornyn was re-elected with 55% of the vote.

Republicans picked up a US House seat with Pete Olson defeating incumbent Nick Lampson who took Tom DeLay’s seat in a special election for HD 22.

So Texans will now send 20 Republicans and 12 Democrats to DC, a pickup of one Republican seat.

Texas Statewide elections saw no changes

Republican Michael Williams won re-election to the Texas Railroad Commission with 52% of the vote.

Each of the 3 sitting Texas Supreme Court Justices on the ballot won re-election with 51 and 52% margins. All 3 are Republicans.

Three Republicans on the Court of Criminal Appeals handily won re-election.

State Board of Education saw no upsets as the five Republicans and two Democrats won their re-election bids.

TX Senate – D’s gained 1 seat, one in run-off, now 19 R’s, 12 D’s

Of the seats up this cycle, only one incumbent lost as Republican Kim Brimer lost his bid for re-election to Wendy Davis in SD 10. That shifted one seat from the Republicans to the Democrats making the totals now 19 R’s and 12 D’s.

The special election for SD 7, Kyle Janek’s vacated seat, is in a run-off between Democrat Chris Bell and Republican Joan Huffman. They received 38% and 26% respectively.

TX House – D’s gained 3 seats now 76 R’s, 74 D/s

HD 11 – Republican Brian Walker came within .2% of taking out incumbent Chuck Hopson losing by 102 out of 52,830 votes cast.

HD 17 – Republican Tim Kleinschmidt beat Donnie Dippel for Robby Cook’s seat, an R pick-up.

HD 29 – Randy Webber, Republican handily defeated Kevin Murphy for the Mike O’Day seat. The seat didn’t change parties

HD 32 – Todd Hunter defeated Democrat incumbent Juan Garcia 50% to 47%.

HD 47 – Donna Keel failed to unseat Democrat Valinda Bolton.

HD 48 – Pam Waggoner failed to take Democrat Donna Howard’s seat.

HD 52 – In this open seat once vacated by Mike Krusee, this once considered safe Republican seat went to Democrat Diana Maldonado who beat Brian Daniel by less than 1%. The Libertarian candidate got almost 4%.

HD 55 – open seat - Republican Ralph Sheffield handily beat Democrat Sam Murphey
(this is formerly the Republican Diane Delisi seat)

HD 73 – Republican Doug Miller handily defeated Daniel Boone in this open seat after defeating Nathan Macias in the primary.

HD 78 – Republican Dee Margo who beat Pat Haggerty in the primary was defeated by Democrat Joseph Moody so this El Paso seat goes to the Democrats.

HD 81 – Tryon Lewis easily picked up the former Buddy West open seat.

HD 82 – Speaker Tom Craddick easily beat challenger Bill Dingus

HD 96 – Democrat Chris Turner unseated Republican incumbent Bill Zedler 51-47%.

HD 97 – Republican Challenger Mark Shelton defeated incumbent Dan Barrett 55-45%.

HD 101 – Democrat Robert Miklos defeated Republican Mike Anderson by 1.2%
(The Republican incumbent Thomas Latham was defeated in the primaries)

HD 102 – Democrat Challenger Carol Kent defeated incumbent Tony Goolsby 53-47%.

HD 105 – Incumbent Republican Linda Harper-Brown narrowly defeated challenger Bob Romano by a mere 25 out of 40,700 votes cast.

HD 107 – Conservative Bill Keffer failed to unseat incumbent Democrat Allen Vaught to win back the seat he lost last cycle. The vote was 50-47%.

HD 112 – Republican Angie Button won this seat with 56% of the vote against Democrat Sandra Vule. The Libertarian candidate earned over 4% of the vote in this open seat.

HD 130 – Republican Allan Fletcher beat libertarian candidate William Gray Junior to keep this seat Republican after defeating Corbin Van Arsdale in the primary.

HD 133 – Incumbent Republican Jim Murphy lost to Democrat Kristi Thibaut by 464 votes.

HD 144 – Republican Ken Legler defeated Joel Redmond for this open seat formerly held by Republican Robert Talton.


Bond Initiatives

A total of 37 School districts had bond initiatives on the November ballot. Only 11 failed, bringing the total debt passed in one day in Texas to a startling $1.4 billion. The largest was for $219 million in Allen, Texas. It appears even in this tough economy, most passed. The listing is here: http://s3-texasisd.s3.amazonaws.com/Public/Nov08_bond.pdf


Tax Rollback Elections

It appears that around 47% of the tax rollback elections in 49 ISD’s passed. That means that half the time, voters didn’t allow the taxing authority to take in more revenue. Six are slated for later this year. We thank the Texas ISD website for this information and for the bond initiative data: http://s3-texasisd.s3.amazonaws.com/Public/Nov08_TRE.pdf


Harris County

218,182 registered voters and 62.6% of them participated in this election
47% of the Republicans voted straight party ticket compared to 53% of the Democrats; but 59% of the early voting Democrats cast straight party votes; 119,484 cast a vote in the open senate seat SD 17 (Chris Bell and Joan Huffman are headed to a runoff)

Republican County Judge Ed Emmett won handily with 54% of the vote; Republican County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt won with 54% of the vote, Pct 3 County Commissioner Steve Radack won with 60%.

Almost 16% under voted down ballot, and a number of local judges were unseated. Even though Obama won big in this Houston area, Republicans Ed Emmit was re-elected as County Judge and taxpayer advocate Paul Bettencourt kept his seat as Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector.