Beto O’Rourke is not happy today as his prediction for a democrat sweep of this special election in Texas did not come to fruition. Instead, the GOP candidate won by big margins, sending shock waves among local democrats.
The Dallas Morning News reports from Austin, TX:
Democrats called the race the most important election of the year.
They said it would set the tone for the general election in November.
They took in hundreds of thousands of dollars from national groups and even some of the party’s presidential candidates popped in for support.
Then, they got trounced by 16 percentage points in a record-breaking special election runoff for a statehouse district in the Houston suburbs. The result gave Republicans bragging rights in the first big political battle of the year and poured cold water on Democratic claims that they will take the Texas House in November.
The result in Tuesday’s special election for House District 28 was a significant blow to Democrats who had bet big that a win by their candidate, Eliz Markowitz, against Republican Gary Gates could be the first in a series of wins that would help them take control of the Texas House this year for the first time in two decades.
Instead, Democrats were left with a wider margin of defeat in the district than in 2018, as Republicans celebrated their resounding victory and mocked their opponents for declaring the race a “bellwether.”
“This is a serious setback for Texas Democrats,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. “Their goal in this election was most optimistically to win, but their minimum goal was showing progress compared to 2018 and this is a severe reversal.
“While it would be wrong to discount any prospects of flipping HD 28 in November,” he added, “the pathway to flipping the Texas House just became much steeper.”
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