Voters in Texas return to the polls on Tuesday for primary runoffs in contests where no one earned a majority of the vote in the first round on March 5.
Lone Star Republicans will decide whether to eject several incumbents who’ve run afoul with the base—including a prominent West Texas congressman and the speaker of the state House— in favor of more hardline options. They’re also selecting nominees in another pair of congressional districts, including one where a longtime Democratic congressman was recently indicted.
Below you’ll find our guide to the top runoffs to watch. The polls close at 8 PM ET/7 PM local time in most of Texas, while they’ll close an hour later in the small portion located in the Mountain Time Zone.
To help you follow along, you can find interactive maps from Dave’s Redistricting App of Texas’ 38 congressional districts and 150 state House seats. No one has released any reliable polling for any of the contests we cover below.
You also can find Daily Kos Elections’ calculations of the 2020 presidential results for each congressional district here, as well as our geographic descriptions for each seat. And you’ll want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states.
• TX-12 (R) (58-40 Trump): State Rep. Craig Goldman led businessman John O’Shea 44-26 in the first round of the GOP primary to replace retiring Rep. Kay Granger in a constituency based in western Fort Worth and its suburbs.
Goldman has maintained a huge fundraising edge over O’Shea throughout the contest, and almost all of the $1.1 million that super PACs have spent in the runoff has benefited the frontrunner. The state representative also sports endorsements from Granger, Gov. Greg Abbott, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a powerful conservative who leads the state Senate.
O’Shea, though, is hoping that hard-right voters will make up a disproportionate share of the vote in round two and favor him over Goldman, a former legislative leader who is closer to the party establishment. O’Shea has also reminded voters that his opponent voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, a far-right icon who is O’Shea’s main ally, for corruption.
Goldman, for his part, is trying to avoid being outflanked on the right. The state representative has run ads blasting O’Shea for not voting in elections when Donald Trump, Abbott, and other prominent Republicans were on the ballot.
• TX-23 (R) (53-46 Trump): Far-right challenger Brandon Herrera, a gunmaker who has over 3 million YouTube followers, forced Rep. Tony Gonzales into a runoff after holding the incumbent to a 45-25 advantage in the March GOP primary for this sprawling district in West Texas.
Gonzales found himself in this predicament a year after the state GOP voted to censure him for, among other things, voting to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the hours after the Jan. 6 attacks and later supporting gun-safety legislation after the Uvalde school shooting, which happened in his district exactly two years ago on Friday. Herrera has continued to argue that Gonzales, who is a close ally of GOP leadership, is insufficiently conservative and voted “to track you and your family’s vaccine status.”
The congressman and his allies, though, have used their massive financial advantage to push their preferred narrative about Herrera, whom Gonzales has dubbed “a known neo-Nazi.” Gonzales’ side has highlighted Herrera’s mockery of the Holocaust, veteran suicide, and even Barron Trump, and pointed out that he only relocated to Texas from North Carolina a few years ago.
Gonzales has the support of Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and House leaders. Herrera’s biggest backers, by contrast, are a pair of far-right congressmen from out of state: Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good of Virginia and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. (Gonzales also had some choice words for both of them.)
The winner will take on businessman Santos Limon, who won the Democratic nomination in the first round. Limon has struggled to raise money, but he could have an opening if Herrera pulls off an upset.
• TX-28 (R) (53-46 Biden): The Republican runoff to take on Rep. Henry Cuellar suddenly surged in importance after federal prosecutors indicted the congressman on corruption charges in early May.
GOP voters in this constituency, which includes Laredo and the eastern San Antonio suburbs, will choose between Navy veteran Jay Furman and businessman Lazaro Garza. Furman outpaced Garza 45-27 two months before Cuellar was charged. Neither Republican reported spending much money during the second round, and there has been no outside activity.
• TX State House (R): Eight Republicans in the ultra-conservative Texas House are fighting for renomination on Tuesday as two of the state’s most powerful figures, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, continue their campaign to push the chamber even further to the right.
By far the most prominent incumbent under fire is state House Speaker Dade Phelan, who trailed former Orange County Republican Party chair David Covey by a 46-43 margin in the first round of voting for the speaker’s dark red East Texas seat, which is numbered the 21st District.
Covey already had the support of Paxton and Donald Trump, who are looking to punish Phelan for supporting Paxton’s impeachment last year. Abbott has remained neutral in this contest, though the governor and his political network are targeting several other representatives who successfully blocked his plan to use taxpayer money to pay for private schools. Abbott is also active in a pair of open-seat races where he’s trying to install his favored candidates.
The runoff between Phelan and Covey has been exceptionally expensive for a contest in the 150-member House. AdImpact reported Thursday that Covey and his allies, including the anti-tax Club for Growth, have outspent the speaker’s side $2.4 million to $2 million in advertising.
