The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 29, 2026

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to check out our articles at https://thetexan.news/ and leave us a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.

Well, howdy folks. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. I'm your host, senior editor Rob Lauchess. And joining me today are reporters Mary Elise Cosgray, Meredith Dyer, and Hannah Brewer. How is everybody doing after that Tuesday night primary runoff election? Well, I have to say, I think I'm doing a little bit better than I've been done in years past covering elections because this wasn't quite as late of a night. I think it was a later of a night for Meredith and Rob, but at least the races I was following, they concluded pretty quickly. It was surprising. Once the results started rolling in, we got a lot of answers pretty quickly. Oh, Meredith.

I think you might still be muted. Okay. I lucked out and got the one race that, you know, kept this up quite a quite right to the end. We'll talk about that in a second. But it was the major one. Everything else was kind of decided. And then I was just waiting like, come on. Let's go.

What about you? This was, oh, sorry. No, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Meredith. I was going to segue it, but you want to go for it. I was just going to say what a crazy, I think the railroad commissioner race was. I think that race wasn't called until close to midnight, which was like the latest and I think the closest election of the entire night. Yeah, yeah.

That was crazy. I think my latest one, maybe it was 1030. I think they came out at 1030. the results and so I feel like I was pretty lucky but I do feel like I was constantly refreshing refreshing for like three hours waiting for it to come out eventually it did I was on my in-laws too well there you go it's fun yeah it's kind of like that it's very slow and you know nothing happens and it all happens at once and then you have all of these races get called like almost instantly and then you're struggling to catch up with it so fortunately everybody

have made it through in one piece. We're all still alive. And yeah, now everybody can take a well-deserved deep breath as we prepare over the course of the summer to head into the November election, which is going to be a big one.

You know, we're in a midterm election, which usually does not bode well for the party of the president when they're at power. Republicans, though I think are feeling pretty confident, but Democrats are also feeling pretty confident, and that's going to make for a fun election. So without further ado, I think we should get into the biggest issue of the night. Mary Elise, the conclusion to the long-anticipated U.S. Senate GOP primary race occurred earlier

and by wider margins than some expected. Give us the details. Yeah, I think a lot of Republicans cite a breath of relief, just knowing that this GOP primary runoff has concluded. It was one of the more nasty primaries, I think, that has been in Texas's political arena and at least recent political cycles, election cycles. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did ultimately defeat Senator John Cornyn. So that is, draws to close. Cornyn's very lengthy political time as an elected political official. Of course, we don't know what he's going to do moving forward, but he's, I believe it's since 2002 that he has been in Senate. So very lengthy. But Attorney General Ken Paxton won. And I think it seems like it wasn't a huge surprise that Paxton

won the race, but it was the amount by which he won. And how quickly we saw that Paxton was just really in a significant lead that was going to be hard for Cornyn to overcome. We saw, let's see, Paxton was able to get, he got 64% of the votes, and then Cornyn received 36%. So a very wide margin there. It's also worth noting that Cornyn had the lowest vote share with that 36% for an income at U.S. Senator and a head-to-head primary or runoff since 1974, which is significant. So, yeah, this is this has just been such a wild race to follow because it's been so intense. Cornyn and Paxton have really held nothing back in their campaigning against one another.

But then we saw once this race was concluded on Tuesday night, and I think it, I almost want to say it was done around, it was around 9 p.m. that folks started calling the race, maybe a little bit earlier. I think either Greg Abbott or Dustin Burroughs, it was one after the other pretty quickly, but they started calling. calling the race for Paxon congratulating him. Not too long after President Trump was also congratulating him. But it was very, very quick after that where folks started saying, okay, now is the Republican Party we need to unite. That was a really big concern from some Republican leadership during this race where

it was such an intense, such a nasty, bloody primary that Republican leadership was concerned because, you know, of course, it was dividing the party. and dividing, you know, we've got Cornyn's voters, we've got Paxton's voters, then the folks who were kind of in between. But then after we saw Greg Abbott came out and he just called for, we need unity, he said we need to unite as we move forward to this November general election. And a lot of people warned about the Democratic nominee, state representative James Tolariko.

They said, excuse me, they said, you know, he's a legitimate candidate that we should be concerned about. They also mocked him for a number of things that he said as, well, he was a state representative, representing a more liberal area of Texas, of course. But a lot of these comments we saw was just started to be resurfaced. And Republicans just really started to throw some grenades at Tala Rico pretty quickly. But also the Tala RICO camp is not holding back either. They're moving forward pretty confidently against Paxton and just highlighting his different legal scandal. personal scandals, and different posts and then campaign videos. So, yeah, like I said, Paxton was able to secure, well, when we put out this piece,

it secured 62.4% of the vote, and Cornyn was at 38%. And then as of the next morning, Paxton had 64% of the votes, and then Cornyn had 36. So pretty low number for Cornyn there. Yeah, definitely speaks a lot probably to President Donald Trump's endorsement. Of course, there's a number of factors that played into this, but that endorsement that Trump made was made on the second day of early voting. And it likely had a fair amount of impact on voters who were maybe undecided or some folks who had decided to vote for Cornyn but weren't necessarily resolute on that decision. So this is going to be a very fascinating general election to see, just considering the history that Paxton has some of the baggage that he does carry with him, the allegations, the scandals.

But then also Tala Rico, who's definitely considered a more liberal candidate, and he does have a history of saying he's a history as a more liberal state representative. And so those, you know, those clips are being pulled up and he's being bashed over a lot of different comments, but specifically about the transgender topic. His comments about God being non-binary, also in a more humorous aspect of this race, he's being called a vegan by a lot of Republicans, and he's countering those allegations because, of course, that's an allegation worth countering in Texas. So this is going to be a very fascinating election to watch, just considering who Telarico is, and the money that is already pouring in for

Calarico, too. That was a concern when Paxon was endorsed by Trump was the amount of money that would come in from out of state for Tala Rico's campaign, just considering that Paxston was a little bit more of a candidate with a little bit more baggage from the Democrats' perspective. And so perhaps gives Tala RICO a little bit of a leg up. So we'll see where this race ends up, but we are 159 days away from the November general election. So we'll be watching this closely. I was just going to say two funny things about that race is one is James Tala Rico is already selling I'm a Tala Freiko T-shirts on his website. I don't know if you've seen those. So he's using some of these insults in his favor. And the other thing that was just interesting to me was John Cornyn looked. And when he gave his concession speech, he looked so done and tired. I mean, he's had a long fight. And his wife had her purse on like it looks like the entire night. She looked like she was just ready to just like, okay, we're going out the door. But obviously it was him with his family and his wife there to support him. That was nice.

But she had that purse on like my mom does when she's just ready to like get out the door. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I'm looking for. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to add. It's also going to be very interesting to watch how Cornyn finishes up this term.

I think a lot of people have been talking about that. Because in a sense, now he's been freed from the chains of campaigning and having to kind of market himself in a very specific. way to a specific group of voters. So that'll be interesting to see if he kind of acts a little bit differently in the Senate if he chooses to vote on some things that are maybe a little bit more controversial or independent from the mainstream Republican path. Yeah, I mean, this is a guy who ran on saying, you know, I voted with Trump 99% of the time, right? And this is a guy who Trump even said, you know, he's like, oh, I like John Cornyn, right?

He said he didn't like him, you know, enough to endorse him. but this is they both were trying to run you know right next to trump and of course paxton got the golden ticket of the endorsement but yeah it's it'll also be interesting because there's been i think mary lees you talked about this in your article but a lot of concern about um cornon tallurico voters you know people who voted for corin in the primary but might switch over and vote for talarico because they don't like paxton this is a big concern you know a lot of polls have sort of consistently shown that Cornyn would have a bigger lead over Tala Rico in a general election matchup, even though, of course, Paxton still is above Tala Rico in most of those, in most of those matchup polls.

I still think that six months is a long, long time. And especially as the GOP campaign machine turns from fighting each other to putting out negative stuff about Talarico, I think it's easy right after the election for a lot of people to say, We'll never vote for Ken Paxton. Give it six months. You know, I think a lot of people are going to eventually decide that if, you know, if they're there, I think a lot of people are going to are going to, you know, even if they don't like him, they're probably going to pinch their nose and vote for Paxton. Yeah, good point. I would also, I also would think that maybe it would be more likely that folks who just couldn't bear to vote for Paxton but felt more comfortable with Cornyn.

I could see those folks just staying home instead of voting for Talleyico at all. That seems a little bit more likely to me. But like you said, six months is a long time and a lot can happen between now and then. Absolutely. And of course, there's also the issue of the fact that President Donald Trump not being on the ballot often has a sort of depressive effect on Republican voter turnout. But we'll just have to see. So it'll be a close race. I think that's the biggest thing is it will be very close.

You know, obviously, Cornyn got, unfortunately, you know, destroyed in, it's, you know, it sounds not nice to say, but this was, as Paxton destroyed him in that primary. But I imagine this general will be a bit closer. But speaking of close races, Meredith, turning next to you, we had a very late night, as we mentioned earlier, waiting for the Railroad Commissioner race to be called. break down what happened for us. Yes. So like we kind of mentioned before, this was the down to the wire kind of feeling situation. So, you know, you have incumbent Jim, right? You have Beau French.

We've talked about this election, this campaign that's been very contentious and very, like, extreme in some of the nature of the things that have been talked about. And just there's some, you know, kind of that bad blood feeling between the two of them just because or at least on one side or anyway the point is like stuff has been thrown out it's been pretty intense and so it starts out with the evening with early voting with french at 53.43% and right at 46.57 which is like you know a good chunk a good difference there where you're now you're wondering like okay is it just going to keep widening this way but instead it just started to incrementally like I would you know be clicking decision desk and

looking at it and it would just point this, point something this, it would just kept going down throughout the night until finally the end result was 50.71%, which is much closer than I am assuming the French campaign camp wanted to be on. And then Jim Wright had 49.29.29. So it's just like, you know, when you're so close to 50%, that's just, it was just watching those last districts kind of come in, those last sections. And so French is the, you know, Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission. He said he is greatly, deeply grateful for the support of Texas Republicans across our state. Our campaign focused on defending oil and gas and putting America first. And that's exactly what I will continue fighting for as we turn our attention to. He said radical Democrat John Rosenthal, state ref John Rosenthal, who is his Democratic opponent in the fall in November. It was just interesting online to watch because there's a group that kind of got that certain people put together, of Paxton. I'm trying to think of who it was.

It was like Paxton and French and who am I forgetting? Anyway, there's another big one. It's a Mays Middleton for Attorney General. I think Mays Middleton was one. That wasn't as strong, but there was another person. They kept like putting all their pictures up and everyone was celebrating like very early. Like, oh yeah, we got it. We got it.

We got everybody, you know, especially in Paxton was announced and everything. And I, and it was just, I just kept checking because I'm like, I don't know. People don't know. It's not actually done yet. And so eventually at midnight, we were so lucky to be there watching as the final chose one. So, yeah, that was the close. I can only imagine what I was like for both of those camps just to watch that as it like starts to get really, really close to each other. Well, thank you very much, Meredith, for covering that one.

Definitely the latest, closest race of the night. That's the one that kept us up all night. So fortunately, that was, as you said, it was called like within 1% of, It was just over 1%. So kind of the polar opposite, if you will, of the Paxton Cornyn race, which was like two-thirds to one-third, then from like 50-5 to like 49 and a half, so or just a little bit wider than that. But thank you very much for covering that one. Mary Elise, turning back to you now, former Congressman Colin Allredd went up against his successor in his old congressional district. district on Tuesday night. Tell us how that race panned out. Yeah. So Congressman, former Congressman

Colin Allred, who's a very, very familiar name here in Texas for folks covering elections, he defeated Congresswoman Julie Johnson in their Democratic primary runoff. So they were running in a congressional district 33. Johnson represents CD 32. Allred one with 55 percent. while Johnson got 45%. So it had about a 10% point difference. So a race a little bit different than the railroad commissioner situation where it was a little bit more clear, more quickly, who is going to win, who is going to take this home.

Johnson, so when we say successor, I mean that Johnson succeeded Allred in CD 32 in the November 2024 general election. And that was when Allred went and challenged. Senator Ted Cruz, although that was ultimately unsuccessful, as we know. And then Johnson launched that race for CD 33 as a result of redistricting because she was essentially drawn out of CD 32, which she represents right now. And then she jumped in after the congressman, Mark Veezy, who's the one that represents CD 33.

He decided that he wasn't going to be running for Congress moving forward. and he had kind of mentioned that he might run for a couple other positions, but it appears as though he won't be doing that. So just to give you an idea of this district, kind of the partisan rating, on our Texas Partisan Index, it shows the CD33 went from a D-71% area down to a D-68%. And that was after that 2025 redistricting. So now Allred is going to go face Republican Patrick Glellan. who was one of the, I think he was one of the first handful of races that was called very early in the night, Patrick Glesby over John Sims. He got 57% of the vote. So Allred will now be facing Gillespie in November in the general election. And then that'll, of course, determine who represents CD 33. Glesby definitely is a pretty low profile candidate. And of course, All Red is pretty well known. Like I said, in Texas.

elections. He's had a couple bids and he was former congressman in CD 32. So this is a, this is just a unique race to see Johnson go up against Allred and to see that they were, you know, aligned on a lot of the same issues, which is the case with primaries, oftentimes where you're, you're from the same party, you probably align on a lot of the same topics. But something that Johnson said and her kind of concession statement after Allred won. was she was lamenting that this area of Texas will not have LGBTQ representation, and it will also not have a female Democratic representative. And so she was kind of focusing on that and saying that she's going to be looking to advance

certain communities and make sure that they are getting into elected positions into Congress. So that was interesting that she chose to focus on that with all red winning. just kind of highlighting the LGBTQ topic, which has definitely been a focus of hers while she's been in Congress. And we see that, you know, ultimately Allred was able to defeat her. So just interesting that she mentioned that in her concession statement. And again, Allred got 55%. Johnson was at 45%. So about a 10 point difference there with this race.

Well, good stuff. Thank you very much for covering that, Mary Elise. Yeah, certainly interesting to see how this, these U.S. U.S. Senate races, I think, keep coming back with Allred, leaving Congress to run for, or leaving the House, I should say, to run for U.S. Senate, and then now coming back to Congress. And, of course, if that race of Allred against Cruz has anything to say about this race against Pax, between Paxon and Tala Rico, it might not be quite as close of a race, right? I mean, if I recall correctly, Tala Rico lost by something like eight points, you know, and Tala Rico, I'm sorry. I can talk about all red, you're right, all red, you're right, all red lost by about eight and a half points. And I remember at the time, even like my dad was like, he's a football player.

You'd think that he would have had a better shot. So, I mean, definitely a far cry from where we were in 2018 when Beto O'Rourke came pretty close to knocking Ted Cruz. out, not quite close enough, but nevertheless still pretty interesting. So thank you very much for covering that. But now, Hannah, turning next to you for a different Texas congressional district. Tell us about the results in Congressional District 19. Yes, Tom Selle secured the runoff, Republican runoff nomination by nearly 30 points against Abraham Enriquez. So he will face Democrat Kyle Rabel in the general election. in November. But the district, it's West Texas, it's solidly Republican, our Texas

partisan index, as it at 78% Republican. He beat out Enriquez by a total of, yeah, nearly 30 points and claimed about 65% of the votes compared to Enriquez is about 35%. That was as of 8pm, Tuesday night, although it was pretty clear from the beginning. Tom Selle went out pretty far ahead of Enriquez from the start. But during the March primary election, he also had the upper hand by almost 22 points, but still didn't have enough to secure the nomination outright. But his campaign is focused on a variety of issues from energy dominance in West Texas to enforcement of immigration policies. During a recent debate with Enriquez, he confirmed support for AI development, calling it a modern day arms race, which has been a big topic in West Texas with the development of data centers. Enrique's attacked Sell several times during the debate and both seemed to try to align themselves with Trump pretty closely.

But Encel also was showing support for President Donald Trump's policies, but stated there were issues such as national deficit, which he thought required greater focus from Washington. So I think it'll be interesting to see how that comes out, assuming he wins in November against Kyle Ravel. So the winner will replace incumbent Congressman Jody Arlington who will step down after he completes this term. All righty. Well, thank you, Hannah, for giving us the rundown on that story. Definitely. Lots of lots of, it's interesting how a lot of districts, I think, are decided in the primary, right? Because as you mentioned, this is a very heavily Republican district. I'm sorry, are 78 percent, right? Meaning that in 2022 and 2024, 74, 78 percent of the voters went for the Republicans.

candidate across multiple, you know, statewide races. So, yeah, I mean, it's like in some districts, right, where you have a much closer partisan rating, it'll all be decided in the general. But here, it's pretty much decided. Like, this was the race for this district. It's obviously always possible that a rebel will win, but it's not very likely. So thank you very much, Hannah, for giving us the rundown on that one. Mary Elise, no surprise, turning back to you for another congressional story. They should give you guys, they should give you like a newsletter talking about Congress or something. Yeah, go check out the 40. Absolutely. A very good one. I would say we're recording this on Thursday, a very good issue of the 40 today talking about all of the congressional. So what it means for Texas in Congress.

But turning back to you, another redistricted district that was changed up as a result of the 2025 mid-decade redistricting last year has now had its two candidates set for the general election. Give us the details. Yeah, this was for Texas Congressional District 35. And so like you said, the parties' candidates for November are now set. There was actually both a Republican in a Democratic primary runoff that we were following, which was a little bit more rare, you know, for a lot of these races, there was just a Democratic or there's just a Republican runoff that we were following. But so the Republican Victor for CD 35, which, because it was redistributed, it's one of the anticipated blue to red flips as a result of that 2025 redistricting that happened. So the Republican victor for CD 35 is

Trump endorsed Carlos Dela Cruz, who is the brother of congresswoman Monica Dela Cruz. And he won by 58% against state representative John Lujan. And that was, you know, those unofficial results that came in at 9.30 p.m. on Tuesday. But that was at the point where a lot of major publications were calling the race for Dela Cruz. So it's also worth noting that Lujan was an individual who actually was a part of passing these new maps who voted in favor of this redistricting. But ultimately, Trump endorsed Dela Cruz and he did win that Republican primary runoff. Then the Democratic primary runoff, which is one that got a whole lot of attention, especially in recent weeks. It was between former Bear County Sheriff's Deputy Johnny Garcia.

He did ultimately win. And then his opponent, Maureen Glendo, who lost, she was really the highlight of a lot of attention recently because a lot of Democratic folks were concerned about her comments regarding. Zionists and they were alleging that she is an anti-Semite. And that was really like a very, there was a very strong response, at least at the national democratic level, against Glinda saying this woman is an anti-Semite. We cannot support her. So Johnny Garcia did win, ultimately with 59% of the vote.

And then Glendo came in with 41% on election day. So of course, like I said, Glenda was just slammed with these anti-Semitism allegations. And then, then as this was all going on, Garcia was just kind of adding to his collection of endorsements. Even some people, he picked up some folks from their primary who had originally endorsed Glendo, who moved over to endorse Garcia after the kind of highlighting of her comments about Zinus. And so CD35, like we said, was one of those five districts that were targeted for the mid-decade redistricting, which of course was requested by President Donald Trump. This seat is currently held by Congressman Greg Kassar, but because of this,

the new drawing, the new maps, he was moved out of Austin to, or the, excuse me, the seat was moved out of Austin down to near San Antonio and then flipping it from that deep blue area to solidly Republican. Trump also celebrated Dela Cruz's victory on election night. He had these graphics. He was putting out on truth social, just kind of as the races were being called, touting his victory because the candidates who he endorsed for just winning one after the other. So he was sharing his kind of celebration there on truth social. So now Garcia and the other Cruz will go on to face each other in the November general election, of course, to determine who's going to hold this redistricted seat. And then also, it'll kind of serve as a hallmark for the impact of the

2025 redistricting and kind of how that actually affected this area. So we'll see that specifically November general election when Garcia and Daley Cruz go up against each other. But Daley Cruz, you know, went into this with a Trump endorsement and he's still holding that. And then Garcia has the backing of national Democrats. They have really, I mean, he was added to the red to blue program, which we highlighted in peace earlier, just essentially directing more resources to this campaign and marking it as a race that

the Democrats believe could potentially be a good spot from them to flip a seat, an area that's supposed to be red to blue, hence the name of the program. So we'll be watching this race, too. Thank you, Mary Elise, for giving us the rundown on that one. You brought up specifically that there was a state lawmaker who was involved in the passing of the new congressional map, who then did not get Trump's endorsement for a new congressional district that's expected to be a GOP pickup. And I wish, of course, Holly was here to talk about two of the congressional races that she covered. So I will do my best to cover her little races here because I wanted to talk about Congressional District 9 and 18.

Congressional District 9 has been held by Congressman Al Green, who is a Houston Democrat for a while now. And that district was redrawn to be more Republican favorable. And two Republicans who made the runoff there were Alex Miller, who ran for Harris County Judge in 2022 and narrowly lost to Lena Hidalgo and state representative Briscoe Kane, who was also involved in the redistricting. And Miller ended up getting the Trump endorsement, and she also ended up. winning the CD-9 Republican runoff. So she is going to run as the GOP nominee in that district. And Green left to challenge the new Congressman Christian Menofy in Congressional District 18.

And that was the district that was held by Sheila Jackson Lee until she passed away and then was held by Sylvester Turner, the former mayor of Houston. And then he also passed away in pretty quick succession and then was vacant for while until the special election was finally held for for that one and Christian Menifee won that one. And so Green was challenging Menifee for the seat. It became a sort of battle of youth versus experience. And in this particular one, Houston voters chose youth because Christian Menophe won that Democratic primary pretty handily. But I wanted to bring this up because it's just another interesting example of a state. lawmaker who did help get these congressional districts passed, the new ones, but did not get that

Trump endorsement, that the coveted golden ticket to push them across the finish line. So I thought that that was, I recommend everybody go and read Holly's stories about that, but that was a very interesting little Houston area, kind of a Houston shuffle, you know, of everybody moving around at each other's districts. So speaking, though, of, of another incumbent losing their seat, Meredith, a longtime state representative from Houston lost his seat in the Texas House on Tuesday night. The only state lawmaker who actually lost their own primary runoff of this go-around. Give us the details on that story.

Yeah, so in HD 149, which is in Houston, and we're talking southwest Houston, A-Leaf, Katie, area. It is with our partisan rating, a D-58, which it's down from D-62 previously. So it's changed a little bit, but still solid Democrat-leaning district. So Representative Hubert Vaux has been serving in this district for more than 20 years. So this is a long-time, like, staple Democrat person in the House who he's been on multiple committees. And so he was challenged by Darlene Bro, who's the president of the A Leaf ISD board, school board. And their primary was exceptionally close. So there was four people running in the primary.

And they each, they pretty much tied receiving 38% of the vote. And there was three votes that were separating these two candidates. So they headed into the runoff super tight. But what happened was the other two candidates, like their votes or the vote. percentage or the ratio that went to them ended up going almost entirely to Bro. And she ended the runoff with 61% and Vaux had 39%. So that's like one of those solid like kind of defeats that was very, very clear. And it was just interesting like voter turnout for these sometimes.

I and other people probably don't realize how few people are voting. Like in the primary there's about 10,000 people that voted. And then in this runoff, there was only like 2,700 people that decided this. It's kind of like a big change, especially for a huge change that only like a small amount of people decided. So that's always really interesting. Bro, in a victory statement on social media. She wrote that she said this was never about one person. It was about a community that believed in showing up for each other, speaking up for each other, and building something together.

Thank you to every volunteer, every voter, every family member, every supporter, and every person who poured their heart into this campaign. This win belongs to all of us. some interesting things that we have in our coverage of this race was that like bro was backed in the runoff by the Houston Chronicle editorial board and they had endorsed Vaux from almost every election from 2006. This was the first time that they had and that was probably a good indicator for people who were paying attention to the race like, okay, he has lost some of the support that he would normally have. Another thing that was interesting just in writing and covering this was Vaux's campaign website pretty much seemed to be unchanged since like some kind of COVID time, like almost everything that he talked about. And he had pretty brief statements, no endorsements listed. It was very simple, but they all, almost all of them mentioned like COVID. So it was kind of an interesting thing.

Just looking at some of the effort that was put into the race on either side, it really came out in, in Brough's favor. she ran a race that seemed to be, like she said, thanking all of these people and the whole community, it seemed to be pretty involved in that way. So she's going to face Republican nominee Dave Bennett in the November general election. And so we'll continue to follow this race. Well, thank you, Meredith, for covering that story. Definitely interesting to see a state lawmaker actually lose their primary,

which is, you know, not something that normally happens, but as you said, Vaux's been in there for a very long time. And the Houston Chronicle editorial board even came out against him after having endorsed him so many times. So definitely an interesting one that. Thank you for covering that one. Hannah, turning next to you. State Representative Gina Hinojosa is currently running for governor. She secured the Democratic primary nomination in March to challenge Governor Greg Abbott come November.

Who is running to replace her? As Montserrat Garibai won the seat for Texas House District, 49, no Republican filed to run against her in the general election November. So she's the only candidate. She won against Democrat Kathy Tovo in Tuesday's runoff election. Garibai stated about the win. Thank you, Austin. We once again proved we're a community of bold fearless fighters and will defend our rights inside and outside the capital. So she's proceeded in the district by state rep Gina Hinajosa, who, like you said, Rob is currently running for governor against Greg Abbott.

The district is strongly Democratic with a partisan rating at 82 percent, and it comprises carts of Austin West of Interstate 35. Garibai received 62 percent of the vote while Tovo received 38 percent, which was a much wider gap than the March. primary election in which Gereby won by 33% and Tobo gained 28% in the votes. So similar to other races we've talked about, it looks like voters have moved over from the spread of candidates to one candidate in particular. She stated in her campaign that she intends to end the criminalization of immigrant communities and dismanto state-imposed barriers through assurance of equal access to housing, education, and health care. regardless of immigration status, education and health care are big key issues for Garibai.

She previously served as deputy assistant at the U.S. Department of Education under the Biden administration and also as Secretary-Chene Treas of the Texas AFL-CIO. So, yes, we won't see because it's pretty much a done deal here. Yeah, this is another one of these districts where, The race is decided in the primary. You know, it's a very heavily Democratic district. So thank you very much, Hannah, for covering that one. Turning back to you now, Meredith.

There is now a Democratic nominee for the competitive House District 37 in the Rio Grande Valley. Who will be trying to flip that Texas House District in November? Yeah, I feel like we're going back and forth between these, like, totally decided and then like pretty competitive. have been close. So HG37, yeah, it has a D-51 percentage leaning in 2022, and then it shifted to R-53 after the 2024 election. And it's one of five districts that the House Democratic Campaign Committee is targeting to try to flip in this election. And so the chair for that committee, state rep Christina Morales, told the Texas Tribune listed the five different districts, including H.D. 37. And so currently, the

The state rep of Janie Lopez holds this seat and she, like we said, she flipped it in 2022 and then she held it in 2024 with a 10-point lead. So the tide has shifted Republican in this way, but it's not one of those crazy like 60, 70% situations. And she enters this race with Lopez as the incumbent has some solid endorsements from President Donald Trump, Governor Greg Abbott, and then U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. And so in the Democratic primary, the lineup was, for this runoff, was Harlingen, CISD, Director of Special Education, Oseal Ahoa, against Law Student Esmeralda at Cantu Castle. And so the results were that Ahoa secured the nomination on Tuesday night with 62% to 38%. So this was a solid win that just was not close in this case with the Democratic runoff. And so he credited his supporters. And volunteers, he really had a similar, you know, and it's pretty common. But he's thanking everybody, like, this belongs to all of us, all the volunteers, thinking everyone that was making calls and donating, praying, he said, encouraging and believing.

And he talked about the community, like the community vision. He said, I've always believed this campaign was about people listening to our neighbors, fighting for our community, and making sure that every voice is heard. And so tonight I'm honored that our message resonated across this district. So he's going to face against, he's going to go up against incumbent Janie Lopez in November. and this one will be interesting to see. How close is it going to be? Is it going to be, are we going to be like waiting up until midnight looking at the back and forth kind of thing?

Or is it going to be is Lope is going to kind of run away with it again? Like she had a 10 point lead last time, is that what's on the horizon for this district? Meredith, the only thing I can guarantee is that whatever is most inconvenient for the state's reporters is exactly what's going to happen. And if that means that it'll be until midnight before this is called, then it'll be before midnight. No, probably not in, yeah, go ahead. November, we're all going to be up all night. There's just now that way than anybody's getting any sleep. It's just with the close ones.

It's like, like, how close will it get? Are we going to get down to like, whoa, someone like eaked out by the skin of their teeth or just actually now it's kind of headed in the direction and like the Republican direction like it was or will they be able to flip it? If they put in those resources and targeted, as we want to flip, this is one of five out of many. They do, obviously, the Democratic see it as a place they could possibly flip and something that, and they want to return it back to like where it had been in the past. That's true. Thank you very much for covering that story, Meredith. Hannah, turning back to you.

This is our legislative ping pong today. State Representative Alma Allen is retiring in Texas House. District 131 after her term, which Democrat is going to move forward in the November elections? Yes. Stacey Childs defeated Lawrence Allen in the runoff race for the Democratic nominee for Texas House District 131. Lawrence Allen is the son of retiring rep Alma Allen. He received her endorsement. But Childs came out ahead of Allen by over 20 points in the election. So she held 62% of the vote while Allen. maintained about 38% of the vote. So she will face Republicans Scott Whitmarsh in the November general election for this Houston area district. According to our Texas Partisan Index, the urban area rates heavily Democratic at 77%. And Child said to the Texan about her intentions for the district,

my priorities are simple, protecting public education, helping working families breathe a little easier financially and making sure District 131 gets the investment and attention it deserves. Both candidates campaigned heavily on education, which was something that Representative Alma Allen has also focused on during her tenure. Childs was endorsed by Houston Chronicle, as well as the Council on American Islamic Relations activist affiliate called Care Action. And so there was a pretty clear lead by Childs from the beginning of votes being counted. This race, I think the results came out around 8.30 or so. But it was pretty quickly showing that Childs had won.

Well, thank you, Hannah, for giving us the rundown on that one. It's definitely interesting to see a state representative endorsing her own child, but her child did not win because her child lost to child's. So in that race, I've been working on that one for a little bit, by the way. That was the product of some thought. But Meredith, turning back to you for yet another open Texas house seat. And by the way, for everybody listening, you can visit the Texans war room to see our open seat track. where we do keep track of all the seats that have been vacated or people are retiring from for federal and state offices. So check that out if you are interested.

But turning back to you, Meredith, state representative Bobby Guerra's open Texas house seat had two runoffs, one for the Republican and one for the Democrat. Tell us about that. Yeah. So Bobby Gera has been in this seat for nearly 14 years and he announced his retirement. I think Mary Lease wrote a piece about it that you can check out as a. will always linked in there, served on multiple committees and, yeah, was just ready to move on to something else. And so this district is in Hidalgo County. It covers McCallin, parts of Mission, Edinburgh, and FAR. And it has a slight democratic lien. We put it at D53, and this was a shift

down from D56. So we're seeing some of these have a downward shift after the 2024 election cycle. So who there's two we had two different runoffs in each. So for the Democrats, we had a former Texas Capitol staff for Julio Salinas. He ended up defeating banking executive and former Calan City Commissioner Victor Sebi Haddad. It was 56% to 44. So it was a solid, solid victory there. So yeah, Julio Salinas is very, he's young, very, we were talking about age versus experience kind of thing before he is very young and he even just looking at his website it's like really it's just colorful and fun and very out there and has just you can feel like the energy from the website um and he talks about the things that he prioritizes are like repealing right

to work laws he talks about family paid leave cost of living adjustments a lot of things with the economy he gets into stuff with schools um opposing what he calls private school voucher schemes wanting to extend like free pre-K access to school support staff. So he has a lot of very specific ideas. That was one thing from his site is as a former staffer. He knew the things to talk about and was very detailed and had a lot of information there about what he wants to do. So that was interesting to read. And he also had some major endorsements for being young and not having a lot of experiences as elected official.

US Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed him, Congressman Greg Cesar, and then some state reps, Christina Morales, Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, and Benton Jones, are a few that popped out there. And then, so he was congratulated by some people as well in the State House. Democratic caucus chair, Gene Wu, wrote, Julio showed me around the Rio Grande Valley last summer when I visited with local leaders proud of him onto November. And then State Rep. Anna Maria Ramos congratulated him and said he's a strong, progressive voice for the working families in the Rio Grande Valley. So that's what happened on the Democratic side on the Republican side. Gary Groves defeated former prosecutor Sergio Sanchez.

It was another solid 63-237 race. Yeah, and Gary Groves had some victory statements. He has very, very strong on his website and on things he writes like MAGA statements. He really likes to use MAGA. He also has like a MAGA hat on in a lot of his things. on the website. So he thanked his campaign team saying to my incredible MAGA campaign team, thank you for working tirelessly every single day to make sure this campaign was an amazing effort. He also says to all of our MAGA patriots, supporters, friends, and everyone who voted

for and stood behind our campaign. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. So it's interesting. We're talking about these midterms and Trump not being up for re-election, obviously not, you know, not running again. It's just interesting to see who. who decides to really like go in on the MAGA type of wording or make that like, honestly, if you look at his website, it seems almost like a part of his personality. I mean, he's got the hat. He's got the, he's really excited about that. So, yeah, so in November, we're going to be having Salinas versus Gros, which is interesting

because one is a very young, very progressive candidate. And then the other one is older and MAGA. We'll see in some of these, like in one of these tighter, more competitive type of districts that has like that slight leaning, like, is it going to hold or will it be able to be flipped? Well, thank you very much, Meredith, for reporting on that one. Definitely looking forward to seeing how that race turns out. Turning now back to you, Hannah, tell us about the winner of the San Antonio area House District 125 Democratic runoff.

Yes, Adrian Rana won the Democratic nomination in the primary runoff. election for HD 125 against Michelle Barientas Vela. He received 80% of the total vote while Varyantus Vela received 20%. So this is like by a wide, wide margin. He stated about the win on Facebook. No work doesn't stop here. Tomorrow we keep fighting for our students, teachers, working families, seniors, veterans, and every neighbor across HD 125. He will face Republican Ricardo Martinez in the November general election in order to succeed state rep Ray Lopez who will not seek re-election. The district covers part of Bear County and includes parts of San Antonio, Leon Valley, and Helotis. According to our partisan index, the district is firmly Democratic with a rating of 59%.

During the March primary election, Raina also led Barantis Vela but only by five points. So seeing this really wide margin and the runoff is kind of crazy. He received 39% of the vote while she received 34%. So the outcomes were really different this time around. Rina also outraised his competitor in the most recent campaign recording period. He reportedly raised about 8,000 compared to her 13,000. So Rana's campaign focuses mostly on issues of education, improvement of infrastructure, abortion access in veteran care. And in regards to education, he has stated that he attempts to address attendance-based funding issues with public schools. He's also been openly critical of the recent congressional redistricting.

And he calls it an attack on the democratic process. So we'll see what happens in November. It's a very solidly democratic district, but it's kind of crazy to see such a wide margin. of a win. Well, thank you very much, Hannah, for giving us the details on that one. Thank you to both of y'all for everything you all have reported on with the Texas House. We had a lot of people leave the Texas House again on that open seat tracker. It's going to be a lot of new people coming in. It's going to be an exciting 90th legislative session. But Mary Elise, we did have one runoff in the Texas State Senate, the Republican, who will go on to challenge state senator Roland Gutierrez, who is a Democrat, was determined by this week's primary election runoff.

Tell us about that race. Yeah, like you said, this was the only state Senate district we were watching that was up during the runoff elections. But Marcus Cardenas won the Republican primary runoff for Texas Senate District 19. and he'll now go on to challenge the incumbent Democratic State Senator, Roland Gutierrez, as you said, in November. Cardenas received 52% of the vote and then his opponent, who is Robert Marx, received 48%. They had a lot of similar issues that they were campaigning on, including a plan for lowering taxes. But Mark specifically emphasized his commitment to reforming, the current education system in Texas.

But like I said, they both had a really big focus on lowering taxes. And then Cardenas had kind of four specific pillars that he based his campaign on, which included economic development, public safety, education, opportunity, and infrastructure and growth. And he was endorsed by Governor Greg Abbott in early February to go up against Gutierrez and November. And that was something, his focus on public safety was something that Abbott really plotted and kind of said that that was one of the reasons he chose to endorse him. So Gutierrez has served in the Texas House for 13 years, and then he was elected to represent

SD-19 in 2020, and he ran unopposed in the 26 Democratic primary. So he didn't face any sort of a primary candidate, but he will now go on to face Skardinas in November. So Gutierrez will be up against Cardenas and we'll be following them both as they campaign leading up to this general election. Well, thank you very much, Mary Elise. We certainly have had a great roundup of election pieces. And for everybody listening, check out the texan. News because we have even more election pieces that we didn't have the chance to get to this podcast. We just wanted to hit on a lot of the biggest highlights from the night.

But there's all sorts of other exciting ones. So definitely check out the Texan, read through our articles. If you go to our front page right now, it's all election stuff from top to bottom. So definitely check it out. But this week has not been all work, though. So I know we've had some good tweetery from this week. So Mary Elise, why don't we start with you and continue on tweetery from last week? Because I believe there's been a development on a very, very important issue.

You know, I think that my Twitter is going to be hard to be just saying this week. But as our devoted listeners may remember, for anybody who listens through the Tweeteries section, we mentioned a rare albino buffalo in Bangladesh who had been nicknamed Donald Trump because of his kind of orange tuft of hair on top of his head. well, he has been spared from sacrifice during one of their holidays because of his notoriety, because of his fame, which I'm sure is due in part to our podcast, us covering him. But they said it was a last-minute government intervention that prevented him from being sacrificed and then he was relocated to the capital's main zoo. So, but that distinct, what they call a distinctive blonde tuft on top of his head, spared him from an untimely death. So I thought that was worth highlighting. I'm sure that the weekly roundup makes it all the way over there to Bangladesh, right?

Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Absolutely. You know, my Twitter is actually kind of related to that, which is that Thursday, May 28th is National Hamburger Day. So I know this podcast is dropping tomorrow, but, you know, for National Hamburger Day, I hope people saw that all kinds of fast food restaurants are having deals, deals on burgers, except they will not be making a burger out of Donald Trump. So that's probably a good thing. I don't know. Have you ever had a buffalo burger before?

They are pretty good. No. I have. Yes. It was good. It's a Montana. Yeah. Oh, that makes sense.

Very tasty. But Meredith, turning next to you, what's your Twitter? So I saw something about a telescope branch. Has anyone seen this? It's very cool. I'll have to send you to link. I don't think so. Yeah, so it's in Crowell, Texas.

And somebody, I don't know which news division or if he was independent, but he made like a 10-minute video of like coming to Texas and going to this place that's called the telescope branch. So it's in the middle of nowhere. I don't know where, I don't know where Crowell. all Texas is, they were explaining that nothing is there. There's no light pollution. There's no buildings. And so people send their telescopes there.

And this person, it's been going on for two years. He sets them up. So there's like a picture of like hundreds of telescopes. And then remotely people can access their telescopes and see the night sky in a much more clear way that they never could if they didn't because nobody lives out there other than this guy and his all of the, and everyone's telescopes. And so you rent a space at this telescope branch for, I think it starts at like $99 and can go up to hundreds of dollars depending on probably what type of like technology that you

use or what they do for you or anything. Anyway. And so yeah, it's just interesting that there's all these hundreds of people at home logging on and looking at a telescope that's who knows how far away. They could live in other states, things like that. So I thought that was just interesting. I'm like capitalizing on the middle of nowhere. And like in a way that doesn't sound like and maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't sound like it harms the environment, right? It's not like a data center. It's not like using water or electricity in the same way. I'm sure it uses things.

But who's a space person? There's obviously electricity that's being used and internet and all that. But it's not, this would be much lower, correct? It's probably not demanding very many resources. Not too many things. Yeah. And so it's like, that's kind of beautiful. I like that.

It's cool. Yeah. Smart person that tapped into this and that's how he makes his livelihood. There you go. We'll see if it'll be addressed in the 90th legislative session along with all the other data center concerns that are sure to be popping up. But Hannah, I believe you also have some Twitter for us this week. Yes, the White House posted, today we remember a legend. On this day in history, Harambe would have been celebrated, would have celebrated another birthday, an icon that became part of internet history. And it just made me laugh because I completely forgot. about him. You forgot? And I'm even struggling to like jog my high school, middle school brain to remember.

What year was it? Do we know? What did they say? It was how many years? He died. 10 years ago. Yeah. Okay.

And it was in Ohio, right? Or no? It was in the Cincinnati Zoo. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. The kid fell in and they had to shoot Harambe because unfortunately a gorilla's can kill humans, especially

children very easily. On that note, I just want to say I also saw on Twitter a picture of a baby gorilla being born. And without context for that, it looks like a human form that's like super wrinkly. And it was just like a weird, I was like, what is going on? And then you're like notice as I clicked on it. It was, but it's so tiny.

And it has like, and it has. Yeah. more of a human form. It's just like very weird. They look so. If you ever go to the zoo and you like lock eyes with one, you're just like, you are like me. Like we're the same. It was just so wrinkly, like this little wrinkly baby.

And I was like, wait, what's happening? Benjamin Button. What's going on? Benjamin Button situation? What's happening? Yeah. I would say, Hannah, if you've ever seen an orangutan, those things are definitely people. That's those things are.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't feel this way when I see like chimpanzees. I'm like, I know that that's, yeah, chimpanzees kind of. Yeah, chimpanzees kind of seem a little bit stranger, but gorillas and orangutan specifically. Those are those are the ones where you're looking and you're like, I know, what are you thinking? Yeah, this is too sentient. No, it's just.

Absolutely. Well, thank you to everybody for your tweeterie and thank you to everybody for listening. It's been a good podcast. Definitely just a lot going on with election night. And fortunately, everybody on the reporting team has caught their breath. breath and we're ready to hit the ground running for preparations for the November election. Yeah, so visit the Texan. News to check out all of our articles about all of these elections.

We had details we couldn't even go into on this podcast, but it's been a big one. And we look forward to, I can talk if I try real hard. We look forward to y'all joining us again next Friday morning for the next episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, visit us at the Texan. News. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the Texan.

dot news. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.