The two biggest races in the Texas primaries, at least from a Second Amendment perspective, are headed to runoff elections after no candidate managed to win an outright majority of the vote. In the Republican Senate primary incumbent John Cornyn maintains a slim lead over challenger and Attorney General Ken Paxton as of Monday morning, with Paxton trailing Cornyn by about a single percentage point (and roughly 26,000 votes).
Cornyn’s efforts to shepherd the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act through the Senate after the 2022 shooting in Uvalde, Texas has led to censures from the state GOP and a bruising primary battle with Paxton, who’s been the recipient of one of the most brutal attack ads in Texas political history. Now the pair will continue the fight until the runoff election takes place on May 26.
The other race that 2A advocates have been closely watching is the 23rd Congressional District. Two years ago Tony Gonzales was able to fend off a challenge from Brandon “The AK Guy” Herrera, but only by a few hundred votes. Since then, the congressman (who also voted in favor of BSCA) has been caught up by allegations he had an affair with a staffer who later took her own life by setting herself on fire.
Though Gonzales has denied the allegations, I thought Herrera would win the primary pretty handily, and getting over 50% wasn’t out of the question. Instead, it was Gonzales who led for most of Tuesday evening, though as of 9 am ET Monday morning Herrera now has a 1.5% lead over the incumbent. Unfortunately for Herrera, that translates to 43.3% of the vote, so TX-23 is going to be heading to a runoff as well.
I still believe that Herrera will win the runoff, but I suspect it will be closer than it should be. TX-23 is the home of Uvalde, and while Herrera has won majorities in Uvalde County, in the city itself his pro-2A stances aren’t nearly as popular.
Which brings to the real danger for Republicans that was exposed on Tuesday night. Cook Political Report labels TX-23 “Solid Republican”, and gives the GOP a 7-point advantage on the generic ballot. As of Monday morning, though, more votes have been cast in the Democrat primary than on the Republican side.
As of this writing, there have been 54,808 votes in the GOP primary, compared to 57,587 for Democrats. That’s relatively close, but it should still be ringing alarm bells for Republicans given that in 2024 the Republican primary had 30,000 more voters than the Democrat primary (57,630 to 27,893).
To make matters worse, this year the Democrats avoided an expensive runoff, with Katy Padilla Stout winning the primary with more than 50% of the vote. Stout’s website touts her support for “universal background checks, a ban on bump stocks, and red-flag laws”, and TX-23 looks competitive enough that gun control groups are sure to spend some serious coin backing her campaign between now and November.
The gun control lobby is also likely to spend big on the Texas Senate race, where Democrat James Talarico avoided a runoff with Jasmine Crockett and can now turn his attention to the general election in November. Talarico’s campaign website mentions his support for “universal background checks,” gun storage mandates, and raising the age to purchase “semi-automatic rifles with certain military-style features like high-capacity magazines.”
The biggest takeaway from Tuesday night is that pro-2A candidates are not guaranteed a win in the Lone Star State this election cycle. “Safe” districts like TX-23 aren’t particularly safe this year, and Second Amendment advocates are going to have to work hard to help candidates like Herrera get elected in November.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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