Our fourth and hopefully final special legislative election for this cycle is now queued up.
Justin Rodriguez
Five candidates have signed up for the Feb. 12 special election to fill the seat of former state Rep. Justin Rodriguez, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
The candidates, four Democrats and one Republican, had until 5 p.m. Monday to file.
Rodriguez, a San Antonio Democrat, gave up the seat earlier this month after being appointed to replace longtime Bexar County Commissioner Paul Elizondo, who died late last year.
The Democratic candidates for solidly blue House District 125 include:
- Steve Huerta, a social justice activist
- Ray Lopez, a former member of the San Antonio City Council
- Coda Rayo-Garza, an education policy expert
- Art Reyna, who represented HD-125 from 1997 to 2003
The lone GOP contender is Fred Rangel, a former member of the State Republican Executive Committee who unsuccessfully ran for Texas GOP vice chair last year.
These are the five we’d heard about at the end of last week, so no late surprises. As for the “solidly blue” qualifier, we’ve already talked about that. Here’s a handy chart for you:
Dist Romney Obama Abbott Davis Trump Clinton
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079 34.1% 64.6% 39.3% 58.5% 26.5% 68.0%
125 39.5% 59.0% 42.5% 55.6% 33.3% 60.8%
145 38.3% 60.2% 40.8% 57.2% 28.7% 66.8%
SD19 44.1% 54.6% 49.1% 49.0% 41.9% 53.4%
As I said before, HD125 is solidly blue in a high-turnout context (we don’t have 2018 numbers yet), more moderately blue in a low-turnout context. It’s bluer than SD19, which is certainly reassuring, but it’s not blue enough to sleepwalk through it or fail to mend fences in a runoff. Honestly, I’d prefer in general to let numbers rather than adjectives do the describing of districts like these. The data’s easy enough to find. Let the reader be the judge of how solid or swingy a given district is. Early voting starts in HD125 on January 28. The Rivard Report and the Current have more.