Rebecca Zisser/Insider
Texas is kicking off the 2022 midterms with the first primary elections of the cycle. Polls will close at 7 pm local time on Tuesday. Follow along for live results.
The races and the stakes:
Texas is holding primary elections for a number of important statewide and congressional races.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is running for a third term and faces primary challenges from former State Sen. Don Huffines and former state GOP chairman Allen West, among others.
Abbott maintains a decisive fundraising and spending advantage, as well as strong Republican institutional support — including the backing of former President Donald Trump — from within and outside Texas.
He is followed by Huffines, who has been endorsed by Sen. Rand Paul, Trump's former campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, and Katrina Pierson, who served as Trump's campaign spokesperson in 2016.
The most recent campaign finance reports, covering the first three weeks of January, showed Abbott raising $1.4 million and spending $4.5 million out of his sizeable war chest, while Huffines raised $1.3 million and spent $2.7 million.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, Beto O'Rourke, a 2018 Senate nominee and 2020 presidential candidate, is the frontrunner for the gubernatorial nomination. O'Rourke came within 3 percentage points of defeating Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, but faces an uphill battle winning statewide in a midterm year where the party in power typically loses seats and faces more challenges winning in a red state like Texas. Trump, for his part, won the Lone Star State by over 5 percentage points in 2020.
GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is also running for reelection and faces a smattering of primary challengers. The Democrats competing for the nomination for lieutenant governor include energy executive Mike Collier, professor and Texas Democratic Party vice-chair Carla Brailey, and state Rep. Michelle Beckley.
Embattled Republican Attorney General and Trump ally Ken Paxton is also facing multiple serious primary challengers, including GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman.
A number of candidates including former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski, immigration attorney Rochelle Garza, and civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, are also competing in the Democratic primary for attorney general.
Texas, which gained two new House of Representatives seats as a result of the 2020 Census, is also holding its first congressional primaries under its new maps. The highest-profile House primary of the night is the rematch between longtime centrist Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros in the majority Hispanic South Texas-based 28th District.
Cuellar defeated Cisneros, an immigration attorney and one of his former interns, in 2020 and maintains strong institutional support in the district as well as a solid fundraising and cash-on-hand advantage.
However, Cuellar is running under a cloud of legal uncertainty after the FBI raided his Laredo home and campaign office in mid-January.
ABC News reported that the raids were connected to a "wide-ranging" federal investigation involving "US businessmen" and the country of Azerbaijan. Cuellar, the co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus, has maintained close ties with the oil-rich former Soviet nation for years but maintains "no wrongdoing."
A slew of Democratic and Republican candidates are also competing for their parties' nominations for Texas' now-open 15th District, one of the only competitive seats under the state's new congressional map.
Tuesday's primaries will also determine the nominees for two heavily Democratic seats: the mostly Black, Dallas-based 30th District vacated by retiring Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, and the 35th District, which stretches from Austin to San Antonio.
And on the GOP side, the crowded Republican primary to replace retiring Rep. Kevin Brady in the Houston-adjacent 8th District, led by former Navy SEAL Morgan Luttrell and Republican operative Christian Collins, is a burgeoning proxy fight between two wings of the GOP, the Texas Tribune reported.
Not all primary elections, however, will be settled on Tuesday. Texas is a runoff state, meaning if no candidate earns over 50% of the vote, the two highest-performing candidates will face off in a May 24 runoff.
source https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-governor-attorney-general-congress-primaries-live-results-vote-counts-2022-3