Early results are trickling in, some good, some not so good. Let's have a look, Democrats first:
- Who are these people that are voting for Mark Thompson? We had two excellent candidates for Railroad Commissioner at the start of this race, and as things are going we're going to end up with this guy. WTF? At least Eric Roberson is leading in Dallas' CD32.
- Rosemary Lehmberg has a big early lead (PDF) on Mindy Montford.
- Larry Weiman is up 20 points on Marc Isenberg.
- Richard Morrison is over 60% (PDF) in his County Commissioner's race in Fort Bend, but with fewer than 300 early votes cast, so it's far from over.
On the GOP side:
- Pete Olson is crushing Shelley Sekula Gibbs in CD22, thus lowering the humor potential of that race by about 97%. Angie Chen Button is leading the crazy guy in Dallas' HD112, while West Texas incumbent Buddy West appears to be on his way to retirement. West was anti-Craddick, so that's a pickup for the bad guys, while Button is likely to continue Fred Hill's anti-Craddick stance for a hold. In Harris County's HD144, Ken Legler has the early lead.
- Speaking of Harris County, Pat Lykos has the lead in both absentee and early voting. So much for my analysis of where the vote was coming from.
I'll try to keep an eye on these, but feel free to chime in if I'm too slow.
UPDATE: At 9 PM, the Harris County Clerk page has no precincts reporting, but the SOS page does. Usually, it's the other way around. Anyway, I think it's safe to declare Mark Thompson, Rosemary Lehmberg, Richard Morrison, and Pete Olson all winners - in fact, the AP has called it for Olson. More later. BOR, Elise Hu, and Houston Politics are all liveblogging as well.
UPDATE: All results are in. Lykos defeated Siegler, so the Chuck Rosenthal era is officially over, and prosecutorial experience is not an issue for the fall. Weiman beat Isenberg, Legler squeaked past Roberts, Button knocked off Dunning, and in what may have been the nastiest State House runoff, Ralph Sheffield beat Martha Tyroch in Central Texas. Thank you, and good night.
UPDATE: Oops, missed that Roberson won in CD32. Now I'm done here.
Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 08, 2008 to Election 2008Have a look at the county-by-county returns. These rural counties like Willacy, Tyler, and Ulvalde are having 10-20% turnout and are going big for Thompson.
And it's not as if there's anything else on the ballot in many of these places. People specifically, purposely voted for him.
Do they think he's somebody else? Like voting for Gene Kelly because they loved him in Singing in the Rain?
Posted by: scott_m on April 8, 2008 8:48 PM