The hottest race was in San Antonio.
With more than 81 percent of the precincts counted, Mayor Ron Nirenberg took a nearly 3-point lead against Councilman Greg Brockhouse, but it likely won’t be enough to avoid a runoff to determine San Antonio’s next mayor.
Nirenberg, who led by two points following early voting pushed his lead to 48.42 percent with Brockhouse garnering 45.82 percent. However, a winning candidate would need to cross the 50 percent threshold to secure victory.
If neither candidate secures more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff will be held next month.
“Did any of you think it was going to be easy?” Nirenberg said Saturday night to a group of supporters, volunteers and staff assembled at Augie’s. “We’re in for a long night. But guess what, this long night’s because this city deserves it. We will wait here and we will grind away at the progress earning every single vote and rechecked in the politics of division until we walk away winners. Because that’s what this city deserves. This is a city for all.
“This is about the future of San Antonio, it’s not just about one election. And we’re going to win, because this city needs to sustain progress.”
Here are the results. Nirenberg increased his lead over the course of Election Day and was up by a bit more than 3,000 votes. The runoff between the progressive Nirenberg and the not-progressive Brockhouse will be contentious, and important.
In Dallas, State Rep. Eric Johnson led the big field for Mayor.
With 149 of 529 precincts reporting, State Rep. Eric Johnson has 21 percent of the vote, Dallas City Councilman Scott Griggs has 17 percent, Lynn McBee has 15 percent, Mike Ablon has 13 percent and Regina Montoya and Miguel Solis have 10 percent.
Nine candidates ran for the open seat.
Mayor Mike Rawlings could not run again due to term limits.
Since no candidate got more than 50 percent of the votes, there will be a runoff between the top two candidates.
That runoff will happen on Saturday, June 8.
Those results are here, and they are more or less the same with 317 of 528 precincts reporting. Johnson is in his fifth term in the Lege and if he wins the runoff he’d vacate his seat, thus causing the fourth legislative special election of the cycle. In this case, it would be after the legislative session, so unless the Lege goes into overtime there would be no absence in Austin.
Elsewhere, Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price won again, holding off former Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Deborah Peoples; those results are here. In races I was following, Nabila Mansoor was headed for a runoff in Sugar Land, collecting 34.22% of the vote to Naushad Kermally’s 39.16%. Steve Halvorson fell short again in Pasadena. The three Pearland ISD candidates also lost.
Congratulations to all the winners, and we’ll look to the runoffs in June.
In the Dallas runoff, Johnson is going to be the establishment candidate and Griggs is going to be the liberal candidate. I don’t dislike Johnson but I’m not crazy about his backers so I guess I’m going to vote for Griggs unless there are very good reasons.
I’m peripherally involved in a Democratic organization here now (FEDDs–I’m on their mailing list) and through them I got on Griggs’ list. Montoya targeted me through either that, Emily’s List, or her Clinton connections (she got that endorsement). I saw lots of signs for lots of different people and had lots of approaches on this one. It was a surprisingly expensive/busy/well-backed election for one that was such a long shot for any single candidate.
And in Spring Branch, those South of I-10 had yet another victory unfortunately. The fact that they (and several other areas including Pearland) still have At Large districts) should be changed. Someone needs to sue to fix this problem.