Mark Strama announced his resignation from the Lege in February to go and run Google Fiber in Austin. Last week, Rick Perry set November 5 as the special election date to replace him.
Mark Strama
The race to serve out the remainder of former state Rep. Mark Strama’s current term got an official election date Thursday as Gov. Rick Perry set a Nov. 5 special election.
Known for his work on education and clean-technology issues, Strama, D-Austin, announced in February that he was leaving his House seat. Strama, who had considered a run for Austin mayor, announced in June that he had accepted a position leading Austin’s Google Fiber operations. Google announced in April that Austin would be among the first places to try out the high-speed internet service.
With Strama’s departure looming on the horizon for several months, the field of candidates vying to take his House District 50 seat already begun to fill up. Early hopefuls to announce included businesswoman Jade Chang Sheppard, associate municipal court judge Ramey Ko, prosecutor Rico Reyes and Celia Israel, a former aide to Gov. Ann Richards.
“They are all really good candidates, and the district will be served by any of them,” Strama told Texas Weekly in May.
I agree with Strama’s assessment of the candidates to be his successor. The special election matters for two reasons: One, there will likely be another special session next year to sort out the school finance situation, once the retrial and the appeal to the Supreme Court have been resolved. Two, whoever wins, assuming he or she wins again in 2014, will have a leg up on other freshmen in 2015 in seniority. As BOR noted, the seat is Democratic, but a Republican could have a chance in a low-turnout election and runoff. One would hope that after all that has gone on over the past few weeks that generating some excitement on the D side for this would not be too challenging.
Strama and Rep. Craig Eiland are the first two legislators to announce that they will not be back in 2015. With the special session all over but for transportation funding in the House, you can expect there to be more such announcements in the coming weeks. As I noted a few months back, the Lege has seen quite a bit of turnover in the past decade, much of which has been self-imposed. I see no reason why this year will be any different.