There’s one state race on the ballot this year, where there’s a special election in HD118 to succeed the retiring Rep. Joe Farias. The San Antonio Express News has endorsed Gabe Farias in that race.
Gabe Farias
Six candidates — three Democrats and three Republicans — are seeking to replace former Rep. Joe Farias, who stepped down earlier this year. We recommended that voters choose Gabe Farias, a Democrat, as their next state representative in the district that stretches from Somerset across Bexar County’s deep South Side and north to Selma.
Farias is the former representative’s son, but we urge voters to choose him because he brings a solid set of varied credentials to the post.
The 44-year-old Farias has been the president and CEO of the West San Antonio Chamber of Commerce since 2012, and the position has given him insight into the needs of small businesses and private enterprise in general. He also ran his own business as a sports marketer.
Additionally, he has served on the staff of two City Council members and worked in the office of state Rep. Roland Gutierrez.
Farias supports efforts to improve and adequately fund public education, and expanding Medicaid to secure federal funding that the state has left on the table. The funds would help provide health care for poor Texans.
See here and here for the background. A full list of the candidates in the race is here; note that Democratic candidate Tomas Uresti is the brother of State Sen. Carlos Uresti, who as it happens was the representative in HD118 before Joe Farias. As the endorsement editorial notes, this race will almost surely go to a runoff, and pretty much everyone involved is also running in next March’s primary. This is a Democratic seat, but it’s close enough that something odd could happen in a special election, though if it did it would likely be reversed in the 2016 general, as happened in the other partisan direction in HD97 in Tarrant County in 2007-2008. The main thing is that if whoever wins the special then goes on to win next November, he will have a leg up in seniority over his fellow freshmen. As usual, I’ll keep an eye on it.