Blake Farenthold
Nine candidates have filed for the June 30 special election to finish former U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold’s term, according to the secretary of state’s office. The deadline was 5 p.m. Friday.
As expected, the group includes the four candidates who are currently in the May 22 runoffs for the November election: Democrats Raul “Roy” Barrera and Eric Holguin, as well as Republicans Bech Bruun and Michael Cloud. The other five candidates who filed for the special election are Democrat Mike Westergren, Republican Marty Perez, independent Judith Cutright, Libertarian Daniel Tinus and independent Christopher Suprun.
Of the five candidates who are not also in the runoffs, Suprun, who is from Dallas, is perhaps best known — he refused to vote for Donald Trump at Texas’ Electoral College meeting following the 2016 presidential election. Westergren, meanwhile, is a Corpus Christi lawyer who unsuccessfully ran for Texas Supreme Court in 2016.
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Before the June 30 special election to finish Farenthold’s term, voters in the district will primary runoffs will take place on May 22 to determine Democratic and Republican nominees for the seat in the fall. The winner of that contest will serve a full term beginning in January 2019.
See here for the background. Let’s be clear that only the candidates who are in the primary runoffs have a chance to hold this seat beyond the end of this year, if he or she wins both their runoff and then again in November. The others can aspire to be little more than a slightly extended version of Shelley Sekula Gibbs. Which isn’t nothing, but isn’t more than that. My guess is that any involvement from national Democrats would occur in the runoff for this race, assuming one of the three Dems that filed makes it that far. We’ll see how it goes.
My guess is that the candidates not in the primary runoffs are banking on the hope that a supreme court ruling with new maps this year would reopen the general election filing with yet another top two contest.
New maps are unlikely. But Texas should gain new seats in the 2020 census, and name ID from a prior campaign might come in handy.