Candace Valenzuela
Democrat Candace Valenzuela, a 34-year-old Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board member, is launching a campaign Monday against Texas GOP Rep. Kenny Marchant, one of the party’s top targets in 2020.
She will face an uphill battle for her party’s nomination in Texas’ 24th district, where several high-profile Democrats are eyeing the race. The suburban north Texas seat has long been a conservative stronghold, but the region’s rapidly changing demographics have recently made it more competitive.
Valenzuela, whose mother is Mexican-American and father is African-American, hopes to capitalize on that in her bid against Marchant, a seven-term congressman who narrowly beat a poorly funded opponent in 2018.
“We have a lot of folks moving into this area to live and go to work, this district isn’t the same as it was five-ten years ago,” Valenzuela said.
Valenzuela won her first and only election by defeating an 18-year incumbent on the school board of trustees in 2017, saying she wanted to add diversity to a panel did not match the student population.
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Other candidates gearing up for the Democratic primary in the 24th district include Kim Olson, who ran unsuccessfully for state Agriculture Commissioner last year, Jan McDowell, the Democratic nominee against Marchant in 2016 and 2018, and Will Fisher, an attorney who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in Texas’ 26th district last cycle.
See here for more on Olson’s entry. With the contested primaries now here and in CD22, I was wondering where things stood in comparison to 2018. In CD07, the field had begun to fill out in early April, with Jason Westin being the first of the candidates that raised significant money to enter. Alex Triantaphyllis entered in early May, with Laura Moser and eventual winner Lizzie Fletcher joining in mid-May. In CD32, Colin Allred was an early entrant, in late April.
There were lots of other contested primaries, of course, but you get the idea. Based on this much, I’d say we’re basically on the same track as in 2018. We had enough candidates by this time in the cycle to start to see real fundraising activity for the Q2 report. I expect we’ll have a similar experience this time. For tracking purposes, here’s what I know about other races of interest:
The DCCC top tier races:
CD10 – 2018 candidate Mike Siegel is in.
CD21 – Joe Kopser will not run again, but Wendy Davis is giving it a look.
CD23 – 2018 candidate Gina Ortiz Jones is giving all indications that she’s in, though she has not yet made an official announcement.
CD31 – MJ Hegar is being urged to run for this again, but she is currently looking at the Senate race. I have no idea who else might be looking at this one.
Other races:
CD02 – Elisa Cardnell is in, and it sounds like Todd Litton is not going to make another run.
CD03 – No idea yet.
CD06 – No idea yet.
CD25 – No idea yet.
That’s what I know at this time. I’ll be looking at the Q1 finance reports in the next few days, which may reveal some other names. If you know of more candidates, leave a comment and let us know.
UPDATE: Somehow, I managed to overlook CD22, where Sri Kulkarni and Nyanza Moore are in the race.
Julie Oliver announced at the Texas Democratic Women’s Blue Ribbon Lobby Day that she is running again in CD-25.