Rep. Jessica Farrar
Here’s the current list of people who have filed CTAs for HD148, not including Rep. Jessica Farrar and her 2018 opponent Ryan McConnico:
83999 COH Isaacson, Terah C. 08/20/2019 State Representative Dist 148
65547 COH Yarbrough Camarena, Kendra J. 08/21/2019 State Representative Dist 148
84004 COH LaRotta, Luis Humberto 08/21/2019 State Representative Dist 148
83177 COH Mundy, Mia 11/26/2018 State Representative Dist 148
83989 COH Shaw, Penny 08/18/2019 State Representative Dist 148
84010 COH Nunez, Anna L. 08/22/2019 State Representative Dist 148
69682 COH Carmona, Christopher 08/26/2019 State Representative Dist 148
84029 COH Watt, Christopher B. 08/29/2019 State Representative Dist 148
84025 COH Garcia, Adrian 08/28/2019 State Representative Dist 148
84022 COH Eastman, Anna M. 08/27/2019 State Representative Dist 148
84026 COH Trevino, Alva I 08/27/2019 State Representative Dist 148
The first six, down to Anna Nunez, I’ve discussed before. Let’s review the others.
– No, that’s not County Commissioner Adrian Garcia. According to Carlos Calbillo on Facebook, this Adrian Garcia is a “former Texas Senate intern, Aggie and campaign worker in the race that now-Commissioner Adrian Garcia ran for Congress against Gene Green. He is no relation to the Commissioner.” You can see a picture of him at the link above, and this appears to be his Facebook page. It’s certainly possible some people will think he’s the County Commissioner, but whether they’d be happy to vote for him or confused as to why he’d be running for another office is a question I can’t answer.
– Chris Carmona is a Republican who has run for office a couple of times – City Council against Melissa Noriega in 2011, County Attorney in 2016 (he lost in the primary), and for HD148 against Rep. Farrar in 2014 (he got 39.7%). Having more than one Republican in the race may split that vote enough to prevent either of them from making the runoff, though with this many Dems in there as well I wouldn’t count on that. He still has his 2016 campaign Facebook page; I assume he’ll repurpose it for this race.
– Christopher Watt is an attorney (this is why I’m pretty sure I’ve got the right person). His Facebook page suggests he’s a Democrat. I didn’t find any campaign presence for him.
– Alva Trevino is an attorney who serves on METRO’s Executive Leadership Team, having previously been METRO’s General Counsel. Her husband Joe Trevino ran for City Council in 2007, losing in the runoff to Jolanda Jones for At Large #5. She should be a serious contender, able to raise some money quickly, which everyone is going to need to do in this short campaign with a lot of background noise.
– Last but certainly not least is Anna Eastman, who I’d say starts out with the name recognition advantage after serving two terms as HISD Trustee. She announced her candidacy on Friday to a lot of acclaim.
So that’s eleven candidates, which needless to say is a lot, all running for an office that they’d need to run for again next year, beginning with the primary. I had originally thought that whoever won the special election would have a leg up in the primary, but now I’m not so sure. Mostly that’s because with this many candidates – and remember, the filing deadline is Wednesday, so there’s still time for more people to jump in – the potential for an unexpected result is non-trivial. As I’ve said many times, we’re going to have a super high turnout primary next March, which means the incumbent advantage for someone who would have literally just won, will be small. I’d still give the winner of this race the edge, but it would not shock me at all if we wind up electing someone else next year.
I’ll update again once the filing deadline passes. I’m going to do some interviews for this race, but we’ll see how many.