Texas voters are heading to the polls on Tuesday in the first primary contest of the US 2022 midterm elections.
The state attorney general, Ken Paxton, a staunch Donald Trump ally who has the former president’s endorsement, is seeking the Republican nomination for a third term in office.
Paxton, who has been under indictment since 2015 and faces whistleblower accusations of misusing his office, is running against a number of GOP challengers, including George P Bush, the son of Jeb Bush and nephew of George W Bush.
Bush and Paxton’s other challengers are hoping to push him to a runoff election in May. Races go to a runoff in Texas if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.
Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, one of the most conservative Republicans in the country, is expected to win his party’s nomination for a third term. Democrats are likely to nominate Beto O’Rourke, who narrowly lost a 2018 US Senate bid before his failed presidential campaign in 2020.
On the Democratic side, the most closely watched race is between Henry Cuellar, a longtime conservative Democrat in south Texas, and his progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, who is backed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
The race is a rematch of 2020, when Cuellar, whose home and office were raided by FBI investigators in January, narrowly defeated Cisneros. When Republicans redrew the district as part of the redistricting process last year, they excised some of the portions where Cisneros performed the most strongly in 2020.
The races are being watched as an early signal of the political temperature in the US. Texas is one of the fastest-growing states in the country and 95% of the growth over the last decade has been from people of color.
Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas since 1994, but many see it as increasingly politically competitive.
Whichever candidates ultimately prevail in the congressional primaries are highly likely to win in November. When Republicans redrew Texas’s 38 congressional districts last year, they reduced the number of competitive districts from 12 to just one.
The single remaining competitive district in the general election is the 15th congressional district, which stretches from outside San Antonio to the border city of McAllen in the south-east. Numerous challenges to the congressional map are pending in court.
One of the biggest stories of the primary so far has been the staggering impact of new voting restrictions.
The primary is the first in the state in which new sweeping voting restrictions will be in effect. For weeks, election officials have reported widespread issues with implementing the law’s provisions on mail-in ballots. A new requirement that voters note either their state ID or last four digits of their social security numbers is causing tens of thousands of ballots to be rejected.
In El Paso county, at the western end of the Texas-Mexico border, officials have rejected 27% of the 3,855 ballots they received so far, almost all because of issues related to the new state law, according to numbers provided by Lisa Wise, the county elections administrator.
In Harris county, the most populous in the state, officials said they had flagged 10,876 ballots – 29% of those returned – for rejection as of Saturday.
Leah Shah, a spokesperson for the election office, said the county planned to call voters whose information they had on file to try and get voters to correct any issues with their ballots.
The rejection numbers are staggeringly high. In the 2020 election, Texas officials reported rejecting less than 1% of ballots statewide.
Texas voters are heading to the polls on Tuesday in the first primary contest of the US 2022 midterm elections.The state attorney general, Ken Paxton, a staunch Donald Trump ally who has the former president’s endorsement, is seeking the Republican nomination for a third term in office.Paxton, who has been under indictment since 2015 and faces whistleblower accusations of misusing his office, is running against a number of GOP challengers, including George P Bush, the son of Jeb Bush and nephew of George W Bush.Bush and Paxton’s other challengers are hoping to push him to a runoff election in May. Races go to a runoff in Texas if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, one of the most conservative Republicans in the country, is expected to win his party’s nomination for a third term. Democrats are likely to nominate Beto O’Rourke, who narrowly lost a 2018 US Senate bid before his failed presidential campaign in 2020.On the Democratic side, the most closely watched race is between Henry Cuellar, a longtime conservative Democrat in south Texas, and his progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, who is backed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.The race is a rematch of 2020, when Cuellar, whose home and office were raided by FBI investigators in January, narrowly defeated Cisneros. When Republicans redrew the district as part of the redistricting process last year, they excised some of the portions where Cisneros performed the most strongly in 2020.The races are being watched as an early signal of the political temperature in the US. Texas is one of the fastest-growing states in the country and 95% of the growth over the last decade has been from people of color.Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas since 1994, but many see it as increasingly politically competitive.Whichever candidates ultimately prevail in the congressional primaries are highly likely to win in November. When Republicans redrew Texas’s 38 congressional districts last year, they reduced the number of competitive districts from 12 to just one.The single remaining competitive district in the general election is the 15th congressional district, which stretches from outside San Antonio to the border city of McAllen in the south-east. Numerous challenges to the congressional map are pending in court.One of the biggest stories of the primary so far has been the staggering impact of new voting restrictions.The primary is the first in the state in which new sweeping voting restrictions will be in effect. For weeks, election officials have reported widespread issues with implementing the law’s provisions on mail-in ballots. A new requirement that voters note either their state ID or last four digits of their social security numbers is causing tens of thousands of ballots to be rejected.In El Paso county, at the western end of the Texas-Mexico border, officials have rejected 27% of the 3,855 ballots they received so far, almost all because of issues related to the new state law, according to numbers provided by Lisa Wise, the county elections administrator.In Harris county, the most populous in the state, officials said they had flagged 10,876 ballots – 29% of those returned – for rejection as of Saturday.Leah Shah, a spokesperson for the election office, said the county planned to call voters whose information they had on file to try and get voters to correct any issues with their ballots. The rejection numbers are staggeringly high. In the 2020 election, Texas officials reported rejecting less than 1% of ballots statewide.