Posted by Butch Taylor overwhelming led the Democratic field in HD 22. Unofficial totals show that if he could have swung 12 votes his way he would have won without a runoff. Don Webster finished a distant second with 25.7% of the vote. There is speculation that Webster may forego a runoff.
FWIW, the Democrats had a lot more participants in their primary than the GOP did (3726 to 999, unofficially). For example, the Democrats had three candidates who received more votes than GOP primary winner Wayne Johnson.
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How, pray tell, is this considered a district that the Republican will win? Unless all the
losing Democrats can throw their support to Johnson, that seems unlikely at this stage.
Granted, there’s plenty of time before the general, Johnson will probably have plenty of
money, etc., etc., etc. But still…
Jamy, good question and good points. I have never said that a Republican will win this district, and I have been a little surprised how much I have seen in blogs about the likelihood of a Republican being elected to this district. It could certainly happen of course, but…
[...] As the Political Parlor speculated on election night might happen, second place finisher Don Webster has dropped out of the race for the HD 22 Democratic nomination making Butch Taylor the party’s nominee. [...]
[...] We will also be looking with interest to see the turnout numbers for each party. It would be a mistake to infer too much from them particularly if turnout is light, but they will allow the fun of speculating on how partisan the district has become. For example, Republicans expressed some hopes of picking up the House District 22 seat after Democratic Rep. Albert Hall died last November. But when the Democrats turned out three-and-a-half times as many voters as Republicans did in the primary, you got the sense that the district did not have as many active Republicans as the GOP hoped. Democrat Butch Taylor went on to claim the seat in the general election by a wide (58%-42%) margin. [...]