Episode 19: Talking Texas Primaries, with Gabby Birenbaum of The Texas Tribune

It’s almost primary time! This coming Tuesday, three states — Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas — will hold their regular primaries to nominate candidates for various federal and state offices. This will begin six months of primaries across 50 states and the District of Columbia, with the final races occurring in September.

Of those states, Texas will host most of the high-profile races happening on March 3. To talk about the Lone Star State contests, DDHQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley was joined by Gabby Birenbaum, the Washington Correspondent for The Texas Tribune. Gabby joined the DDHQ Podcast in December to talk about Texas’s electoral slate, and she returned to help clarify where things stand in the state’s major primary races.

The conversation opened with the U.S. Senate race, looking at the dynamics of the three-way Republican primary involving incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Rep. Wesley Hunt. Cornyn and Paxton look headed for a May 26 runoff, but don’t write off Hunt entirely. On the Democratic side, Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico are facing off in a much-watched contest that looks to be quite close.

Down the ballot, some U.S. House primaries have grabbed their own share of headlines. Most notably, Rep. Tony Gonzales faces a tough primary challenge in Texas’s 23rd District under a cloud of scandal regarding an alleged affair with a staffer. The staffer committed suicide last September and, earlier this week, it came out that Gonzales had sent explicit texts to her, which has led some Republicans to call for his resignation. Beyond that race, Texas’s redistricted map has precipitated a number of heated primary contests for both parties, including the Democratic primaries in the 18th and 33rd districts, and the GOP primary in the 2nd District.

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