Around the Texas Capitol: Special elections, Texas population growth

By Shayne Woodard and J Pete Laney, TAD Governmental Affairs

The Texas Capitol is pretty quiet during these hot, slow summer days, but there is still some political activity brewing.

Texas Senate District 19 special election

Eight candidates have filed for the July 31 special election to replace former State Sen. Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio), who resigned last month after being found guilty earlier this year of 11 felonies related to fraud and money laundering.

Running are:

Democrats:

• State Rep. Roland Gutierrez is an attorney and currently represents House District 119, which is located along the southern and eastern portions of Bexar County.
• Former Congressman Pete Gallego of Alpine, who represented CD 23 and also is a former Texas House member.
• Charlie Urbina Jones is a San Antonio attorney who ran for Congress in 1998 in CD 23 and for the Texas Democratic Party chair in 2006.
• State Rep. Tomas Uresti is the brother of Carlos Uresti and currently represents HD 118. He lost the 2018 election for his House seat to Leo Pacheco, former Bexar County Democratic Party chair.

Republicans:

• Jesse Jay Alaniz is former Harlandale ISD Board president.
• Peter Flores is a native of Pleasanton (Atascosa County) who challenged Carlos Uresti in 2016 general election.
• Carlos Antonio Raymond is a San Antonio real estate agent.

Libertarian:

• Tony Valdivia is a San Antonio financial analyst who unsuccessfully ran for San Antonio city council.

Update on the U.S. Senate race

Republican Ted Cruz leads Democrat Beto O’Rourke 41 percent to 36 percent in the general election race for a Texas seat in the U.S. Senate, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

Neal Dikeman, the Libertarian Party nominee for U.S. Senate, garnered 2 percent, according to the survey. And 20 percent of registered voters said either that they would vote for someone else in an election held today (3 percent) or that they haven’t thought enough about the contest to have a preference (17 percent).

Texas population swing

Texas’ Hispanic population increased from 9.7 million in 2010 to 11.1 million last year, according to new census population estimates. Meanwhile, the state’s Anglo population has increased by about 458,000 people to almost 11.9 million. That puts Hispanic Texans on pace to become the largest population group in the state by 2022.

Political resignation

In early June, State Rep. Larry Gonzales (R-Round Rock) resigned. TAD wishes the best of luck to Gonzales, who had already decided against serving another term. The special election to replace him will be at the same time at the November general election.