#TX2018 Runoff Results: Congressional races go well; State Rep races do not....

"And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when thou turnest to the right hand, and when thou turnest to the left.
Isaiah 30:21

We've got some good news and some bad news:

• The good news: In Congressional runoffs, Conservatives went 4 for 5.

• The bad news: In State rep runoffs, Conservatives went 1 for 6.

We wrote about the stakes of the Congressional races on Monday.  We don't want to re-hash the same points here, but suffice to say that pulling the Texas delegation to the right could have a disproportionate impact on the entire Congress.  The Texas Observer made the same observation:

A new class of Texas tea-party darlings, buoyed by millions of dollars in outside spending, won their Republican congressional runoffs Tuesday — all in deep-red districts. Come January, that means the obstructionist wing of the U.S. House Republican conference — the Freedom Caucus — will add a few more Texas wingnuts to its ranks.

There's no sugarcoating the Texas house results.  We missed an opportunity.   There are a number of reasons why, but the biggest is that there are a lot of good ol' boys in this state who've been in charge for a long time and they do not want to give up their power.  The Texas house is their last island of power.

That being said, if you look at the legislature and this cycle as a whole, the long term trend continued.  We gained a new Senator, we gained 7 or 8 new house members (depending on November), and we're getting a new speaker.  Slow, steady, progress can be frustrating at times, but it'll get you where you need to go (eventually).

Bottom Line: To paraphrase the Rolling Stones, we didn't get everything we want this cycle, but we got what we need...