In Texas’ 23rd congressional district, incumbent Rep. Henry Bonilla (R) wasn’t expected to have too much trouble. In November, he’d almost won the district outright, coming just two points short of avoiding a run-off and heading back to DC for an eighth term. There were widespread rumors that Bonilla had come to consider his re-election a foregone conclusion, and had begun considering a run for statewide office in the coming years.
With this in mind, yesterday’s results were a very pleasant surprise.
Former Congressman Ciro Rodriguez defeated seven-term Republican Henry Bonilla in a runoff election Tuesday, adding another Democrat to Congress.
With nearly all precincts reporting in the state’s largest district, Rodriguez had 54% to Bonilla’s 45%. […]
“I thought it would be, in all honesty, would be a lot closer than it was in the end,” Rodriguez said at his campaign party. “I can assure you I’m going to be reaching out and working with everyone. When you get elected, you represent everyone in the district.”
Rodriguez was in the House for four terms, but was ousted in 2004 after Tom DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme skewed the district’s boundaries. I wonder if DeLay thinks the effort was worth it? His stunt led to his indictment and his resignation from Congress, and after Bonilla’s loss, produced just two additional Republican seats. What a fiasco.
A couple of other points of interest (including the winner of our predictions contest):
* Rahm Emanuel and the DCCC deserve a lot of credit for making this win happen. National Journal noted that a “very well-connected Democratic source told me today that the DCCC spent $1.5 million on the contest largely because they knew that Rodriguez, with his limited fundraising skills, could not win this on his own. So, this is as much (if not more) a victory for Rahm, as it is for Ciro.”
* Bonilla’s vote in favor of a border fence made a big difference in Maverick County. In 2004, Bonilla won the county with 59% support. In 2006, he lost it, 86% to 14%. Wow.
* As Chris Bowers noted, “Democrats now have 233 seats in the 110th congress, more than Republicans have had since 1952. the Republican “revolution” never secured this large a majority in the House. We beat them. We did better than they ever did. So much for the vaunted Republican political machine, which recorded record voter contacts, record fundraising, and record early voting this cycle. With their best effort, we beat them harder than they ever beat us.”
* And I’m very pleased to announce that yesterday’s results mean I can finally call a winner in the Official Carpetbagger Election Predictions Contest. I asked readers to guess the results way back on Nov. 5, but with a handful of undecided races, and with so many readers coming so close, we needed to wait until all of the results were in before naming a winner.
In this case, there are two. Alex Simpson got it exactly right, predicting Dems would go +30 in the House and +6 in the Senate. The other winner is KTinOhio who guessed +31 in the House and +6 in the Senate — and would have been exactly right were it not for voting irregularities in Florida’s 13th. (Rege, Ed Stephan, JoeW, Dale, and stlouisguy were the next closest competitors, by the way)
Congratulations to Alex and KT, both of whom have won a free, autographed copy of “Chasing Ghosts,” written by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Director Paul Rieckhoff.