Race in Texas' 23rd District to be Decided in Dec. 12 Runoff

[Ron Burgundy]

CQPolitics.com - The unusual House runoff election in Texas’ 23rd District — between seven-term Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla and Democrat Ciro D. Rodriguez, a former House member from a neighboring district — now has a date: The contest will be held on Dec. 12.

The unusual House runoff election in Texas’ 23rd District — between seven-term Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla (news, bio, voting record) and Democrat Ciro D. Rodriguez, a former House member from a neighboring district — now has a date: The contest will be held on Dec. 12.

The date announced Tuesday by Republican Gov. Rick Perry effectively established a five-week runoff campaign going back to Nov. 7, when Bonilla and Rodriguez finished first and second in an unusually single-ballot, all-candidate primary that coincided with the national Election Day.

This complicated electoral situation is the result of a June Supreme Court ruling that invalidated the existing lines of the 23rd District — as drawn in a mid-decade redistricting plan implemented by the state legislature’s Republican majority in 2003 — on grounds that the map did not adequately safeguard Hispanic voting rights.

A federal court this summer adjusted the lines of the 23rd District, as well as four nearby districts, and vacated the results of the March 7 primaries that had been held in those districts. Only in the 23rd, which gained significant numbers of both Hispanic voters and Democrats, did the changes have a significant political impact.

Although Bonilla is himself Mexican-American, his political security has relied largely on support from non-Hispanic whites, as most Hispanics in his region, as elsewhere, lean Democratic. The 2003 Republican remap was aimed at providing Bonilla with greater political security, and he was strongly favored for this year’s race against a little-known Democratic challenger prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling.

That ruling and the subsequent redrawing of the 23rd District, however, thrust Bonilla into a much more competitive situation. Running on the same ballot with Rodriguez, four other Democrats and one independent candidate, Bonilla strived for a majority vote that would have made him the outright winner and obviated a runoff. But he fell just short, taking 49 percent of the Nov. 7 vote.

Rodriguez earned the second slot by taking 20 percent of the total vote, placing him 8 percentage points ahead of the third-place candidate.

Though Rodriguez — who served in the House from his victory in an April 1997 special election until January 2005 — was by far the most politically experienced candidate in the Democratic field, he did not have an easy time in the Nov. 7 contest. His fundraising was weak; he came in with the rap of a two-time loser, having been ousted from the 28th District seat in the 2004 Democratic primary by Henry Cuellar and then losing a rematch in this year’s March 7 primary (which was later vacated under the court-ordered remap); and he sowed confusion by first telling a labor group that he would drop out of the Nov. 7 contest, and then reversing himself to stay in the race.

Still, the new map added additional portions of populous Bexar County (San Antonio) to a district that reaches hundreds of miles west to take in rural areas, hugging the Rio Grande River nearly to El Paso. And the portions of the county that are in the 23rd generally lean Democratic: Bonilla, who like Rodriguez hails from San Antonio, was held to 46.7 percent of the Bexar County vote on Nov. 7.

District-wide, the five Democratic candidates’ combined vote edged the vote for Bonilla by a tiny margin, 48.7 percent to 48.6 percent.

And Rodriguez has one huge argument to make in the runoff campaign that he could not use with certainty prior to the blanket primary: If elected, he would be a member of the new Democratic House majority in the 110th Congress, while Bonilla would be consigned to the Republican minority if re-elected.

But the fact that control of the House was decided definitively in favor of the Democrats on Nov. 7 could make it hard for both candidates to maximize voter interest in their runoff.

Voters can begin casting ballots in the runoff election starting Dec. 4, the beginning of the “early voting” period allowed under Texas law.

Barring extended challenges of a few yet-to-be-decided races elsewhere in the nation, the Texas 23 runoff election will complete the 435-member roster for the 110th Congress that will convene in January.

There is one other runoff election, a Dec. 9 contest in Louisiana’s 2nd District, a New Orleans-centered constituency that already is certain to stay in Democratic hands: Voters will choose between eight-term Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) and Democratic state Rep. Karen Carter.