Texas primary sets up Greg Abbott-Beto O’Rourke showdown as midterms begin

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Republican Gov. Greg Abbott will face Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke after voters in Texas on Tuesday opened what could be a lengthy, bruising primary season poised to reshape political power from state capitals to Washington.

Both men easily won their party’s nomination for governor. Looking ahead, Abbott is in a commanding position in his bid for a third term, beginning his campaign with more than $50 million and running on a conservative agenda in America’s largest Republican state. O’Rourke, meanwhile, is seeking to recapture the energy of his 2018 Senate campaign, when he tapped into a burst of Democratic energy to nearly oust Ted Cruz.

“This group of people, and then some, are going to make me the first Democrat to be governor of the state of Texas since 1994,” O’Rourke told supporters in Fort Worth, where in 2018 he flipped Texas’ largest red county. “This is on us. This is on all of us.”

A more competitive race was taking shape in the GOP primary for state attorney general. Incumbent Ken Paxton is facing several challengers, including Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, the nephew of one president and grandson of another, and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert. Paxton led a failed lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election and has for years faced securities fraud charges and an FBI investigation into corruption allegations. He has broadly denied wrongdoing.

LIVE RESULTS: Texas 2022 Primary Election

Democrats, who haven’t won statewide office in Texas since 1994, face challenges of their own. Nine-term U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar is hoping to avoid becoming the first Democratic member of Congress to lose a primary this year. He’s facing progressive Jessica Cisneros and is contending with the fallout of a recent FBI raid on his home, though he’s denied wrongdoing.

Texas’ rapid growth — driven by more than 4 million new residents — has shifted once solidly red suburbs away from Republicans. But the GOP has countered that with redrawn maps that left fewer competitive congressional districts along with dramatic new voting restrictions.

Absent poll workers and technical hiccups caused isolated delays in two major cities Tuesday.

In Houston, morning voters were left standing in line or looking for polling places after a Harris County website that directs people to nearby voting sites went down temporarily.

Also, a handful of Democratic poll workers in Fort Worth did not show up as scheduled, delaying the opening of some party polling places in Tarrant County. New state law requires each party to have a separate setup at voting sites.

Texas last year approved the nation’s toughest abortion restrictions — measures that some saw as going too far.

“That’s where I think Greg Abbott and the current Republicans kind of crossed the line,” said Eric Medrano, 25, a longshoreman in Houston who voted for one of Abbott’s far-right challengers, Don Huffines. He added, “I don’t believe (abortion) should be banned at such an early, early stage.”

The primary also tested Republican efforts to more aggressively court Hispanic voters — and even before polls closed, they were celebrating.

Counties along the state’s border with Mexico, long a stronghold for Democrats, were on track to smash Republican turnout levels compared with recent elections. It is the latest warning sign for Democrats who are trying to hold the line with Hispanic voters who swung toward former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Texas votes as the nation slowly moves out of the deepest lows of a pandemic that has raged for nearly two years. But that’s tempered by inflation reaching a decades-high level and a burgeoning war in Europe. There are also persistent questions about the country’s commitment to basic democratic principles after many GOP leaders have tied themselves to Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

After Texas, primaries in other states won’t resume until May. That means results here could be viewed for months as a measure of the nation’s political mood.

Republicans are betting that Texas’ primaries will be the first step toward them retaking Congress in November, pointing to President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, spiking inflation and anger about the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

History is also on the GOP’s side. The party controlling the White House has lost congressional seats in the first midterm race every election cycle this century except in 2002, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the fight over the party’s future is much fiercer than it was 20 years ago.

U.S. Rep. Van Taylor of North Texas, for instance, has become a target for some on the right after he voted to certify Biden’s electoral victory and to create an independent commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection. The Republican now faces four primary challengers who have largely refused to accept Biden’s victory and have tried to minimize the insurrection.

National Democrats say Trump’s outsize GOP influence and an economy roaring back from the pandemic may help them counter political precedent. Still, disagreements between the party’s progressive and more moderate congressional wings helped doom Build Back Better, a sweeping, Biden-backed spending and social programs package.

Cisneros is one of three Texas progressives who could secure Democratic nominations in House districts blue enough to all but guarantee they’ll be headed to Congress. A 28-year-old immigration attorney who supports Medicare for All, Cisneros nearly toppled Cuellar during Texas’ 2020 primary. She still has to overcome Cuellar’s strong name recognition, though.

Cisneros has been endorsed by progressive stalwarts Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned with her and with Greg Casar, an Austin City Councilmember who championed a $15 citywide minimum wage and is favored to win the Democratic nomination for an open House seat representing Texas’ capital.

In Dallas, civil rights attorney and state lawmaker Jasmine Crockett has denounced “puppets” of the Democratic establishment and is running for a seat being vacated by longtime congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who has endorsed her.

Emily Winnenberg, 29, who owns a small business in Dallas, voted in the Democratic primary and said abortion and voting rights were top of mind.

“I’m first and foremost extremely concerned with women’s reproductive rights being all but being taken away,” Winnenberg said, adding that Biden’s unpopularity means he “has a PR problem, not a logistical problem.”

“I think he’s actually accomplishing a lot for Americans,” she said. “He’s done a good job getting the country back on track in terms of COVID precautions and getting that under control.”

Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Juan Lozano in Houston, Jamie Stengle in Dallas, Acacia Coronado in Austin, Jake Bleiberg in Houston and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.