The Democratic primary left some unfinished business.
El Paso Democrats will head back to the polls May 28 because several races saw no candidates win more than 50% of the vote.
The three highest-profile primaries – for district attorney, sheriff and District 77 in the Texas House of Representatives – will all have runoffs. James Montoya will face Alma Trejo in the DA runoff; Oscar Ugarte and Robert “Bobby” Flores will meet in the sheriff runoff; and Vince Perez and Norma Chavez will be in the District 77 runoff.
El Paso Republicans, who haven’t had much to cheer about in El Paso for years, saw a surge in turnout.
The Republican primary drew 20,714 voters, a 12% increase over the last presidential primary in 2020. That’s below the nearly 29,000 in the last seriously contested GOP primary in 2016, but higher than any other GOP primary in recent decades.
And the draw for Republicans clearly was former President Donald Trump. He won 82% of the primary vote in El Paso. Republicans only fielded a handful of local candidates and only one local race – for Texas 23rd Congressional District, which includes a small piece of El Paso County – had more than one GOP candidate.
Almost one in five El Paso Republicans skipped over unopposed candidates for sheriff, district attorney and Texas’ 16th Congressional District.
Even Democratic primary candidates who strayed into MAGA-land lived to fight another day.
Appointed County Criminal Court at Law No. 1 Judge Linda Perez was criticized by her opponent, Linda Noelle Estrada, for taking a smiling picture with a man in a red Make America Great Again cap at a 2019 Trump rally. Perez won her Democratic primary with 59% of the vote.
And Flores earned a runoff spot by finishing a distant second in the Democratic sheriff primary despite being photographed wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” t-shirt, a message based on a vulgarity that became a rallying cry among conservatives opposed to President Joe Biden.
Democrats drew about 37,000 voters in their primary, a 47% decline from the 2020 presidential primary. President Joe Biden wasn’t seriously challenged this year, and the Democratic presidential primary was still active when El Pasoans backed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over Biden and others in 2020.
But Tuesday’s turnout was the lowest for an El Paso Democratic primary in a presidential election year since 2000.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales was forced into a runoff.
Gonzales, who lives in San Antonio has represented the 23rd Congressional District since 2019, fell short of 50% of the vote in the Republican primary and will be in a May 28 runoff with YouTube personality Brandon Herrera.
The district stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, and includes much of the Texas-Mexico border. Gonzales won about 46% of the district vote to Herrera’s 23% in a five-candidate race.
In El Paso County, Gonzales won 43% of the vote and Herrera 30%. Just under 1,500 El Paso County residents cast ballots in the Republican primary for the 23rd Congressional District.
Gonzales was criticized by many Republican organizations in his district as insufficiently conservative on issues such as guns, border enforcement and same-sex marriage. He was censured last year by the Texas Republican Party.
Santos Limon is the Democratic nominee in the 23rd after defeating Lee Bausinger, 59% to 41%. More than 2,000 El Pasoans voted in that Democratic primary, with Limon winning almost two-thirds of those votes.
Democrats probably saw at least a small protest vote. Maybe more.
President Biden has been criticized by many Democrats – particularly younger ones – over his actions in the Gaza conflict. In the last week’s Democratic primary in Michigan, 13% of voters cast “uncommitted” ballots as part of a campaign to make a statement about Biden’s pro-Israel policies in the conflict.
Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar of El Paso, is one of seven national co-chairs of Biden’s re-election campaign, but has called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, a step the Biden administration has resisted.
Texas Democrats didn’t have an uncommitted or similar option on the ballot, so the protest option is limited to voting for a lesser-known candidate or sitting out the vote. The 84% of votes cast for Biden and 86% for Escobar are strong wins for them.
About 7% of El Pasoans who cast ballots in the Democratic primary chose no candidate in the presidential and congressional races. That’s up from about 2% in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary and Escobar’s last primary race in 2022.
Escobar faced largely unknown opponents in each of her last two primaries. Deliris Montanez Berrios won about 12% of the votes in 2022; Leeland White won about 14% this year.
More importantly, younger El Paso voters flocked to the sidelines this year. Data on the makeup of Election Day voters won’t be available for several weeks, but the number of Democratic early votes cast by people under 30 in El Paso plummeted by 80% this year compared to 2020.
People vote – or don’t – for complex reasons, so it’s difficult to pin low turnout on any specific cause. But taking several factors together – especially the drop in turnout and the abstention rate in the presidential primary – suggests at least a small protest among Democratic voters dissatisfied with Biden on Gaza or other issues.
Sheriff Richard Wiles chose not to seek re-election. Voters rebuffed him anyhow.
Wiles was first elected in 2008 and never faced serious opposition in three elections after that.
He endorsed his patrol commander, Ryan Urrutia, to succeed him, and also was a prominent supporter of two other candidates. All three lost in landslides.
Urrutia finished a distant third in Tuesday’s primary behind Oscar Ugarte and Robert “Bobby” Flores, winning only 24% of the vote.
Wiles served as campaign treasurer for county attorney candidate Sergio Saldivar, who was crushed by Christina Sanchez, winning less than a third of the vote.
The sheriff also served as campaign treasurer for former Sheriff’s Detention Officer Peter Faraone, who got 42% of the vote while losing the Precinct 1 county commissioner race to Jackie Arroyo Butler.
