SAN ANTONIO (CN) – Despite Republican Congressman Will Hurd’s claiming victory Tuesday night, his race against Gina Ortiz-Jones is still too close to call after a dramatic overnight turn of events that brought the Democratic challenger within 689 votes of flipping a third U.S. House seat in Texas.
But Texas’ congressional delegation remains tightly in Republican hands – at least 22 of the state’s 36 U.S. House seats were retained by the GOP, with Hurd’s seat still in the balance.
And while Democrats mounted a vigorous political fight, unlike past midterms, they were unable to capture enough votes to topple Republicans from any statewide office. Gov. Gregg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton each coasted to re-election. Paxton held onto his post despite serving most of his first term under criminal indictment for securities fraud.
Texas 23
Hurd claimed an early victory at an Omni Hotel in northeast San Antonio Tuesday night over challenger Ortiz Jones, who hoped to become the state’s first Filipina-American to serve in Congress.
At midnight, Ortiz Jones trailed the two-term moderate Republican from Helotes by 4 percentage points.
“We achieved the largest victory in a political climate that ended the careers of dozens of my colleagues,” Hurd said just after 10:30 p.m. CST Tuesday to a roaring crowd of supporters.
But his victory speech in one of the state’s few swing districts may have come too soon; Ortiz Jones pulled ahead of Hurd as more votes rolled in early Wednesday morning. By 8 a.m. CST, 689 votes separated the two candidates, 102,903 to Ortiz Jones’ 102,214.
Hurd has been unafraid to part with Republican leadership on crucial issues. He has publicly criticized Trump’s plan for a border wall and denounced Russia’s influence on the 2016 election.
Hurd, who worked as an undercover agent for the CIA in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan for 9½ years and is one of only two black Republicans in the House, overcame Democratic incumbent Pete Gallego by just under 2,500 votes in 2014, and bested the former congressman again in 2016 by a slightly larger margin of 3,051 votes.
Ortiz Jones, one of about 50 women running for office in Texas this year, dubbed Hurd “Washington Willie” in campaign ads and reminded voters of his eight votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act every chance she got. She pushed her experience as an intelligence analyst in the Obama administration and military service in Iraq as a way of matching Hurd’s foreign policy expertise.
Hurd told reporters Tuesday night: “My goal is simple — I treat everyone with respect. And that’s the example I’ve shown over the last four years. When you actually solve problems, people are going to reward you. “I’m excited that the folks of the 23rd have realized that I’m actually working on their behalf.”
District 23 wraps around western San Antonio and stretches to the edge of El Paso, running along the Rio Grande and incorporating rural border towns such as Del Rio and Eagle Pass.
In the tiny West Texas town of Alpine, population 6,000, enthusiasm over the Senate race brought an uptick of voters to the sand-colored downtown Civic Center.
Peggy Low, 52, an Alpine Elementary School teacher, said she voted for Cruz and Hurd.