Air Force veteran Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar will officially face Senator John Cornyn in November after beating State Senator Royce West on Tuesday in the second Democratic primary round of Texas.
Hegar gained endorsement not only from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, but also from major national groups, including the EMILY List, Everytown for Gun Safety, and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She has long been the anointed candidate to face Cornyn, and was the one who garnered the most votes in the Texas Super Tuesday primary in March.
On Tuesday, he again defeated West, a progressive element of Democratic politics in Texas. In the run-up to the second lap, Hegar and her allies spent a lot to make sure they saved the race: According to the Texas Tribune, she, along with DSCC and EMILY’s List, invested at least $ 2 million in ads in the Houston area during the last race week, beating West 85-1.
That kind of expense might well have been necessary. According to Mark Jones, a political science researcher at Rice University, West had been gaining traction in the race, although Tuesday’s result shows that it didn’t happen fast enough to beat him.
In particular, Jones said, the national movement after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis gave West a boost. “African American office holders and political elites in the state,” he said, began to “really join the West in a way that they had not had in the original primaries in March.”
However, Hegar was always the favorite, and now he’s heading into the general election against Cornyn with around $ 1.6 million in the bank and a steep climb ahead. Cook’s Political Report calls the Texas Senate race “Probable R,” and Jones said he believes “it’s still pretty safe.”
Texas is becoming less safe for Republicans: FiveThirtyEight poll average shows that President Donald Trump is in a tie with Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the state, and former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was just a few points away. overthrow Republican Senator Ted Cruz in 2018.
But Cornyn appears to be somewhat more popular in the state than her colleague in the Senate, no matter the president, and is running 8-13 points ahead of Hegar in recent polls, so he will have to work hard for her. .
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