Democrats wanted to send a message in the Texas House District 28 special election runoff. A strong performance by Democrat Eliz Markowitz in Fort Bend County’s reddest legislative district would have demonstrated that the Republican hold on the Texas suburbs—and House—was in peril ahead of the 2020 elections.
Instead, Texas Republicans sent a message of their own. Republican Gary Gates on Tuesday trounced Markowitz by 16 percentage points, more than double the margin of victory enjoyed by now-retired incumbent John Zerwas in 2018.
The runoff quickly became a proxy for Texas politics at large. The race served as a test case for Beto O’Rourke’s new organizing group, Powered By People. O’Rourke tapped into his massive volunteer network, recruiting more than 1,000 people to come and knock on more than 40,000 doors in the district, where he came within 3 percentage points of Ted Cruz in his 2018 Senate race. After Markowitz’s loss, Governor Greg Abbott, who mobilized his powerful political machine and bussed an army of volunteers to canvass the district on Gates’ behalf, gleefully trolled the Democrats’ figurehead.
