Primary runoff results (updated as numbers come in)
Texas Senate District 15 Molly Cook, Texas’ first openly-LGBTQ state senator Texas’ first and only openly LGBTQ state senator, Molly Cook, trails Jarvis D.
Johnson in the Democratic Primary runoff to fill the District 15 seat in the Texas Senate. Cook won a special election last month to finish out the term of incumbent Democrat John Whitmire after Whitmire stepped down to become mayor of Houston.
The primary runoff, however, is to determine who will claim the full four-year term that begins in January. With 53.7 percent of the votes counted, Johnson leads with 51.5 percent to Cook’s 48.5 percent. Texas House District 21 Dade Phelan, the incumbent Republican in House District 21 and the Speaker of the House, appears to have won his runoff over challenger David Covey.
With about 99 percent of the ballots counted, Phelan has claimed a narrow victory with 50.7 percent of the vote. The runoff has proven to be an expensive race, with Southeast Texans bombarded daily with TV ads and mailers from the two candidates.
