Shelley Luther, Drew Springer headed to runoff in Texas Senate special election
This story has been updated to show revised state results.
State Rep. Drew Springer and Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who in May defied orders to shut down her business during the novel cornavirus outbreak, will advance from a special election Tuesday to a runoff to determine who will fill a Texas Senate seat.
Luther received 32.17% of votes for the District 30 seat, and Springer had 31.93%, according to unofficial results released by the Texas Secretary of State.
Gov. Greg Abbott will schedule a non-partisan runoff. Democrats will be able to vote in the runoff even though both candidates are Republicans. The next session of the Texas Legislature begins Jan. 12.
Six candidates ran in the special election to replace outgoing state Sen. Pat Fallon.
Jacob Minter, a Collin County electrician and recording secretary for the IBEW Local 20 union, ran as the sole Democrat and received 21.18% of votes.
Beyond Springer and Luther, the other Republican candidates included Denton Mayor Chris Watts, Craig Carter, a small business owner who ran for the Republican nomination for Senate District 30 in 2018 and Andy Hopper, a Decatur software engineer who is a member of the Texas State Guard.
Senate District 30 spans 14 counties and includes parts of Collin and Denton counties. The district stretches west into Parker and Palo Pinto counties and as far as Wichita, Archer, Wise, and Young counties.
Fallon, a Republican from Prosper, is running to represent Texas’ 4th Congressional District, which opened after former U.S. Rep. John Ratcliffe was confirmed as the director of national intelligence in May. In November, Fallon will face Democratic nominee Russell Foster, who will face an uphill battle in the reliably red congressional district where Ratcliffe won over 75% of the vote in 2018.
Springer, who lives in Muenster, holds the endorsements of roughly 30 fellow state lawmakers, including Fallon and some of Tarrant County’s Republican delegation.
Luther announced she was entering the race at a Back the Blue rally in Denton. While Springer has touted his conservative record of supporting 2nd Amendment rights and anti-abortion policies during his eight years in the legislature, Luther positioned herself as “detached from the Austin establishment.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 9:20 PM.
