No Contested Seats on SBOE Change Parties
Democrats have wanted to defeat Mercer for years and hoped that recent fervor over a controversial Mexican-American heritage history book critics lambasted as racist would draw Latino voters in San Antonio to vote him out and replace him with Bell-Metereau, an English professor at Texas State University.
The rest of the races for the state board were blowouts, with Republican members outperforming their Democratic counterparts with double-digit leads. State Board of Education districts are generally politically safe seats, with 10 favoring Republicans and five solid for Democrats. Most contests are decided in the primary election where the battle is over ideology rather than political party.
Four seats held by Republicans were left to partisan contests. In Houston, Bahorich easily outran Democratic challenger R. Dakota Carter, a 28-year-old psychiatrist who would have been the youngest and first openly gay member to serve on the board.
Republican Keven Ellis, a chiropractor and business owner in District 9 north of Austin, trounced Democrat Amanda Rudolph, a professor at Stephen F. Austin State University. Ellis, a moderate, will take over for Thomas Ratliff who strove to get the increasingly political board to set aside partisan differences. In the district pinched between Houston and Austin, incumbent Republican Tom Maynard crushed his Democratic challenger, Judy Jennings, a director of assessment evaluation for Resources for Learning LLC, an education firm.
Curated form the Houston Chronicle