Local vote endorses statewide runoff results

Bandera County Democrats supported the same two candidates who won runoff races statewide on July 14 for the Democratic nomination to a U.S. Senate seat and a Texas Railroad Commission post, according to unofficial results from the Bandera County Elections office.

Runoff totals from Bandera County showed Mary “MJ” Hegar, a former U.S. Air Force officer who received a Purple Heart during her one of her tours of duty, outpolled state Sen. Royce West in the race for the U.S. Senate nomination by a count of 314 to 91.

Statewide, with all of the state’s precincts counted, Hegar prevailed with 498,175 votes, or just over 52 percent of the total, to 475,551 for West, the Texas Secretary of State reported.

Hegar will face Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the Nov. 3 General Election.

In the runoff for the Railroad Commission seat, attorney Chrysta Castañeda won 283 votes in Bandera County, while attorney Roberto R. “Beto” Alonzo claimed 115 votes, unofficial totals showed.

Castañeda secured almost 62 percent of the vote statewide to 38 percent for Alonzo with all of the precincts in, numbers from the Secretary of State showed. That amounted to 575,453 for Castañeda and 353,397 for Alonzo.

Castañeda and Republican James Wright, a rancher and the owner of an oilfield waste services company, will face off in November to fill the railroad commission post.

The vote totals included results from the 10-day early voting period that ended on July 10 and the runoff election day on July 14.

Republicans had runoffs for various places across the state, and other Democratic runoffs were on ballots across Texas, but those were the only two runoffs for offices up for grabs in Bandera County.

The 405 Democrats who cast ballots in the runoff in Bandera County amounted to about 2.5 percent of the 16,438 registered voters in the county, officials said.