From the Bend, the Statewide Picture: Senate, Governor and the Legislature
Coastal Bend voters share Tuesday's biggest choices with 30 million other Texans — and add a few of their own, from Congress to the statehouse seats that handle ports and water.
Every ballot in Nueces County on Tuesday carries the same top lines as every ballot in Texas — and then diverges into the local geography that decides who speaks for the Coastal Bend in Austin and Washington.
The statewide slate leads: Republican Ken Paxton against Democrat James Talarico for the U.S. Senate seat John Cornyn is vacating, and Gov. Greg Abbott's bid for a fourth term against Democrat Gina Hinojosa, with the lieutenant governor, attorney general and other statewide offices behind them.
Below that, the races get local fast. Coastal Bend voters choose their member of Congress, their state senator and state representative — the officials who carry the region's defining issues to Austin: port funding, water supply, windstorm insurance and the property tax burden on coastal homeowners.
Windstorm insurance is the ballot-box issue that outsiders miss and locals never do. The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association's rates and funding, decided by the Legislature and regulators, land directly on monthly budgets from Corpus Christi to Rockport — which is why statehouse races in the Bend are fought on kitchen-table economics.
Judicial races, Nueces County offices, Corpus Christi city questions and school district propositions complete ballots that vary by address; the county elections office and VoteTexas.gov carry the sample ballot for every precinct.
Polls run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. The statewide races will be counted in Austin's spotlight; the local ones will be decided by the neighbors who show up — which, in midterm years, is the whole story of Texas politics.
