State House Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio) took 51.77% to Democratic challenger Kristian Carranza’s 48.23% with all vote centers counted in the expensive House District 118 race.
This Southside seat became the epicenter of Texas politics in the final months of the election, with both parties pouring millions of dollars in to help their candidates.
After early results were announced Tuesday night, a beaming Lujan entered his watch party to applause and hugs from the roughly 150 friends and family members gathered at the Missions Open Air Market.
“I think our district is hungry for good leadership, and I’m hoping that they’re going to say, ‘You know what, let’s not worry about party [affiliation] so much, and let’s look at who’s getting things done, who’s got a vision for our community,’” he told the San Antonio Report.
Lujan is currently the only Republican state House member representing a district President Joe Biden would have carried.
Though Democrats had no chance of taking the majority in the Republican-dominated Texas House this year, they had his race high on their list of targets they hoped to flip to help them stop school vouchers in the next legislative session.
“I don’t know the ultimate number [of the House’s partisan divide], but obviously not picking up seats doesn’t help in that regard,” House Democratic Caucus Leader Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) said at a watch party Tuesday night.
Carranza spent her career working on campaigns for both local and national Democrats, and came in determined to raise the money needed to put this race in play this year.
She lined up endorsements from the Texas Organizing Project, Planned Parenthood Votes, labor unions and other groups that made her race a top priority.
In the final month, Carranza received $1.2 million from a national PAC aligned with gun safety activist David Hogg, helping her keep pace with national conservatives, tort reform groups and business PACs pouring resources in for Lujan.
“We are running the most expansive, effective field program for [Get Out The Vote] in the whole state, right here in this district,” she told roughly 150 supporters at Tandem coffee shop Saturday morning, where progressive groups were meeting up before going out to knock on doors.
Carranza was expected to address supporters at Cowboys Dancehall on Tuesday night, but left the party quietly without offering public remarks after the early results were published.
“If Carranza doesn’t win this, good Lord, how are we going to win this?” Democratic political consultant Laura Barberena said of the race at the San Antonio Report pre-election panel last week. “She’s just done everything right.”
Lujan’s lead comes as Democrats’ heavy investments — combined with his own 11th-hour campaign misstep — made for a tough race.
TV ads blanketed the district repeating comments he made in a Sept. 27 interview with Texas Public Radio, during which he volunteered that if he had a daughter who became pregnant as the result of rape, he wouldn’t allow her to have an abortion.
Lujan also faced significant criticism for siding with Gov. Greg Abbott on an unsuccessful plan that not only sought to direct taxpayer money to private schools but held public school funding hostage as leverage to get it.
In the final stretch of his campaign, he said he planned to take a different approach on both issues if he returned to the legislature — seeking clarifications in the state’s abortion law and separating public school funding from the voucher debate.
At Tuesday’s party, Lujan’s mother, who was a principal at Southside ISD’s Julian C. Gallardo Elementary, said she and her son are in agreement that vouchers are not a bad idea, as long as public schools get the money they need for things like teacher pay.
“We’ve talked about it quite a bit,” Yolanda Lujan said of her son.
As one of the few House members facing a tough reelection race, Lujan said Tuesday that talking to voters this year had undoubtedly shaped his perspective on both the voucher debate and the state’s abortion law.
“Everyone should have to do it,” he said of the hours put into campaigning and interacting with constituents. “You just hear so much, you learn so much.”
“I have always lost John Lujan’s district,” Abbott said at a campaign rally in Universal City last month. “So has [U.S. Sen. Ted] Cruz and [U.S. Sen. John] Cornyn and every other statewide candidate.
“The only person who can win that race as a Republican is John Lujan.”
