AP Decision Notes: What to expect in the Texas primary runoffs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two prominent Texas Republicans are looking to settle political scores within their own party in the primary runoff elections on Tuesday, when voters will decide nearly three dozen unresolved races from the state’s March 5 primary.

For entirely different reasons, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have put the weight of their statewide political organizations behind efforts to unseat Republican state representatives who have crossed them on policy or political grounds. Abbott is focusing on GOP members who helped defeat his 2023 education plan that would have allowed spending taxpayer money on private schools. Paxton has targeted more than 30 incumbents who voted to impeach him last year on corruption charges. He was later acquitted in the state Senate.

The revenge campaigns could push the legislature further to the right in a state where Republicans already have a lock on state government. In recent years, Texas has implemented one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, expanded gun rights and adopted a sweeping immigration enforcement law that is currently tied up in federal court.

Nine Republican state House incumbents were defeated in the March 5 primary, while an additional eight were forced to runoffs. All were targeted by Abbott or Paxton or both.

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