Voters in conservative Collin County did their part to “Keep Texas Red” on Tuesday, turning out in droves to elect and re-elect Republicans up and down the ballot.
Republicans there swept the board. Not a single Democrat won a partisan race in the county.
Collin County voters chose stalwart conservative State Rep. Van Taylor of Plano to represent Texans in the 3rd U.S. Congressional District, which encompasses most of the county. Taylor won by a 10-point margin over Democrat Lorie Burch, filling the open seat left by retiring U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson. Taylor is one of the most consistently conservative members of the Texas Legislature, earning an A+ career rating on the Fiscal Responsibility Index.
In the county’s legislative races, Republican incumbents and newcomers alike defeated Democratic opponents.
Voters chose Angela Paxton to fill the State Senate District 8 seat that Taylor is vacating.
“I want to congratulate you on a great victory,” Paxton said at a Republican victory rally Tuesday night with her husband, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “You have won, Collin County!”
Paxton thanked her supporters for giving her the opportunity to serve and to continue the unity started in this election. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said:
Collin County has come together like never before, and we’re positioned with this delegation to work together to do the things we have all agreed need to be done in the state, and in our county, and in this district. We’re going to work together to secure our borders, to fight human trafficking, to lower our property taxes, and to work on school finance reform.
But more than anything I am hopeful that, together, what we’ve seen in this election is going to allow us to have a clarified vision like we’ve never had before of what it takes to work together to keep Texas strong. Because we know what we have here is special. Here in Collin County, here in Texas, we know that it’s not an accident. It’s the result of the amazing conservative policies and conservative leadership that we have and that we’ve just now secured for the next two and four years.
Conservative State Reps. Matt Shaheen and Jeff Leach, both from Plano, will be serving another two years in the legislature. The two Texas Freedom Caucus members won re-election to their respective District 66 and District 67 House seats, as did House District 70 State Rep. Scott Sanford of McKinney. Republican Candy Noble won the open District 89 House seat left by retiring State Rep. Jodie Laubenberg.
Republicans retained control of county government as well.
Former county commissioner Chris Hill was elected to serve as county judge and will fill the spot held for 12 years by retiring Judge Keith Self, who wholeheartedly endorsed Hill as a fiscally conservative successor. County commissioner candidate Darrell Hale won the open Precinct 3 seat; incumbent commissioners Cheryl Williams (Precinct 2) and Duncan Webb (Precinct 4) were re-elected to four-year terms. All faced Democratic opponents.
Texans for Fiscal Responsibility endorsed Taylor, Angela and Ken Paxton, Shaheen, Leach, Hill, Hale, and Williams.
Collin’s county courts stayed red too, with District Attorney Greg Willis and Republican judges running unopposed for all open district court and county court at law seats.
Well over half of Collin County voters chose the eight GOP candidates for the 5th Court of Appeals, which serves Collin, Dallas, and four other counties. But voters in Dallas County tilted the outcome of those key appellate court races to the Democrats’ “slate of eight.”
Turnout was a robust 61.5 percent, with 355,694 Collin County voters casting ballots in the November 6 midterm election. By comparison, voter turnout was 36 percent in the 2014 midterm and 68 percent in the 2016 presidential election.
Narrow margins of victory in some races may portend a shifting electorate, but Tuesday’s Republican sweep shows Collin County voters are, for now, reliably conservative and can be counted on to “Keep Texas Red.”
