See El Paso County election results here.
Hundreds of El Paso Democrats crowded into an election night watch party Tuesday, watching big-screen TVs and erupting into cheers with every update. And there was plenty of cheering.
It was a big night for Democrats in El Paso, across Texas and around the country as the Republicans suffered major defeats, turning “ruby-red” Texas into a river of blue. Democrats swept the state’s top races, including governor, the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, lieutenant governor, attorney general and state comptroller.
Local races followed the usual pattern in El Paso, with Democrats Miguel Teran and Annette Griego defeating their Republican opponents in two county commissioner races. El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego defeated Minerva Torres Shelton with nearly 69% of the vote. In the nonpartisan city representative races, incumbents Alejandra Chavez, Art Fierro and Chris Canales were forced into runoffs. City Rep. Ivan Niño beat Richard Genera by a 69% margin.
But most of the interest Tuesday night was on the statewide campaigns.
“Talarico just won the Texas Senate seat against Ken Paxton,” marveled Ed Felix, an El Paso digital creator watching election results at Old Sheepdog Brewery in South-Central El Paso. He stood with an ecstatic group, most holding their heads in disbelief, hugging and shouting at the announcement of the U.S. Senate victory.
“They said it couldn’t be done,” said Felix, producer of 2fast2felixx, an El Paso political Instagram account with more than 100,000 followers. “Beto O’Rourke lost the seat to Ted Cruz by like 200,000 votes in 2018. They said it couldn’t be done after that. Talarico comes in using a lot of the infrastructure that Beto O’Rourke helped build and just levels the absolute (expletive) out of Ken Paxton.”
El Paso County Democratic Party Chairman Michael Apodaca thanked campaign volunteers and field workers for “getting the job done” and sending the message that “El Paso County is still the Democratic stronghold of Texas,” he said, speaking on a glitchy PA system to a throng of campaigners, many wearing Talarico shirts.
In an interview with El Paso Inc., Apodaca said the election cycle had established El Paso as a place where statewide campaigns could motivate voters to turn out in large numbers.
“The important part is that we are giving our statewide ticket a wide margin,” he said. “We did our job to ensure that we brought out more people to vote.”
For more than three decades, the Republicans had maintained their grip on Texas, resisting a few determined Democratic challenges over the years, including O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate bid. On Tuesday night, that grip loosened as Democrats captured some of the state’s most consequential political offices in a backlash against the MAGA agenda, some El Paso voters said.
“The public at large, all across the nation, they are exhausted from this Trump phenomenon,” said Amit Ghosh, a technology entrepreneur and avid political observer. “Given the war, given the high prices, given Trump’s ostentatious selfishness, buying things, building things that only he’s worried about, I think the average person today is upset.”
“People are recognizing the danger of having one man running everything,” he said, adding that he believed the U.S. system of three government branches had been gutted by Trump.
“All that is coming to an end,” he said.
El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego spoke about what he viewed as the negative tone of the county judge race.
“I love El Paso,” he said shortly after his race was called. “I am just so proud of our community that they did not get caught up in the lies.”
Samaniego said his next term would focus on several areas, including healthcare, mental health, developing aerospace opportunities and expanding opportunities for local film production.
El Paso County Republican Party Chairman Michael Aboud said the Democratic sweep reflected a disorganized Republican Party rather than the quality of the GOP candidates.
GOP candidates “ran good races,” he said.
“These election results were not the result of efforts by the individual campaigns but a result of the disunity in the Republican Party across the nation,” Aboud said. “The voters want to see and vote for a unified Party. Not one that is in disarray and fighting amongst itself, and they want either a stable economy or one that is growing.”
Aboud said the Republican Party would be preparing for the next battle at the polls.
“The socialist Democrats will be inflicting pain on this nation in the coming years,” he said. “The voters will be ready for a change again.”