Democrat Donna Howard and Republican Ben Bentzin, both candidates for Todd Baxter's vacated Texas House District 48 seat, began revamping their campaign efforts Thursday in preparation for a head-to-head runoff.
All of the candidates in Tuesday's special election failed to win a majority of votes, resulting in the pending showdown between Howard and Bentzin.
Gov. Rick Perry called for Tuesday's special election for the Northwest Austin and Travis County House district following Baxter's November resignation. Baxter narrowly won re-election as the Republican incumbent a year before and left the House to become a lobbyist.
Howard finished with 49.47 percent of the votes cast. Bentzin, who finished second, received 37.80 percent. In all, 13,555 people cast ballots, according to the Travis County Election Results Web site. Howard was only 73 votes short of winning the election outright.
Howard said she plans to intensify her grass roots campaign of going door to door and making phone calls. She said she will also be supported in the runoff election by Democrats Kathy Rider and Andy Brown. Rider also ran in the special election Tuesday, and Brown was unable to run in the election because he has not yet lived in District 48 for year. Howard and Rider combined picked up almost 60 percent of the vote on Tuesday night.
Bentzin noted the low voter turnout, which was about 14 percent, and said that a higher turnout would be in his favor. He said that his campaign plans to promote the importance of this election in order to increase voter turnout.
"I'm Vince Young, and it's halftime," the former Dell executive said.
Whoever represents District 48 in the special session on public school finance is especially important because the district's schools suffer greatly from the state's "Robin Hood" school finance law, Bentzin said. Almost 62 percent of the taxes citizens pay for education in the Eanes School District end up going to other schools, he added.
Howard, who served on the Eanes ISD board from 1996 to 1999, said she is waiting for the Sharp Commission and Perry to weigh in on the issue before she decides how she would approach school finance in the special session.
George Strong, a Houston-area political consultant, said that although Howard was the favorite, candidates have lost in such situations before. Republicans had reason to feel comfortable, because they had held the district for so long, Strong said. However, defeating a woman is hard because most voters are women, who often feel that they are underrepresented in politics, he said.
The large number of independents in the district means that there are a large number of voters who could go either way, Strong added.
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