A lot of the attention in Texas’s 28th congressional district has been on the Democratic side tonight, and rightly so. It’s a sort of epic showdown between moderate and progressive forces within the party: Cuellar and Cisneros. But there is also a runoff tonight on the Republican side, and we should expect the general election to be very competitive. The district favors Democrats by only 7 points, according to FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean, and it’s in an area — the Rio Grande Valley — that has been trending toward Republicans at a remarkable pace. The Republican runoff has not yet been called, but Cassidy Garcia, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz, is likely to be victorious. She currently has a 26-point lead, with 30 percent of the vote tallied. She’ll be a formidable opponent for either Cuellar or Cisneros this fall and would add to the ranks of Latinas in the House GOP caucus should she win.
