NO RUNOFF! San Angelo's Pfluger Blasts Into Republican Nomination with 52.15% of Vote

SAN ANGELO, TX — The night grew old at the August Pfluger campaign victory party at the Cactus Hotel lobby in downtown San Angelo. The dozen or so strong supporters, including Tom Green County Judge Steve Floyd and State Rep. Drew Darby, huddled with Pfluger’s team as everyone else grew impatient with the Tom Green County Elections office.

Word reached us at first that long lines still existed at several voting centers when the polls closed. We heard ballot boxes, or some ballot boxes, from the voting center in Christoval didn’t depart the town 22 miles south of San Angelo until 9:30 p.m. headed for the Keyes Building where the ballots would be counted.

Meanwhile, as results poured in from the rest of Congressional District 11, San Angelo’s August Pfluger fell behind the 50 percent plus one vote needed to win the Republican nomination without a runoff to 49.59 percent. With less than 1/2 a point short for Pfluger to seal the nomination with no runoff, the Midland newspaper heralded the event. “Pfluger falls under 50 percent in congressional race,” they reported. Two Midlanders were among the nine candidates challenging Pfluger for the nomination, Brandon Batch and J. Ross Lacy.

Then, just after 12:30 a.m., the final results from Tom Green County came in. Pfluger’s team made some quick calculations and a cheer erupted. Pfluger’s home county had put him over the top. A staggering 84.06 percent of the vote in the Republican primary went to Pfluger. It was 11,922 of 14,183 votes. Batch was second in Tom Green with 5.33 percent of the vote.

It required some time for the final Tom Green County results to get posted to the Texas Secretary of State website, but when they did at 1 a.m., Pfluger had won across the district with 52.15 percent the vote, enough to clinch the Republican nomination without a runoff.

In CD-23 south of here, retired Navy corpsman Tony Gonzales, who we interviewed on camera here, won a close race for the Republican nod with 28.11 percent of the vote but will face runner-up Raul Reyes who received 23.82 percent of the vote. The runoff will be in about 2.5 months. The winner will face Gina Ortiz Jones who won the Democratic Party’s nomination with 68.96 percent of the vote.

CD-11 Final Results, all 29 counties