Troxclair Pushes Ahead in SD 24
Despite Patrick Ally Entry in Race

Capitol Inside
September 20, 2021

Former Austin City Council member Ellen Troxclair made the rounds in Bell County on Monday in a bid for the GOP nomination in a Texas Senate district where she would no longer live based on new boundaries in the baseline map for the upper chamber in a special session on redistricting this fall.

But Troxclair faces a far more imposing obstacle than the issue of residency in the battle for the GOP nomination in the new Senate District 24, which Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick designed as a path back to Austin for former Republican senator Pete Flores of Pleasanton.

Flores announced today that he will be running for the SD 24 in 2022 after being unseated by Democratic State Senator Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio in a separate district last fall. Patrick appears poised to threw his massive might behind Flores, who can expect an immediate infusion of campaign cash as the Senate president's designated candidate.

Patrick's support could carry more weight than ever in a GOP primary election in a party that's become dramatically more conservative in the past year. Flores would give the Senate a Republican who isn't white. Democratic State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville could boost the number of Hispanic Republicans in the Senate from zero to two if he switches parties in a new version of Senate District 27 that appears to be drawn for such a move.

Troxclair appears to be cut from the same basic mold as outgoing State Senator Dawn Buckingham - a Lakeway Republican who's giving up the SD 24 seat in favor of a statewide race for land commissioner in 2022. Buckingham - like Troxclair - is a white woman who'd had strong support from the hard right and establishment interests as well.

But Troxclair's decision to carry on with the SD 24 campaign - for the time being at least - could put early supporters like the Texas Association of Realtors in a pinch now that the playing field has changed with the looping of Flores' home base of Medina County as a favor from Patrick. The powerful realtors political action committee that's known as TREPAC endorsed Troxclair a month ago before the group knew that Patrick would be going all out for another candidate.

The map that GOP State Senator Joan Huffman of Houston proposed on Saturday in Senate District 24 would remove the Abilene area and the slice of Travis County where Buckingham and Troxclair are residents. The district on the Patrick map would reach instead into Williamson County with chunks of Cedar Park and Leander, a pair of Austin-area suburbs where Troxclair would expect to have strong showings.

Troxclair would have a measure of inherent name identification in suburban Williamson County as one of the more prominent Republicans in the Capital City. About 25 percent of the version of SD 24 on the new Patrick map would be based in Williamson County. But 39 percent of the proposed district's population is in Bell County - the heart of SD 24 on the new map.

Troxclair campaigned on Monday at a brewery in Salado and a bar in Temple with an appearance at the Bell County GOP headquarters in Belton squeezed in between.