Nothing less than the direction of the Texas Republican Party could be written in the results of a North Texas special election next Saturday.
On paper, the runoff to fill a Texas Senate seat pits Drew Springer, a four-term Republican member of the Texas House, against an unlikely new GOP star, Shelley Luther, who won national notoriety and overnight conservative credibility when she was briefly jailed in early May for opening her Salon à la Mode in North Dallas in violation of Gov. Greg Abbott’s pandemic stay-home order.
But the names on the ballot might as well be Abbott and Allen West, who became a thorn in the governor’s side as soon as he was elected the state GOP chairman over the summer.