The 'ho-hum' Texas primary: 4 takeaways

The Lone Star State mints the Republican nominee, pushes forward a Tea Party insurgency, and fails to wrest the spotlight away from The Donald

Mitt Romney in San Diego on May 28
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Texas held its primary election on Tuesday, and the results were anything but surprising: President Obama won the Democratic primary, and Mitt Romney came out on top on the GOP side. Still, that doesn't mean the night was without drama, insurgencies, and important mileposts. Here, four takeaways from the Lone Star's turn at the voting booth:

1. Mitt Romney makes it official

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

2. Tea Party insurgent Ted Cruz forces a runoff

Tuesday's main event was the GOP race to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. The winner of the GOP primary is widely expected to become the next junior senator from Texas this fall. But we won't find out who that will be until July 31, since establishment favorite Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst fell short of the 50 percent he needed to avoid an unpredictable nine-week runoff race against "Tea Party all-star" Ted Cruz, a former state solicitor general. At more than $25 million — $10 million of which came from Dewhurst's own pockets — the Cruz-Dewhurst fight is already the most expensive Senate race of this election. For Cruz's backers, "forcing the runoff is itself a huge accomplishment given that Dewhurst is such a well-known and wealthy candidate," says Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy.

3. Obama easily won among Texas Democrats

The president won the Texas Democratic primary with a comfortable 88 percent, dashing Republican hopes that he would be embarrassed by another struggle against an unknown, possibly shady challenger, as he was in West Virginia, Arkansas, and Kentucky. His closest rival, Tennessee lawyer John Wolfe, scored 5 percent. That just goes to show that, as Democratic strategist Matt Angle tells The Washington Post, "In Texas, the people who don't like Obama vote in the Republican primary."

4. Donald Trump hijacked Romney's big night

Romney celebrated his securing of the Republican nomination at a Las Vegas fundraiser hosted by Trump, and all eyes were on The Donald, who'd been interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN, where Trump questioned whether Obama was born in the U.S. Blitzer: "Donald, you're beginning to sound a little ridiculous, I have to tell you"; Trump: "I think you sound ridiculous." David Frum characterized Trump's particularly feisty birther-centered conversation as "a big steaming plate of shit spaghetti Trump just deposited on CNN for his supposed friend Romney."