Will This Be The Year We Finally Flip HD118?
No incumbent. No excuse.
The map above, which shows the South/Southeast corner of Bexar County, includes House District 118. This district has been a thorn in my side, in every Democrat in Bexar County’s side, for going on five years now. Mostly because this district is flippable, but we’ve had a lot of bad luck. However, between the Hispanic swing back left, the (fingers crossed) wave we could have in November, HD118 is a blue target, one that has been added to the DLCC list. So, can it flip this year?
A brief history.
This was Leo Pacheco’s (D) seat for many years. During the 2021 session, he was doing a lot of things that were pissing off the Bexar County Democrats, eventually leading to the County Party censuring him for his vote on an open carry bill.
Pacheco resigned later that year, leaving the door open for a special election. Since then, Pacheco has joined the dark side and become a Republican.
At the time, HD118 was a +14 (D) district. But do you know what else was happening at the end of 2021? Gerrymandering.
There was a special election in September 2021, with five people. And it went to a runoff between John Lujan (R) and Frank Ramirez (D).
That November 2021 runoff, Democrats were so confident they had that election in the bag. Only 5,600 Democrats showed up. The Republican won by 300 votes.
That’s how John Lujan got into office. Then the Republicans redrew that district from a +14 (D) to a +3 (D). This made the next few elections challenging for a few reasons.
One. Democrats in Texas were demoralized in 2022 and 2024. They didn’t vote. We can talk about all the nuances of why, but that’s for another day.
Two. This district is 62.4% Hispanic, and the Trump approval rate has swung widely from up to down since 2022.
In 2022, after the redistricting, Republicans poured $1.5 million into that race to hold on to it. It worked.
In 2024, Kristin Carranza ran for HD118 for the first time. (Here’s my 2024 Meet the Candidate article. I could have sworn we did one in 2026, but it’s all running together.)
Considering that 1.4 million Democrats stayed home in Texas in 2024, Carranza still did really well (considering). She lost 51.8-48.2%, a 4,622-vote margin out of roughly 80,700 votes cast.
She raised more money than any first-time Texas House candidate in history, got $1.2 million from David Hogg’s PAC, and knocked 100,000 doors. Trump carried the district by about 5 points.
HD118 no longer has the incumbent advantage.
John Lujan (R) ran for Congress and lost.
The Republican running is Jorge Borrego. He has a mustache, and he used to work for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is the Texas version of the Heritage Foundation, which is fascist-adjacent.
Regardless, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has had Republicans in the Texas Legislature by the short and curlies for many years. Every policy on Borrego’s website aligns with every policy that has broken this state for the people who live here. More of the same, that’s all that he’s offering.
Trump and Abbott being underwater matter here.
Trump’s approval rating in Texas is 43-51, according to the June UT/Texas Politics Project poll. Net negative eight. Among true independents, that number is a bloodbath. 12% approve, 71% disapprove. Only 38% of Texans think the man “cares about people like you,” down from 46% the week before he won the state by 14 points. His economic numbers are worse than his overall numbers. Inflation and prices, the thing every single person in HD118 actually feels, sit at 28% approve, 58% disapprove.
Abbott’s a little better off. He’s sitting at 44-44 statewide, down from 46-43 in April. That’s a fourth-term incumbent with the built-in advantages of incumbency treading water in his own state.
Where the environment actually helps Carranza is the cost of living. HD118 has a per capita income of $32,194, compared with a state average of $40,752, and nearly 13% of the district’s residents live in poverty. Abbott’s approval on “inflation and prices” statewide is 30-45. On housing, 28-40. Those are exactly the issues this district feels hardest.
The environment is worse for Republicans than it was in 2022, when they needed every advantage they had, including Lujan himself, to hold this seat. This year, they don’t have Lujan. They have a 30-year-old TPPF voucher lobbyist nobody’s heard of, running in a worse national environment, against a Democrat who already came within 4,622 votes without any of these tailwinds.
HD118 flipped Republican in 2021 because of a low-turnout special election Democrats got caught sleeping on.
It stayed Republican in 2022 because of a mid-decade gerrymander and $1.5 million spent to save one specific guy. It almost flipped back in 2024, despite a bad year for Democrats elsewhere in this state.
None of those conditions exists anymore. The gerrymander’s still there, but the guy it was built to protect isn’t on the ballot. Trump and Abbott are both wading through the same water that’s drowning Republicans everywhere else this cycle. The national money that used to show up for Lujan alone is now showing up for Carranza, too.
Borrego’s not John Lujan.
HD118 doesn’t need a miracle this year. It needs Democrats to show up and vote like they already know how this story ends.
116 days until the November election!
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