Two locally contested races helped drive 44.6 percent of Hemphill County’s 2,274 registered voters to the polls over the last three weeks. The fever pitch amid a volley of campaign advertising and an invigorated slate of Democratic candidates reached voters across Texas, resulting in record statewide turnout among 2.2 million Dems, and a strong showing by more than 2.1 million Republican voters. 

Most of the action here was in the Republican primary, which was headlined by Hemphill County Judge Lisa Johnson’s decisive second-term victory over challenger Beth Ramp Sturgeon, and a somewhat quieter contest between sitting County Treasurer Kay Smallwood and Courtney Kendall, who serves as Johnson’s Administrative Assistant. 

Both Johnson and Smallwood successfully defended their re-election bids. 

Judge Johnson easily won re-election in a 641-307 victory, despite an onslaught of criticism from Sturgeon and her most vocal supporter, Salem Abraham, over the refusal by Johnson and the Hemphill County Commissioners to join a lawsuit against Xcel Energy for the role it played in the 2024 Smokehouse Creek Fire. 

Smallwood’s race was quieter, and her 486-405 vote margin smaller—but decisive—generating a fraction of the heat the judge’s race sparked.

Temperatures rose statewide, as well—particularly in hotly-contested races for the Texas’ U.S. Senate seat headlined by candidates State Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary, and incumbent John Cornyn and challenger Ken Paxton in the Republican race for the nomination. Neither Sen. Cornyn nor the scandal-ridden Attorney General Paxton managed to claim a clear majority among a field of eight GOP candidates, and that race for the party nomination will be decided in a May runoff.

In other election news, seven-term State Representative (HD 88) and House State Affairs Committee Chair Ken King—a Canadian native—successfully held off a challenge from Lubbock rancher and oil and gas producer John Browning, winning 53 percent of the GOP primary vote over his opponent’s 47 percent. The winner of that contest may actually have been the United States Post Office, whose mail boxes and trash cans became the beneficiaries of a record crop of campaign fliers.

There will undoubtedly be more to come in the months leading up to May’s runoff races and the November general election, when both the stakes and the political temperatures will surely rise.