State of Texas: Hunt shakes up GOP race for U.S. Senate

AUSTIN (Nexstar) -- There are five men who could conceivably win their party’s nomination for U.S. Senate in Texas, according to the University of Houston-Texas Southern University’s annual Texas Trends Survey. But a woman who is not currently in the race could shake up the race, according to the poll.

The survey comes just days after Republican congressman Wesley Hunt announced he's running for Senate. Hunt joins Attorney General Ken Paxton as a major primary challenger to incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

In the Texas Trends Survey, Paxton slightly led Cornyn 34%-33%, with Hunt coming in at 22%. However, the entirety of the poll was conducted between Sept. 19 and Oct. 1, before Hunt announced his candidacy.

"And this was before I announced," Hunt wrote on social media Thursday. "We're just getting started."

While Paxton adviser Nick Maddux told the Texas Tribune, "we welcome Wesley Hunt to the race," Cornyn's team had stronger words.

"Hunt is a legend in his own mind," Cornyn campaign senior adviser Matt Mackowiak said in a statement. "No one is happier this morning than the national Democrats who are watching Wesley continue his quixotic quest for relevancy, costing tens of millions of dollars that will endanger the Trump agenda from being passed."

"Hunt's entry into the race really complicates things for Cornyn," Mark P. Jones said. Jones is a Political Science professor at Rice University and one of the co-authors of the survey report.

"His strategy was to win in [the] March [primary], where you have a broader, more diverse and potentially more moderate on average Republican primary electorate," Jones said, referring to Cornyn.

If no candidate can garner 50% of the vote, the top two would go into a runoff, where Jones says the electorate is less favorable to Cornyn.

On the Democratic side, former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred has a slim 46%-42% advantage over State Rep. James Talarico. While the results are close, it represents a huge boost for Talarico, as August polling from the Texas Politics Project found that 42% of Democrats didn't know who he was. In this Texas Trends Survey, that number was down to 24%.

"If you're Talarico, you have to like your position now. You've just launched into the race, you raised $6 million and have a larger war chest than Colin Allred has, and you can effectively use that to introduce yourself in a positive way to the one-in-four Democratic primary voters who don't know much about you," Jones said.

On the other hand, Allred has a 95% name recognition rate amongst likely Democratic voters, after winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2024. Even if Talarico may have more room to grow, Allred is already close to gaining over 50% support from likely primary voters.

"If this race remains primarily a two-candidate race between Allred and Talarico, I think we're looking at a pretty competitive March primary," Jones said.

The x-factor is the potential for another candidate (or two) to enter the mix. In a hypothetical matchup between Allred, Talarico, former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Crockett would lead with 31% of the vote. O'Rourke and Talarico are tied for second in the hypothetical with 25% each, while Allred brings up the rear with 13%.

"What the data shows me is that if Jasmine Crockett were to enter the race, she would immediately become the favorite to win," Jones said. "Although it would be quite likely that if Allred and Talarico remained in the race, that it would go to a May runoff."

Robert Roberson's execution halted, lawyers push for new trial

Robert Roberson, the man convicted on capital murder charges for the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki, in 2003, will get another chance to prove his innocence in a district court after the state's highest criminal court blocked his execution scheduled for next week.

This is the second time in less than a year that Roberson's execution was halted. Last October, a group of bipartisan lawmakers led a dramatic last-minute legal battle that stayed Roberson's execution. Roberson has maintained his innocence since 2003.

A 5-4 decision from the all Republican court granted Roberson's application to stay his execution under the state's 2013 junk science law that allows prisoners to request a second look at their case when the science used to convict is found to be debunked.

The case now returns to the district court in Anderson County. "We have won the battle but we have certainly not won the war," Gretchen Sween, Roberson's attorney, said in a virtual news conference following the decision.

Roberson's team will now have to prove to a court that he should be awarded a new trial based on a ruling made last year by the Criminal Court of Appeals. In that case, Andrew Roark was convicted by a jury of injury to a child. The prosecution in that case argued that Roark injured the child through Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), and he was sentenced to 35 years.

Roark filed a petition saying new scientific evidence contradicted the evidence used to convict him at trial. The Criminal Court of Appeals granted his application and ruled that the science behind SBS had evolved, and if it had been presented at the time of his trial, he would not have been found guilty.

Roberson's defense team claims the facts in that case parallel his own. "We have to fight this battle essentially again, but in light of that change of law," Sween said to reporters. "We will be able to go back to a new judge at the trial level and utilize the Roark case to make that case that these cases are materially indistinguishable."

The next hearing in Roberson's case has not been scheduled, but Sween said she has reached out to the Attorney General's office, which is representing the state in this case, to schedule a time to get back in the courtroom.

Deployment of Texas troops leads to court battle

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump Administration from sending National Guard troops to Chicago. The ruling came two days after 200 soldiers with the Texas National Guard arrived in Illinois with orders to protect federal facilities and law enforcement agents.

Illinois sued, calling the deployment unconstitutional. The judge's order temporarily blocked the deployment. A hearing in the case is scheduled for October 22.

Startup aims to help Texans keep the lights on when the grid has power problems

Austin-based startup Base Power announced it raised a billion dollars in Series C financing. Their goal: keep the lights on during the next winter storm.

The company, co-founded by Zach Dell, aims to install batteries that offer on-site energy storage options for customers. The company launched in 2023. Dell is the son of tech billionaire Michael Dell.

“The chance to reinvent our power system comes once in a generation,” said Dell in a press release. “The challenge ahead requires the best engineers and operators to solve it, and we’re scaling the team to make our abundant energy future a reality.”

According to the release, the company has partnerships with homebuilders and serves homeowners in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and the Houston area.

The company is currently building its first energy storage and power electronics factory in downtown Austin at the former Austin American-Statesman building.

The Base Power battery system can hold 20 kilowatt-hours of energy. They are designed to handle local outages, like those experienced during the 2021 Winter Storm. They're built from lithium iron phosphate.