East Texas Republicans sweep state, U.S. house races

EAST TEXAS (KLTV/KTRE) - Voters across the nation are casting their ballots for the candidates of their choice among a number of national, state and local elections.

Throughout the night, we will be updating the ticker you will find here every two minutes with complete current voting results.

ABC has called the U.S. senate race for incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz over Colin Allred. This will be Cruz’s third term as senator.

U.S. House District 5 has been called for Republican incumbent Lance Gooden, who got 67.9% of the vote in his district.

U.S. House District 6 called for incumbent Jake Ellzey (R), who has received 65.5% of the votes in his district.

And in U.S. House District 17, incumbent Pete Sessions has kept his seat, with 66% of the vote.

In the race for Texas State House District 2, Brent Money (R) has defeated Kristen Washington (D), with 57,384 votes to her 13,303 votes.

State House Dist. 8 has been called for Republican Cody Harris, the incumbent, with 45,255 votes to democrat Carolyn Salter’s 9,314.

State House Dist. 4 gave another incumbent a win, with Keith Bell (R) defeating Alex Bar-Sela (D) 50,781 to 20,562 as of 9:50 p.m.

Incumbent Brian Babin (R) keeps his seat in the U.S. House Dist. 36, defeating challenger Dayna Steele (D) 157,762 to 71,177.

At 7:45 p.m., Cruz and Allred were at a 50-50 tie, with each candidate receiving about 3.5 million votes at that time. At 9 p.m., the votes had updated and given Cruz the lead, 4.35 million votes to 3.7 million for Allred. That’s a 54% to 46% race.

Cruz at 9:40 p.m. has 4.9 million to Allred’s 4.05 million votes. The race was called for Cruz, who has won a third term in the U.S. Senate.

LOCAL RACES

In Gregg County, voters approved legal sale of all alcoholic beverages. Prop 1 was approved by voters 334-204.

Gregg County Democrats and Republicans held their own respective watch parties Tuesday night. The contested race is for the State Representative District 7 seat presently held by Jay Dean. His opponent is Democrat Marlena Cooper. At 10:55 p.m., Dean led Cooper 36,443 to 13,381. At the 11:30 p.m. update, Dean was declared the winner over Cooper, 58,797 to 20,327.

In a local race of interest for State Rep. District 6 to replace Matt Schaefer, Daniel Alders (R) defeated Cody Grace (D) with 55,158 votes to Grace’s 21,070.

For Smith County Commissioner Pct. 3, J. Scott Herod (R) has won, with18,668 votes (about 78.4% of the votes thus far) while Edith Mayfield Wilson (D) garnered 5,141 votes, or 21.6% of the vote.

Also in Smith County, Cory Crowell wins Smith Co. ESD 1 Commissioner, winning 47.2% of the vote. Ken Smith took 40% of the vote, and Chris Bellar had 12.8%.

Incumbent Brent Dominy wins the race for Smith Co. ESD 2, Dist 1 over challenger Quint Balkcom, 4,484 to 1,663.

Smith County ESD 2, Dist. 4 goes to Johnny Brown, another incumbent, with 78.4% of the vote over Robert Templin.

Over in Upshur County, Sheriff Larry Webb wins his third election, defeating challenger Brandon “Bear” Williams 16,098 to 3,326 votes.

Wood County incumbent commissioner for Pct 3, Mike Simmons, wins over Madeline Gibson, 5,021 to 937.

In Gregg County, Elections Administrator Jennifer Briggs said they’ve had a busy day there, as well, and she gives us a look at what to expect as Election night progresses.

“Anything that is being done at the polling place, and they were able to check it on the poll and cast your regular ballot, all of that will be counted tonight pretty quickly. The only thing that slows us down is when we have omissions. These are people that have been registered to vote in time, we were not made aware of it by the state until after the deadline, so they didn’t get in the poll books. So, we have to manually enter those in, or any provisional ballots. Things like that,” Briggs said.