Rios Ybarra knocked out of House 43 seat
HARLINGEN — Unofficial returns Tuesday showed Kingsville businessman J.M. Lozano on his way to defeating incumbent Tara Rios Ybarra in the Texas House District 43 Democratic primary election.
As of 11 p.m., Lozano had received 54 percent of the 14,886 reported ballots cast, according to the Texas secretary of state and Cameron County Web sites.
Campaign staff for Rios Ybarra, D-South Padre Island, could not be reached for comment late Tuesday. Lozano did not wish to comment until he could reach Rios Ybarra, he said.
All but seven Jim Hogg County precincts in District 43 reported. But Lozano’s campaign was confident that it won that county, campaign manager Ken Flippin said late Tuesday.
Lozano will not face a Republican opponent in the November general election, but the Libertarian Party plans to announce its candidate soon.
The District 43 representative, covering northern Cameron County and Jim Hogg, Brooks, Kleberg, Kenedy and Willacy counties, has historically been from Kleberg County, although the southern part of the district has a larger population.
The combined 2008 populations of Kleberg, Jim Hogg, Brooks and Kenedy counties was 43,692, according to U.S. Census Bureau records.
Willacy County recorded 20,600 residents in 2008, according to the Census Bureau. Harlingen, the largest Cameron County city in District 43, has a population of 64,843.
Prior to Rios Ybarra’s election in 2008, the seat was held by Juan Escobar of Kingsville.
He succeeded Irma Rangel, also of Kingsville, a Texas political legend. When she was elected to the newly created district in 1976, she was the only Hispanic woman in the Texas House. She died in 2003.
This primary was “one of the nastiest races I’ve ever seen,” Texas Monthly Senior Executive Editor Paul Burka wrote in his political blog in August.
In the weeks leading up to the election, Lozano and his biggest campaign contributor attacked Rios Ybarra’s legislative record as well as her personal life.
Rios Ybarra’s personal relationship with South Padre Island developer Clayton Brashear became public when she was subpoenaed to give a deposition in the divorce lawsuit brought by Brashear’s wife.
A trio of political advertisements paid for by Texans for Insurance Reform, one of Lozano’s largest contributors, brought Rios Ybarra’s divorce to the attention of voters.
Texans for Insurance Reform, a political action committee, contributed $85,216, to Lozano. That total added to the $62,500 in contributions from a Houston trial lawyer and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association made for 53 percent of Lozano’s $277,769 campaign, according to campaign finance reports covering the period from July through Feb. 22.
One of the contributors to Texans for Insurance Reform and an individual contributor to Lozano’s campaign, Houston lawyer Steve Mostyn, said the lawyer group donated money in an attempt to match Rios Ybarra’s main campaign finance source, a tort reform advocacy group.
Rios Ybarra countered the personal attacks in a series of campaign ads that asked voters not to support negative campaigning.
The political action committee Texans for Lawsuit Reform contributed 58 percent, or $256,610, to Rios Ybarra’s $446,545 campaign, according to campaign finance reports covering the period from Aug. 7 through March 1.
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Corey Ryan is a reporter for the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen.
