Campaign Chatter

As expected, state Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, will run for Congress next year instead of for re-election to the Texas Senate.

He'll be running in the newly created CD-36. Jackson, the Senate's president pro tempore, has been in that body since 1999, and served in the Texas House for ten years before that. He'll turn 58 this weekend.

A few minutes after that landed in the email bucket, this came in: State Rep. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, who has said he's interested in running for Jackson's Senate seat, put his thumb on the scale. He didn't want to step on Jackson's announcement, instead announcing that he'll make his intentions clear next week.

• Add a candidate to the race to knock off state Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land: Sonal Bhuchar, a member of the Fort Bend ISD board and a physical therapist, announced her candidacy for HD-26. She joins Howard and Sugar Land City Councilwoman Jacquie Chaumette in that race.

• Ted Cruz, running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, says he's got the backing of former Texas Supreme Court Justice Scott Brister and Heritage Alliance head Richard Ford, among others. That's in Texas. From outside the state, he's listing Brent Bozell, head of the Media Research Center, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. He's got the long list on his website.

• Put Seguin Republican Dale Brueggemann in the CD-15 race for Congress. It's his first run for office. The incumbent is U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Edinburg, and that district, as currently drawn, runs from the Texas-Mexico border to just east and a little north of San Antonio.

• Bob Yancy, a College Station Republican, is running for the Texas House in HD-14, the seat vacated by Rep. Fred Brown, who resigned to take a job outside the district. He'll face Rebecca Boenigk in that primary. [Editor's note: An earlier version had Buddy Winn running in this primary; he's running in an adjacent district. Sorry, sorry, sorry.]

• A couple of former San Antonio city council members — Justin Rodriguez and Philip Cortez — are running for the Texas House, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Rodriguez is after the HD-125 seat held by Joaquin Castro (who's running for Congress), and Cortez will challenge freshman state Rep. John V. Garza, a Republican. Both Rodriguez and Cortez are Democrats. Cortez will likely face Tomas Larralde, head of the local contractors' association, in the primary.

• The race for CD-25 — that's the district that runs from Hays County all the way north to Tarrant County — is going to be packed. Add Brian Matthews to the list. He's a Republican and calls himself "a constitutional conservative." That primary could have more than a half dozen candidates, including former Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams and state Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville.

• Houston Mayor Annise Parker picked up a reelection endorsement from former First Lady Barbara Bush.