Shelley Luther, railing against 'tyrant governor,' seeks Texas Senate seat Tuesday
The first question Friday night for Shelley Luther on her Facebook live campaign update was if she wins Tuesday’s special election in Senate District 30 in overwhelmingly Republican rural North Texas, “What is your plan to end (Gov. Greg) Abbott’s shutdown madness?”
Luther said that with six candidates on the ballot — five Republicans and a Democrat — it is going to be almost impossible to avoid a runoff.
“But if I happen to win outright on Tuesday, which, oh my goodness that would be crazy and amazing,” Luther said, “the first thing that I would do is start going after Gov. Abbott’s lockdown and getting these nursing homes open, the bars and then restaurants all the way open, because I think it is absolutely ridiculous that places like Florida can open all the way today, and here we are in Texas being embarrassed that we’re still closed down, and we’re supposed to be the ones that are leading the way, the ones with personal responsibility and strong Republicans.”
Luther gained overnight political celebrity and instant conservative credibility when she was briefly jailed in early May for opening her Salon à la Mode in North Dallas before Abbott’s pandemic-related edicts allowed.
Last week she chastised Abbott as a “tyrant governor.”
Should Luther be elected to replace Sen. Pat Fallon — who is the presumptive replacement for U.S. Rep. John Ratcliffe in the very Republican 4th Congressional District — to become one of 31 members of the Texas Senate, it will most certainly be read as yet another rebuke of Abbott by his own party seven months into his nearly single-handed leadership of the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Of course, if speculating about the results of a wide-open special election is inherently dicey, with maybe 10% of voters in a vast, 14-county district expected to participate, imparting those results with deeper meaning about the state of Texas politics is even more so.
https://www.statesman.com/news/20200928/shelley-luther-railing-against-lsquotyrant-governorrsquo-seeks-texas-senate-seat-tuesday
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