The action in the state's SD-22 is all in a Dallas court now, with Democrats suing to knock Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, off the ballot, and Birdwell responding (in court filings) that the challenge itself is flawed and that he's eligible anyhow.
This is the paragraph where you catch up with Our Story So Far. Birdwell won a special election for the remaining few months of Kip Averitt's term after Averitt resigned and local Republican officials voted to put him on the ballot for a full term after Averitt gave up the nomination. Democrats voted a few days later to put John Cullar on the ballot in November, and the very next morning — that would be last Friday — he and they sued to knock Birdwell off, saying his recorded vote in a November 2006 election in Virginia means he was a resident of that state on that date. And if the courts agree, that means Birdwell won't be eligible to sit in the Texas Senate until November 2011. The state constitution says you have to be a citizen of Texas for the five years before you join the Senate (it's two year for House members).
Birdwell and the Republicans have now filed their response, saying the Democrats sued the wrong guy (Steve Munisteri, the GOP state chairman), and that the Virginia voting record doesn't, by itself, prove him ineligible to serve. They also argue that, since the Virginia records weren't available to election officials who put Birdwell on the ballot, those records can't be used against him now.
The Democrats and Cullar have to respond by the end of the week (Friday the 13th), and then it's in the hands of the 5th Court of Appeals in Dallas, and possibly the Texas Supreme Court after that. The deadlines are tight. August 20 — that's a week from now — is the last day parties can replace candidates who come off the ballot. The courts can stretch that, but you get the general idea.
How about the politics of this? It's a Republican district. The average statewide Republican walloped the average statewide Democrat in that district by 30.3 percentage points in 2006 and 2008, according to the Texas Weekly Index. It has also been, until now, a Waco district. Republican David Sibley held it before Averitt (and lost the special election to Birdwell, and could be back in the hunt if the courts kick Birdwell out of the race), and McLennan County civic leaders of both parties were hoping to keep the seat local in 2011, when lawmakers and the courts will be redrawing political district lines.
And even if Cullar loses in court, he's got the voting records to run on. Birdwell's records in Prince William, Virginia, and Tarrant County, Texas, show him voting in both places in the November 2004 elections. And the residency issue opens the door for a carpetbagger charge against the incumbent.
Birdwell's advantages are formidable. There's the makeup of the district. He's the incumbent. He's a retired Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army who was badly burned in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, now making his living as a motivational speaker and head of a non-profit set up to help other burn victims. And the geography, which has kept the district in Waco's hands for years, has shifted, with Johnson and Ellis counties swelling with suburbanites from the DFW metroglob. McLennan County has 29 percent of the voters in the ten-county district, but Ellis has 19 percent and Johnson has 18 percent; taken together, they can (and in the special election, did) swing the center of gravity to the northern edge of the district. Even without the partisan advantage, Birdwell has the map on his side.