Texas Republicans turned out in droves to vote in Tuesday’s presidential primary. The race featured a cast of diverse candidates, and backers of all of them gathered at a sports bar in Dallas to watch the numbers roll in.
Christine Roe, Dan Lewis and Jillian Bliss all agree: a Republican needs to be in the White House. They just don’t agree on which one.
Roe voted for Marco Rubio. Lewis voted for Donald Trump. Bliss voted for Ted Cruz.
While Trump had the best overall showing among Super Tuesday states, Cruz won the Texas Republican primary. Bliss says that’s because the Texas senator doesn’t flip-flop.
“He has that little slogan that’s like ‘Trust Ted’ but I really did trust Ted, because I know that when I placed my vote,” Bliss says. “I want to be represented and he represents exactly what he says he represents.”
Dallas County Republican Party Chair Wade Emmert says both Cruz and Trump are candidates pressing hard for change. He thinks that’s one reason voter turnout was so staggering.
“In 2012 in our last Republican primary, on election day, we had 44,500 people show up to the polls to cast paper ballots,” Emmert says. “We ordered 180,000 paper ballots for this election and some polling locations still ran out of paper ballots.”
Emmert says the characteristic he’s most looking for in a candidate is leadership. But he’s not saying who won his vote on primary day.
“Sure, I have my own preferences but that’s between me and the polling booth,” Emmert says.
Which, judging by voter turnout numbers, was the place to be Tuesday in Texas. More than 2.8 million Republican ballots were cast in the Texas primary, the Texas Tribune reports. That's double the 2012 total of 1.4 million.
More from the Texas Tribune
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