On December 12, voters in Texas’ 23rd US House district chose Ciro Rodriguez to be the district’s new member of Congress. He is a Democrat. The vote was Rodriguez 54%, incumbent Henry Bonilla (a Republican) 46%.

The 23rd district is one of five districts in Texas that had its boundaries redrawn in the middle of 2006, because the US Supreme Court had ruled that the old boundaries violated the Voting Rights Act. Because the Texas primary had already occurred when the lines were redrawn, Texas re-opened filing for these five districts and let anyone run in November. Because there were multiple candidates from each party, Texas also provided that these 5 districts should have run-offs on December 12 if no one got a majority in November.

The other 4 newly-drawn districts did not require a run-off. But in the 23rd district, a run-off was needed because no one had polled 50% in November. Incumbent Bonilla had polled 48.6% of the vote; Rodriguez had polled 19.9%; two other Democrats had each polled between 12% and 11%; and five other candidates had split the remainder. It is unusual that a candidate who polled less than 20% of the vote in the first round, won the run-off.