Quote of the day: With Tom DeLay's redistricting scam backfiring on the GOP, Texas's 23rd CD sends Ciro Rodriguez back to D.C.--by 54% to 45%!

"I think we have a real mandate. We needed to make sure we worked on raising the minimum wage. We're also going to take care of prescription-drug costs. And, by God, we're going to do the right thing by our veterans."
--former Democratic Rep. (and now Rep.-elect) Ciro Rodriguez, after handily defeating powerful seven-term GOP incumbent Henry Bonilla in the runoff election yesterday in Texas's 23rd CD

Bonilla falls short in runoff
Ciro Rodriguez returning to D.C. after defeating 7-term incumbent

By GREG JEFFERSON
San Antonio Express-news

Former congressman Ciro Rodriguez completed a stunning political turnaround Tuesday with an upset over seven-term incumbent Republican Henry Bonilla for the state's largest district, a win that topped off the Democratic takeover of Congress.

Rodriguez overcame a huge financial disadvantage with the help of national party officials, who overhauled his campaign and spent aggressively on his behalf.

Bonilla, a 14-year incumbent, telephoned Rodriguez to concede about 9 p.m.

With all but a few precincts reporting, residents in District 23, which stretches from San Antonio south to the Mexican border and almost to El Paso in the west, gave Rodriguez 54 percent of the vote to Bonilla's 45 percent.

"I think we have a real mandate," Rodriguez said. "We needed to make sure we worked on raising the minimum wage. We're also going to take care of prescription-drug costs. And, by God, we're going to do the right thing by our veterans."

The election sends Rodriguez back to Congress after a two-year hiatus, brought about when the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature redrew the state's congressional districts in 2003.

His victory leaves Democrats with 234 seats in the U.S. House, Republicans with 200. A seat in Florida remains contested with the Republican candidate ahead and expected to win.

Tuesday's runoff stemmed from the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last June that Texas Republican leaders breached the Voting Rights Act by slicing 100,000 Hispanics from the district in their 2003 remap. A three-judge panel answered by removing several largely white Hill Country counties and pulling heavily Hispanic south Bexar County into the district.

The move put Democrats on equal footing with Republicans and increased the Hispanic population to 61 percent.

Bonilla blamed his defeat partly on the court-ordered changes.

"They moved the goal post on us further down the field, and we couldn't score again and again," he said.

Early Tuesday night, it became clear that the San Antonio Republican lost Bexar County for the first time in his political career, and the news didn't get much better.

Bonilla also lost ground in what had been his West Texas stronghold. Five weeks ago, he carried Dimmit, Culberson, Presidio and Brewster counties in the seven-way special election, but he lost all four to Rodriguez on Tuesday.

Soon after Gov. Rick Perry set the runoff date, the League of United Latin American Citizens sued and eventually wrangled three extra days of early voting before dropping the complaint.

Vanessa Gonzalez, spokeswoman for Rodriguez, said the former four-term congressman's campaign had placed heavy emphasis on coaxing voters to the polls early.

Democrats almost didn't have a shot at the seat. On Nov. 7, Bonilla came within a single percentage point of an outright majority, which would have allowed him to avoid a runoff.

Still, after an August redistricting decision, the district proved to be much less receptive to the San Antonio Republican, the only Mexican-American Republican in the U.S. House.

Bonilla came into the runoff with $1.6 million in the bank and the advantages of incumbency, a familiar name across the sprawling district and list of projects for which he'd secured federal funding.

Rodriguez hobbled out of the special election nearly broke and with a reputation as a less-than-savvy campaigner.

But he had a name that registered in Bexar County and South Texas, and soon he had the interest of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. After testing the water with polls, the organization wound up spending more than $900,000 on mail-outs and television ads.

When national Democrats came on the scene, Rodriguez's campaign was transformed from a largely volunteer effort to a more professional one.

Staff writers Tracy Idell Hamilton and Laura E. Jesse and News researcher Michael Knoop contributed to this report.

FOOTNOTE: Hard times for (former) House GOP appropriators

In his CQPolitics.com report on nytimes.com, Greg Giroux notes that 2006 has been an unhappy year for Republicans on perhaps the House's most powerful committee, Appropriations. Bonilla, he points out,

became the fifth Republican on the influential Appropriations Committee to suffer defeat at the polls this year, following Nov. 7 losers Charles H. Taylor of North Carolina, Anne M. Northup of Kentucky, John E. Sweeney of New York and Don Sherwood of Pennsylvania

AND HOWIE ADDS THIS NOTE ABOUT CIRO'S WIN--

What makes this news even sweeter is that Ciro is a real progressive, not some Big Business/Rahm Emanuel stooge. And Bonilla was someone the far right was hoping to use as a wedge among the crucial Latino voting bloc they think will save their sorry white asses, demographically. He was always mentioned as a possible GOP future nominee for U.S. Senate or governor.

DWT readers gave a lot of money to Ciro's campaign through ActBlue, and it's wonderful to see it paying off. Thanks, everyone who donated!