SAN ANTONIO – Read more election coverage on the Vote 2024 page. KSAT.com will have live election results May 28 beginning at 7 p.m. Early voting starts Monday, May 20.
Uvalde County voters will head to the ballot box May 28 to decide two races, just days after the two-year anniversary of the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary.
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The May 24, 2022 shooting, where a teenager killed 19 students and two teachers, has served as a backdrop for this year’s elections.
The two runoff races are for the GOP nomination for Uvalde County Sheriff and Democratic nomination for state Rep. District 80.
Sheriff
The ballot for Uvalde County Sheriff is a two-man race between Republican incumbent Ruben Nolasco and Republican challenger Otto Arnim.
Both Nolasco, who was first elected as county sheriff in 2021, and Arnim failed to reach the 50% plus one vote threshold to win when voters first cast their ballots during the primary on March 5. Nolasco garnered 39% of the vote while Arnim pulled in 29%.
The Democratic Party in Uvalde County chose not to enter a candidate for the sheriff’s race, so the winner of the runoff will very likely be the Uvalde County Sheriff.
Nolasco was among several law enforcement personnel named in the Department of Justice’s 500+ page Uvalde report, released in January. In the report, the DOJ said police officials “demonstrated no urgency” in their response to the killings.
“Sheriff (Ruben) Nolasco did not seek out or establish a command post, establish unified command, share the intelligence he learned from both relatives, nor did he assign an intelligence officer to gather intelligence on the subject,” the DOJ report stated. “At one point, Sheriff Nolasco and UPD Acting Chief (Mariano) Pargas were within 10–15 feet of each other outside the exterior door of the northwest hallway; however, they were not coordinating with one another and continued to act independently.”
The report also stated that Nolasco’s “training records revealed that he did not have any active shooter or ICS (Incident Command System) training and had minimal leadership/supervision training.”
Since the shooting, Nolasco and sheriff’s office personnel have attended ALERRT Level 1 training, the report states. He has also taken “some” ICS classes, the report states.
“The Department’s review concluded that a series of major failures — failures in leadership, in tactics, in communications, in training and in preparedness — were made by law enforcement leaders and others responding to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a January news conference announcing the report’s findings.
Arnim, a Uvalde business owner and former Department of Public Safety trooper, announced his run for office in January.
State Rep. District 80
One-half of the race for the District 80 seat in the state House has already been decided. Former Uvalde mayor Don McLaughlin captured the Republican nomination on March 5 with 58% of the vote. The closest challenger to McLaughlin, JR Ramirez, tallied 25%.
McLaughlin resigned from his post as mayor and announced his run for the District 80 seat in July 2023. The man who held the District 80 seat, Democrat Tracy King, said he would not seek reelection two weeks before McLaughlin announced his candidacy.
King has been an elected state politician for nearly 30 years.
The search for a Democratic nominee to replace King remains up in the air. Cecilia Castellano and Rosie Cuellar emerged from a five-candidate pool as the top two candidates in the March primary with Castellano (27%) edging out Cuellar (25%) by single digits.
Castellano is a first-time candidate for state office. Cuellar is no stranger to South Texas politics.
Cuellar, the former Webb County tax assessor-collector, is also the sister of Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo.
Congressman Cuellar and his wife were indicted on federal bribery and money laundering charges earlier this month.
District 80′s coverage map includes Atascosa, Dimmit, Frio, Uvalde and Zavala counties while also holding a footprint in Webb County.
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