With a few days to go before the April 13 runoffs, we check in on the last four on our list: three of them with incumbents in Bryan, El Paso, and Lubbock defending their seats, and a fourth for an open seat, also in Lubbock.

That's how Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw described the violence raging in Mexico’s drug war at a House hearing on Tuesday.

Lawmakers are reeling from the bruising political battle over health care reform and are loath to take on another divisive issue and additional risky votes. So the prospects remain dim for legislation that would improve border security, provide a pathway to citizenship for millions and crack down on unscrupulous employers — but that doesn't mean everyone's forgotten about it, as the hundreds of thousands of advocates who marched on Washington, D.C., last weekend can attest.

Hank Skinner was set to die Wednesday for the 1993 murders of his live-in girlfriend and her two mentally disabled adult sons — a crime he insists he did not commit. About an hour before he was to have poison pushed through his veins, the U.S. Supreme Court spared his life.

Leaders from one end of the Texas-Mexico border to the other want Gov. Rick Perry to tone down the scary rhetoric and get real about solving problems in their hometowns. And, by the way, they would like to be consulted about security plans that affect their communities. "We know what's going on on the border," says Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas. "Our needs were not taken into consideration."

Barring the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is Hank Skinner’s last hope for reprieve from the poison-filled syringe he is set to meet on Wednesday. The board makes life-or-death decisions, recommending to the governor whether an execution should be delayed, called off or carried out, yet it’s one of the least transparent agencies in state government.

The Driver Responsibility Act, which levies hefty surcharges on minor offenders, has cost 1.2 million Texans their licenses, and most of the fees that were supposed to be collected have not materialized. At the direction of state lawmakers, the DPS is trying to get people to pay up and square things with the law. But critics want the program ended altogether.

Local governments, Native American tribes and nonprofit groups in Texas hauled in more than $298 million in federal homeland security grants from 2003 through 2008 and made more than 30,000 purchases, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of a Texas Department of Public Safety database. Much of the money has gone to improve local emergency response and to beef up police and fire departments — critical safety measures that taxpayers might not have been able to afford without assistance from Washington. But it's unclear how some of the expenditures have made the state, or the nation, more resistant to terror attacks.

For the last two months, we've brought you news and analysis on 20 hotly contested primaries. Here's a look at who won, who lost, and who's headed for a runoff in the top legislative and congressional races.

While the director of the Department of Public Safety and some state senators argue that X-ray machines and metal detectors are critical in the wake of a shooting at the Capitol, the Governor and others in the Legislature worry that a gamut of security hurdles would make the place unwelcoming to the public.

“Things are going great. I feel good, and I’m going to campaign to the end,” she told a TV reporter shortly before Houston's Downtown Rodeo Parade. “I don’t think the polls are right.”

Whether or not the outcome of tomorrow's gubernatorial primary is conclusive — whether or not we have a runoff six weeks hence — we can say this with certainty: One of the five main candidates on the ballot will be the next governor of Texas. And this: 40 hours from now, we'll know much more about the state's coming political landscape than we do today. While we bide our time and wait for results, we present these final snapshots of the campaigns as they wound down.

Without El Paso, you know, it'd be like a campaign without sunshine for Farouk Shami. The Palestinian immigrant running as a Democrat for governor has made public overtures to Latinos, and it's working: He's drawing some of his most significant support from Hispanic Democrats in the Sun City.

State Rep. Norma Chavez, D-El Paso, is in the fight of her career, trying to hang onto her Texas House seat after a bruising year in which her public fights with her fellow lawmakers made headlines statewide. Her young opponent says it’s way past time for a change.

About the only thing Jay Kleberg and Dee Margo have in common is the R next their names on the primary ballot — that and their desire to take on freshman Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody in November.