“I’m a positive thinker. If I wasn’t sure of winning, I would not have put my foot in,” he said in his signature bullhorn tone, pressing his BlackBerry against his ear. “Hello? Hello? You’re speaking to the governor here.” 

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.

Three of the biggest social services messes of Rick Perry's ten-year tenure — the sexual abuse scandal at the Texas Youth Commission, fight clubs at state institutions for the disabled and deaths of children on Child Protective Services’ watch — have been noticeably absent from the campaign trail. Is it because Texans don't hold him accountable for these tragedies? Or because his opponents think GOP primary voters simply don't care?

When they were sued last year for storing baby blood samples without parental consent, Texas health officials said they'd done it for medical research. They never said they turned over the blood spots to the federal government to help build a vast DNA database. A Texas Tribune review of nine years' worth of e-mails and internal documents on the Department of State Health Services’ newborn blood screening program, released after the state settled the case so quickly that it never reached the discovery phase, shows an effort to limit the public’s knowledge of the program.

The Texas Workforce Commission spent nearly $50 million during the last two years on day care centers and in-home childcare providers with troubled track records — including sexual and physical abuse, kidnapping, and leaving infants to suffocate and die in their cribs. A Texas Tribune review found that at least 135 subsidized facilities had their licenses revoked or denied by the Department of Family and Protective Services in 2008 and 2009 and had their funding immediately suspended.

When a West Texas sheriff criminally charged a nurse who reported an unethical doctor to the Texas Medical Board, it sent shockwaves through the nation’s nursing community. But her acquittal has done little to calm the furor.

The Dallas mayor left a hugely successful private sector career to lead the country’s ninth-largest city through an economic meltdown and the aftermath of a City Hall corruption scandal. And he doesn’t regret a minute of it. Here, he talks about fighting a sky-high crime rate, how he keeps party politics from his office, and every urban area's Achilles' heel: education.

State Rep. Terri Hodge, D-Dallas, dropped her reelection bid on Wednesday to plead guilty to lying on a tax return. But it's too early for Eric Johnson, her West Dallas-born, Ivy League-educated primary opponent, to claim victory.

Dallas County Republicans are jockeying for a chance to topple two freshman Democrats who seized House districts in 2008. The incumbent Dems — hoping to claim their first House majority in eight years — are girding for battle.

The three Republican gubernatorial candidates — Kay Bailey Hutchison, Debra Medina, and Rick Perry — met for the second, and probably final, time in Dallas tonight. We came, we watched, we wrote, live-blogging all the way.

Three challenges stand between Texas and the era of electronic medical records: convincing doctors to use them, figuing out how to safely share and protect them and finding a way to pay for them.

With each day that passes, David Nicholson fears that the man who killed his profoundly disabled brother will join the ranks of state school workers who are never convicted for their heinous acts.

State employees who commit heinous acts against Texas' most profoundly disabled citizens rarely get charged with crimes, let alone go to jail. A Texas Tribune review of a decade’s worth of abuse and neglect firings at state institutions found that just 16 percent of the most violent or negligent employees were ever charged with crimes.

Texas educators forcibly pinned down students with disabilities as many times in 2009 as they did in 2008, despite efforts to curb the practice.