Gov. Rick Perry has appointed Judge Debra Lehrmann to the Place 3 seat that Harriet O’Neill will soon vacate on the Texas Supreme Court. Lehrmann, a Fort Worth District Court judge, won the Republican nomination for that seat in a runoff against former state Rep. Rick Green, R-Dripping Springs.

It's embodied in the Tea Party movement, in this week's runoff election results from Lubbock and Plano, in last month's primaries, in Gov. Rick Perry's embrace of states' rights and the 10th Amendment, even in Barack Obama's campaign against the status quo in 2008. Voters are furious, and politicians are listening.

Late last night, Rick Green took to his Facebook page to dispute comments attributed to Debra Lehrmann claiming he had pledged to have his supporters back her in the general election campaign.

A consummate campaign organizer who fought first and compromised later — if ever — Norma Chávez time and again won over voters in her central El Paso district, who first sent her to the Texas House in 1996. But over the past two years, her fighting turned to bullying, and the devolution cost Chávez her job.

Voters routed state Reps. Delwin Jones and Norma Chavez on Tuesday, turned back former Rep. Rick Green's bid for a spot on the Texas Supreme Court and handed victories to at least three candidates who appeared to benefit from the Tea Party insurgency in Texas.

Plano's Van Taylor easily won his runoff for the Texas House, beating former Plano City Councilwoman Mabrie Griffith Jackson in the contest to succeed former Rep. Brian McCall, R-Plano.

Charles Perry is on his way to the Texas House, having defeated Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock, and fellow Republican John Frullo won the GOP nomination for an open seat in his predominantly Republican district. Perry has no opposition in November. Frullo will face Democrat Carol Morgan.

We'll be liveblogging results and other tidbits as they come in tonight in 18 runoff races — 16 on the Republican side, two on the Democratic side — from around the state.

Thrills! Spills! Live Runoff coverage tonight!

Today’s elections in 18 Texas primary races, all but two involving Republicans, probably won't change the overall temperature of the statehouse or our delegation to Congress. The partisan makeup of those places isn't at stake until November. But for three House incumbents and challengers in two other races — for the State Board of Education and the Texas Supreme Court  — how the vote turns out is a big deal.

The day before the runoff election, state Rep. Norma Chavez, D-El Paso, is having a rally with Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America and a gay rights supporter.

If Rick Green wins his runoff against Debra Lehrmann on Tuesday, Democrats will be licking their chops — but do they really have a shot of occupying their first Texas Supreme Court seat in more than 10 years?

Grissom on her two hours in Juárez, Grissom, Ramshaw and Ramsey on four of the runoffs on Tuesday's ballot, Ramshaw on the religious experience that is voting for Dallas County's DA and an energy regulator's play for a job at the entity he regulates, Mulvaney on the Texas Senate's biggest spenders, Aguilar on whether — as U.S. officials claim — 90 percent of guns used in Mexican crimes really flow south from Texas, M. Smith on the continuing Texas Forensic Science Commission follies, Stiles on how inmates spend their money behind bars and how counties are responding at Census time, Hamilton on the creative accounting and semantic trickery that allows lawmakers to raise revenue without hiking taxes when there's a budget shortfall, and Hu on Austin's first-in-the-nation car-sharing program. The best of our best from April 5 to 9, 2010.

Low voter turnout means that in a downballot statewide race like that between Debra Lehrmann and Rick Green the winner could be decided by chance — whose name comes first, or whose name sounds the friendliest. Green and Lehrmann are working to combat that dynamic in an unlikely place: Lubbock.

Three sources close to the campaign of Democratic state Rep. Norma Chavez in Austin and El Paso today are reporting that some of her closest local campaign staffers are abandoning ship just a week before the April 13 election.