When state Rep. Jim McReynolds, D-Lufkin, hung up the phone, there was no indication that his friend and fellow Democrat, Jacksonville state Rep. Chuck Hopson, was so close to a major lifestyle change.

“I will be running as a Republican in 2010,” Hopson announced the next afternoon, “and will campaign hard to win the Republican primary and general elections.”

Representing a district that went 71 percent for Republican Sen. John McCain in the 2008 Presidential election, Hopson was counted — along with McReynolds — among a small group of conservative rural Democrats in the Texas House who a cursory demographic analysis would ...

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