Mabrie Jackson, who pulled out of the race for state Rep. Brian McCall's unexpired term, beat Van Taylor in Saturday's special election, winning 56 percent of the vote to his 44 percent, according to Collin County's election results.

Lawmakers and state employees are getting trained in CPR and defibrillator use today — almost a year after Rep. Edmund Kuempel, R-Seguin, suffered a heart attack and collapsed in a Capitol elevator. He was saved by his colleague, Rep. John Zerwas, an anesthesiologist who resuscitated him with CPR. 

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.

Fred Brown won another term in the Texas House, after getting himself into a four-way primary and surviving that and today's runoff against Gerald "Buddy" Winn.

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.

Voters in Central Texas, Dallas and Plano will get to vote for the third month in a row in May, in special elections for the Texas House and Senate. Three officeholders — Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, and Reps. Terri Hodge, D-Dallas, and Brian McCall, R-Plano — resigned before their terms were up. Today was the deadline for candidate filing.

Delwin Jones, who was first elected to the Texas House in 1964 after two unsuccessful attempts, says he has handed out 765,000 promotional emery boards since his start in politics. His tenure and those files weren't enough to win a bruising primary outright last month, though, and the veteran legislator now finds himself in a runoff against Tea Party organizer Charles Perry, who's capitalizing on voter anger at incumbents.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, and former state Rep. Paul Moreno, D-El Paso, will endorse challenger Naomi Gonzalez over incumbent state Rep. Norma Chavez, D-El Paso, in the April 13 runoff that will decide the winner of the House District 76 seat, according to the El Paso Times.

A recount showed state Rep. Al Edwards lost his primary race by eight votes, but Edwards wants to be absolutely sure. He's filed an election contest in district court.

Residency requirements tripped up Brian Birdwell's previous effort to enter the Texas Legislature, and it looks like they will again.

Grissom on the 1.2 million Texans who've lost their licenses under the Driver Responsibility Act and the impenetrable black box that is the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Ramshaw and Kraft on nurses with substance abuse problems and rehabilitation that can get them back to work, M. Smith finds it's not easy being Rick Green, Stiles on counting Texans (and everybody else), Rapoport on the State Board of Education's war with itself and the runoff in SBOE District 10, Thevenot's revealing interview with a big-city superintendent on closing bad schools, Aguilar on the tensions over water on the Texas-Mexico border, Hamilton on the new Coffee Party, Hu on Kesha Rogers and why her party doesn't want her, Philpott on the runoff in HD-47, Ramsey on Bill White and the politics of taxes, and E. Smith's conversation with Game Change authors Mark Halperin and John Heleimann: The best of our best from March 15 to 19.

Republicans in southwest Travis County still need to choose between Paul Workman and Holly Turner before setting their sights on State Rep. Valinda Bolton, D-Austin, in November. Ben Philpott, covering the 2010 elections for KUT News and the Tribune, filed this report.

Census Bureau questionnaires arrive at 8.4 million Texas homes this week. "Fill that sucker out," the bureau's regional director says, "so we don't have to come and knock on your door."

One candidate lost on Tuesday by 11 votes out of more than 10,000 cast. Others lost by fewer than 200 votes. Anyone up for a recount?

Muñoz defeats Rodriguez in the race to replace state Rep. Ismael "Kino" Flores.

Freshman incumbent Tara Rios Ybarra, D-South Padre Island, lost her bid for re-election on Tuesday to Kingsville businessman J.M. Lozano.

Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell, is 121 votes behind Lance Gooden — a former aide — with two precincts left to count.

Griffin holds an early lead in his bid to replace Lubbock County's Carl Isett.