Only 3,512 Houstonians turned up for a special election to fill Joe Moreno's shoes in HD-143. The winner, with 61 percent of the vote, was Ana Hernandez, a former aide to Moreno who was backed by most of Houston's Democrats in the state Legislature.Laura Salinas got 1,365 votes to Hernandez' 2,147 -- a margin of 782 votes. More people -- 6,174 -- voted in the first round, which had six candidates in it. Hernandez got more raw votes, with 2,625, but only mustered 42.5 percent in the November election. All four of the losers endorsed Salinas, to no avail. One more thing: Next year's elections (mainly the Democratic primary) will determine who gets a full term starting in January 2007.

Andy Brown, an Austin attorney who wants a spot in the Texas House, isn't eligible to run in the HD-48 special election to replace Rep. Todd Baxter, R-Austin.That's a January 17 election, and since he won't have lived in the district for a full year at that point, the Texas Secretary of State won't accept his application. Brown is still eligible for the regular election run -- March primary, November general. Three candidate are lined up for the special election: Democrats Donna Howard and Kathy Rider, both of whom have been school trustees and school board presidents, and Republican Ben Bentzin, who has never held political office. Filing is open until next week (12/20 12/19).

Katy Hubener is alone in the Democratic primary in HD-106; Iraq war veteran Christopher Combest, who was going to run, has dropped out.Hubener wants to replace Rep. Ray Allen, R-Grand Prairie. She came close last year in a challenge race, pulling in 47.4 percent against the incumbent in a year when George W. Bush's presence on the ballot added some momentum to Republican campaigns in Texas. Allen says his current term will be his last and Hubener is after the open seat. Combest, an Army lieutenant, hoped to be out of active duty in time for the primary, but told supporters this week that he won't finish in time and won't make the race. He says via email that he'll be back in mid-March, that he hopes to get involved in Democratic politics when he's in the Army Reserve, and that he wishes Hubener the best in the race. On the Republican side, Kirk England, the son of Grand Prairie Mayor Charles England, is vying for Allen's spot. England is an insurance agent and a recent convert to the GOP. He voted in Republican primaries in 2004, and with the Democrats in 1994 and 1996; he didn't vote in either party's primaries in the years in-between, according to Dallas County records.

Saying that you're a Republican, and that you're a candidate for governor, or even that you're a Republican candidate for governor, is not the same as saying you'll seek the GOP's nomination for that office in 2006. And that's why the state's scribbling scrum of political reporters won't close the door on speculation that Carole Keeton Strayhorn will run as an independent next year.Strayhorn, the state's comptroller, has been a leading Republican vote-getter in past general elections. But her results in contested statewide primaries are mixed, and facing incumbent Gov. Rick Perry in a GOP primary dominated by the social conservatives who put him in office is daunting. Things change rapidly in politics, but every poll we've seen shows Perry smothering the comptroller if the primary were held now. Even if she hasn't raised a dime in the current six-month period -- an unlikely prospect -- Strayhorn will enter 2006 with at least $5 million in her campaign chest. The primary elections are on March 7, or nine weeks after the first of the year. Anyone who can spend at the rate of roughly $500,000 per week has to be considered a threat, no matter what the polls say now. If she has more money than that, she'll be a heckuva pest whether she's running in a primary or not. But Strayhorn's political strength has always been in the general election, where swing voters and crossover Democrats dilute the hard-core Republican voters who control the outcomes in GOP primaries in March. Strayhorn has until January 2 to make her intentions known. That's the deadline for filing, either as a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent. • She'd have to put a petition-signing network together. The whole reason for parties is to maintain such networks, but independents like Kinky Friedman have to build their own organizations. Friedman's campaign is deeply into that process and has organized 50 or 60 of the larger counties in Texas. The One Tough Grandma Party would have to start from scratch, relying in part on disenchanted Republicans who might form the nucleus of a statewide organization for her independent candidacy. One hurdle is Friedman, who has already been harvesting anti-Perry and anti-Party voters. He's the bigger celebrity, is more organized (at this point), and is in a position to tag her as a "me, too" independent. • The Legislature is coming back in April or May to try to hammer the state's school finance system into constitutional form. Strayhorn, as comptroller, will deliver the official numbers on their tax and revenue proposals. That provides her an opportunity for political mischief, and how it's received will depend on whether she's politically dead or alive. If, by spring, she's a GOP primary loser and a former candidate for governor, she'll be easier to ignore. If, on the other hand, she's a gubernatorial candidate in the middle of a petition drive to get on the ballot in November, she'll get more attention. • Low talk among some Austin Republicans over the last several months has focused on whether Strayhorn would switch parties and run as a Democrat. She was a Democrat in the first place, but jumped to the GOP in the 1980s to mount an ill-fated challenge to then-U.S. Rep. J.J. "Jake" Pickle, D-Austin. You can still find Democrats in Central Texas who are still angry about that. One of her sons is the spokesman for the nation's top Republican, George W. Bush. And she's not pro-choice like most Democrats are. A switch from the elephants to donkeys would be a tough row to hoe. Besides, she's consistently said she's a Republican and intends to remain one. Isn't it possible that she's telling the truth? • An independent Strayhorn could be really bad news for Democrats like Felix Alvarado, Chris Bell, and Bob Gammage. Some of the financiers who are typically with Democrats are with Strayhorn this time. If she's out of the race in March, some of those contributors might be interested in the Democratic nominee. If she's still in the race, they'll still be with her, and the Democrats will still be looking for funding from a shrunken donor base.

State Rep. Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, is giving up his bid for Congress and has filed with the Webb County elections office to run for reelection to the Texas House.He's been working on a challenge to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo. Former U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, was knocked off by Cuellar last year in a very tight race that changed outcomes several times before the courts ended recount fights in Cuellar's failure. Rodriguez is also challenging Cuellar this year. The district stretches from Zapata County on the south to Hays County on the north, or from the state's border with Mexico almost to the Texas Capital. Raymond held a financial lead over the other two Democrats in that race at the end of September, but it was largely due to $300,000 in loans guaranteed by Raymond himself. He collected $199,225 from individuals during the first nine months of the year, according to FEC data compiled by Political Moneyline (www.fecinfo.com), and he spent $76,996 during that same period. As of September 30, he had $430,397 in the campaign till. Cuellar raised more, $486,491; spent more, $193,604; borrowed none; and had less on hand when the period ended, $279,645. Rodriguez raised $104,251, spent $44,777, didn't borrow anything, and ended up with $70,596 at September 30. In a written statement, Raymond referred to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear the Texas redistricting case, and the possibility that the court will change the lines in Texas as a result. He didn't say this: Redrawing, if it happens, could knock some candidates out of their chance to win a spot in Congress by forcing new elections under a new map. Since the court isn't hearing that case until March, Raymond and others in similar situations have to decide whether to risk running for election in a district that might not exist in eight months, or to stay put and run for offices they know won't change during the 2006 elections. Raymond's move from one race to the other and then back -- while it looks like the safer move -- could easily backfire. While he was out of the race for reelection in HD-42, former Webb County Judge Mercurio Martinez, also a Democrat, got in. Now that Raymond's back, Martinez called him a friend, but said he'll stay in the race. He said he hopes Raymond "will now support the congressional candidate who will make sure our community continues to have a voice in Washington" -- that'd be a plug for Cuellar. And while he didn't say anything negative about the incumbent, he said this about his own self: "I am a man of my word. My community knows where I stand. I do not switch from side to side."

Former judge and legislator Bob Gammage, who's been "exploring" the idea for several weeks, plans to file for a spot in the Democratic gubernatorial primary on Thursday.Gammage is a former Texas Supreme Court Justice who also served in the Texas House and Senate, on the state's Court of Appeals, and in Congress. He'll face former U.S. Rep. Chris Bell, D-Houston, and Fort Worth educator Felix Alvarado in the Democratic primary in March.

Teel Bivins -- the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden -- is stepping down for health reasons. The Amarillo Republican, who was a state senator for 15 years before George W. Bush appointed him to the current spot, will stay on the job until the end of January. Word got back to the states via his Christmas card that said goodbye to Stockholm; it was picked up by the Amarillo Globe-News. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Lewis Benavides of Oak Point (it's in Denton County) to the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation, and named Gina Parker of Waco the presiding officer of that panel. Benavides works in human resources at Texas Woman's University. Parker is an attorney and businesswoman in Waco, and also a past and probably future candidate for chair of the Texas Republican Party. Perry named Yvonne Batts and Frank "Skip" Landis to the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp. Batts is an exec and co-owner of Batts Communications in Abilene. Landis is director of the Biomedical Science Program at Texas A&M University. Carolyn Vogel leaves the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department at the end of the year and in February will become the executive director of the Texas Land Trust Council -- an affiliate of TPW that offers support for land trusts around the state. The Trust for Public Land hired Nan McRaven to be its Texas State Director. she was with Freescale Semiconductor in Austin and with its progenitor, Motorola, before that. Marc Hamlin, district clerk in Brazos County, is the new president of the Texas Association of Counties. The new president-elect is Tarrant County Commissioner J.D. Johnson, and Carol Autry -- the tax assessor-collector in Randall County -- is the new vice president. The new chairman of ERCOT is Mark Armentrout. The board of that outfit -- the Energy Reliability Council of Texas -- elected him to replace Michael Greene, who held the job for a total of six years. Armentrout, who lives in McKinney, is an exec with MBNA Technology. Kevin Thompson, chief of staff to Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, is leaving for the private sector and a gig with Vantage Learning, and Candice Shapiro -- until recently the legislative director for Todd Baxter, R-Austin -- is Branch's new L.D. Deaths: Former Texas Attorney General, state Supreme Court Justice, and Dallas County District Attorney Will Wilson Sr., best known for cleaning up gambling and prostitution in Galveston in the early 1960s. He was 93... Former Rep. Garfield Thompson, D-Fort Worth, who served for ten years ending in 1995. He was 89... James McCrory Sr., a retired political writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, and before that, for the San Antonio Light. He was 82.