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Early Voting Starts In North Texas State Senate District

Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther speaks to a crowd at the 'Texas Bar Owners Fight Back' protest at the state Capitol in June.
Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune
Salon owner Shelley Luther is running for Texas State Senate.

The race is to replace Pat Fallon, who is running for Congress.

Early voting began Monday, September 14 in the special election for Texas State Senate district 30. Voters will choose who replaces Pat Fallon, who’s now the front-runner for a seat in Congress.

Senate District 30 is large and includes Wichita Falls and parts of Denton and Collin Counties.

The winner of the special election will represent the area when state lawmakers convene in January.

There are five Republican candidates and one Democrat running:

-Denton Mayor Chris Watts (R)

-State Representative Drew Springer (R)

-Software engineer Andy Hopper (R)

-Business owner Craig Carter (R)

-Business owner Shelley Luther (R)

-International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 20 Secretary Jacob Minter (D)

Luther is the salon owner who gained celebrity when she briefly went to jail for defying Governor Abbott’s early coronavirus order that closed nonessential businesses.

The Texas Republican Executive Committee recently held a candidate forumin early September for the five GOP candidates.

Early voting lasts two weeks and election day is September 29th.

For voters in Denton County, election information is here. For Collin County, it’s here.

Got a tip? Email Bret Jaspers at bjaspers@kera.org. You can follow Bret on Twitter @bretjaspers.

KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gifttoday. Thank you.

Bret Jaspers is a reporter for KERA. His stories have aired nationally on the BBC, NPR’s newsmagazines, and APM’s Marketplace. He collaborated on the series Cash Flows, which won a 2020 Sigma Delta Chi award for Radio Investigative Reporting. He's a member of Actors' Equity, the professional stage actors union.