I just realized it’s been a while since I wrote anything about Irving. Two important things have occurred in Irving that may have wide-reaching consequences.

For the first story, I blogged a little bit about the race in Texas House district 105, which is one of two districts that cover most of Irving. This is the district of Linda Harper-Brown, a Republican, which she won by a narrow margin of 19 votes in the last election. That caught statewide attention because this was not seen as being anywhere near such a close contest and nearly tied up Dems and Repubs in the Texas House. And people are already watching this district for the 2010 election. Today the first Democratic challenger, Loretta Haldenwang filed papers for the Democratic primary. There is another challenger named Kim Limberg, and I could swear I’ve seen more names than just those two being advertised around town. Anyway, questions remain as to why a relatively unknown Democrat got such a turnout last time, but if strong turnout for the national elections (Obama, of course) was enough to push a guy with no budget and almost no campaign within 19 votes of winning, perhaps somebody who’s actually got a campaign can go all the way. This is one to keep an eye on.

In other news, I completely failed to ever update the blog about the lawsuits going on over at-large voting districts for the city council and the IISD, which is a truly terrible oversight because I was pessimistic about their chances, but they won.

The rescinded order also allows sitting council members to hold their seats until their terms are up, regardless of where they live now. But those council members whose seats come from new single-member districts would have to live in those districts when the seats come up for re-election.

I don’t remember them for sure, but I think two of the affected council members are Lewis Patrick and Beth Van Duyne (ironically, Republican and anti-immigrant). Anyway, this also makes the City Council elections something to watch, as it will be the test of whether or not these supposedly majority Hispanic districts will actually elect a Hispanic representative. While common perception (among Whites anyway) is that 40% of the Mexican immigrants in Irving are illegal, it is kind of hard to know exactly how many of Irving’s Hispanic population are registered voters. Well, the city elections will tell. This should prove to be an interesting year for this little city.