Republicans are going into the fall midterm elections expecting to take their lumps. Polls show them losing or barely hanging on in a number of districts they have long held. And at the state legislative level, Democrats have relied on an energized voting base to take over some long-held Republican seats, causing a great deal of discomfort within the GOP.

Then again, that isn’t true everywhere. Last night in West Texas, there was a special election to finish out the four-year term of state Sen. Carlos Uresti, who had resigned after being convicted of 11 felony charges. The seat hadn’t been held by a Republican since 1879, and a lot of people assumed that no Republican could win there, just because 66 percent of the population is Hispanic.