Dan Crenshaw, a 33-year-old former Navy SEAL, won the GOP primary runoff election in Texas's second congressional district on Tuesday night. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Crenshaw led his opponent, state representative Kevin Roberts, 70 percent to 30 percent.
Although Crenshaw won in a landslide on Tuesday, Republican operatives following the race thought Crenshaw didn't have much of a chance of even advancing to the runoff in the first place. But on March 6, Crenshaw edged out wealthy GOP activist Kathaleen Wall—a self-styled female Trump who spent $6 million of her own money and had the endorsements of Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz—by 145 votes out of 46,000 votes cast. Crenshaw's campaign was strapped for cash prior to the March 6 primary, but he drew just enough attention to his campaign in local media and on Fox News by running 100 miles through his congressional district in and around Houston.
During the runoff campaign, Crenshaw was criticized by his GOP opponent Kevin Roberts for a December 2015 Facebook post in which he wrote that "Trump's insane rhetoric is hateful." Added Crenshaw at the time: "On the one hand you have idiots like Trump and on the other you have equally ignorant liberals."
But while running for office in 2018, Crenshaw downplayed his criticism of President Trump. In an interview in February with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Crenshaw said that Trump was a "good shield against the onslaught" from the left, but "we’ve got to think long-term too because I don’t think Trump speaks to a lot of young people."
"The president can get distracted and tweet some things that are controversial, and that gets in the way of his agenda, but the reality is that we need to support his agenda,” he added. “We have to bring back that Reagan optimism."
Crenshaw, who lost an eye when he was hit by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012, is heavily favored to win the general election in Texas's strongly Republican second district.