Brian Birdwell’s election Tuesday to the state Senate and a decision Wednesday morning by his predecessor to pull his name off the general election ballot have set the table for a November contest between the Granbury Republican and a yet-to-be-named Democrat.

But that’s assuming local and state Democrats think the seat is winnable.

Sen. Kip Averitt said Wednesday he would not run for the seat in November. He announced his resignation in mid-March, but his name remained on the November ballot.

Brian Birdwell won the state Senate special election runoff Tuesday.

Separate sets of county party chairs from the 10-county district — both Democratic and Republican — can now select nominees for the general election.

Birdwell presumably would be the Republican nominee after his victory over former state Sen. David Sibley in Tuesday’s special election runoff.

The Senate district stretches from the Waco area to the southern suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth. It is decidedly Republican territory politically, voting 68 percent for John McCain in the 2008 presidential race.

But that’s not the only way to win. Birdwell’s Republican opponents have argued he doesn’t meet an eligibility requirement for the seat and would be vulnerable to a legal challenge.

Senators in Texas must have lived in the state for the past five years to be eligible for office.

Birdwell lived in Virginia while serving in the U.S. Army, which wouldn’t have an effect on his Texas residency by itself.

But the Sibley campaign said Birdwell gave up his residency in 2004 when he registered to vote in Virginia. He voted there as recently as November 2006.

Democratic officials were in the process of talking about the legal chances of a challenge Wednesday.

“It’s clear many Republicans think that Mr. Birdwell does not meet the residency requirements to hold this office,” state Democratic Party spokesman Kirsten Gray said in an e-mail. “At this point, we will be talking with our legal counsel and with the local county chairs and party leaders about how to proceed.”

Although Birdwell shook off residency concerns as unfounded on election night, saying “residency is not the question,” it was the issue du jour for Democrats.

“I’ve spent half my day on it,” said Democratic election lawyer Buck Wood, who is based in Austin. “The voting in Virginia is pretty damning, but it’s not necessarily conclusive.”

Wood said that in a theoretical court case, Birdwell could argue, for example, that he had violated the law when he registered to vote and voted in Virginia and therefore did not relinquish his Texas residency through those actions.

Wood said he still was assembling relevant documents on the eligibility question and wasn’t ready to weigh in on whether he thought a case against Birdwell’s candidacy could be successful.

A theoretical legal challenge would have to be very strong, given the courts’ general reluctance to pull candidates off ballots, Texas Christian University political science professor Jim Riddlesperger said.

“If it’s close, they always want to leave it to the voters,” he said.

Averitt had said Tuesday he was concerned about a potential Birdwell victory. He said his health had recovered enough since pulling himself off the campaign trail in January, and he was contemplating remaining a candidate out of a conviction that Birdwell fails to meet a residency requirement for the seat.

But Wednesday morning, Averitt said he was swayed by the election results.

“I said I was not going to run again, and I’m not going to run again. I’m going to stick to my word,” Averitt said.

Locally and in Austin, Democrats were mulling potential candidates Wednesday, and discussions about the seat are sure to continue at the upcoming state party convention in Corpus Christi.

The names already being considered include former U.S. ambassador and Waco businessman Lyndon Olson and former state Rep. John Mabry, a Waco attorney who is running against Republican state Rep. Charles “Doc” Anderson.

Mabry said he remains focused on his House race but wouldn’t rule anything out.

“If an opportunity arises, I’ll consider it, just like I’ve considered other political and personal opportunities in the past,” he said.

Political pundits tried to make sense of the results from Tuesday’s runoff, in which Birdwell defeated Sibley with about 58 percent of the vote.

Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson described the results as a show of strength for the tea party movement, but he cautioned that strength would not necessarily translate to larger elections.

“In a low-turnout runoff, which this was, the tea party really was able to flex its muscle, but in general elections I think that will be much less true,” Jillson said.

The unofficial results showed 24,531 people voting, or roughly 40 percent of the number of people who participated in the March GOP primary.

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

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