Among the more interesting questions about Saturday’s state Senate special election: Can the lone Democrat in the four-way race drum up votes in one of the more Republican-leaning districts in Texas?

The 10-county district is made up of McLennan, Bosque, Coryell, Ellis, Falls, Hill, Hood, Johnson, Navarro and Somervell counties, which collectively gave John McCain 68.1 percent of the vote in the 2008 presidential election.

But that’s not all the Democratic candidate, Baylor University political scientist Gayle Avant, is up against.

The candidates for state Senate (from left): David Sibley, Gayle Avant, Darren Yancy and Brian Birdwell.

Avant predicted his campaign would be “less well-funded than my Republican compatriots.”

And while well-versed in political theory, Avant is new to retail politics. (He made the rookie mistake Saturday of not packing enough candy for a small parade in Cameron Park.)

But Avant said he’ll be competitive. He has rolled out bright yellow signs, a yellow Hyundai with his name and picture on it and billboards critical of one of his GOP opponents, former state Sen. David Sibley.

Though Avant is conversant in the big issues facing the state — the budget deficit and redistricting — he’s more likely to talk about energy policy, specifically the law Sibley wrote more than a decade ago to deregulate retail electricity markets in Texas.

Avant thinks the policy was a failure, though he doesn’t want to re-regulate.

“There’s no way to get the toothpaste back in the tube,” he said.

But Avant thinks Texans would be better served if electric providers all had to make a standard offer so consumers could easily differentiate between them.

Republican focus

The Republican candidates — Sibley, Granbury’s Brian Birdwell and Burleson’s Darren Yancy — seem focused on wooing the conservative vote.

Sibley has presented himself as a steady hand who would step into a tough legislative session with seniority and experience. Sibley, a former Baylor basketball player, served in the Senate from 1991 to 2002 after a stint as Waco mayor.

Birdwell has a moving personal history. He was badly burned while working in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

Birdwell went on to start a ministry for burn victims. He now works as a speaker for WallBuilders, an Aledo-based evangelical activist group that works against the separation of church and state, or at least what its officials say is the flawed modern interpretation of the phrase.

Yancy is taking another shot at the seat after losing a GOP primary to now-retired state Sen. Kip Averitt, who subsequently resigned his post for health reasons, forcing the special election.

Yancy recently said Texas needs its own version of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, which expanded the authority of police to stop and detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

Most of the scrapping in the contest has been between the Sibley and Birdwell camps. Sibley’s campaign has raised questions about whether Birdwell, who lived and voted in Virginia as recently as 2006, was eligible to run.

Birdwell pointed to contributions Sibley gave to Democrats while a lobbyist.

A recent event allowed the Granbury Republican to expand on that line of attack. Sibley said at a candidate forum last week that he’d only given money to Democrats without GOP opponents, but a review of his donations shows he gave $5,500 to Democrats in contested situations, a fact Birdwell’s campaign quickly jumped on.

Sibley’s campaign spokesperson, Kirsten Voinis, responded by faulting Birdwell for going negative and grasping at straws.

The donations to Democrats in contested elections amounts to a little less than 1 percent of Sibley’s total giving during the past 10 years.

Voinis pointed to Sibley’s most high-profile endorsement as evidence that conservatives are comfortable with the former legislator.

“Conservative leaders like former President and Gov. George W. Bush . . . know David’s record of defending conservative values,” she said.

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

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