Even before the day’s election results came tumbling in Tuesday evening, the faces of the more experienced staffers at the local David Sibley campaign office signaled trouble. Early returns, incomplete though they were, cast a pall over those who knew precisely what to look for.

For them, the message was clear: Sibley, former Waco mayor, onetime Baylor University regent, once among the lions of the Texas Senate, a man who made Republicans of one era proud and confident of the future, famously close friend of President George W. Bush, and envisioned by many as the last and best hope to keep the Senate District 22 seat in Waco hands, was bound for Election Day defeat.

There was an almost surreal air in the Sibley for Texas Senate office that evening. Some of the less knowledgeable volunteers were laughing at stupid antics on a big-screen TV airing ABC’s “Wipeout,” complete with contestants being knocked into the water by jutting wheels and giant levers.

Others were gathered about laptop computers, intently studying returns on the Texas Secretary of State’s website, doing the math and computing another wipeout.

Dedicated to the game

Some saw the signs of likely trouble even before: Early voter turnout for the week was off in Falls County, friendly turf.

By evening’s end, the figuring was done: Sibley, the lanky, prestigious, low-key legislator-turned-lobbyist, had lost his bid to return to the Senate. Victor: Retired Army Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell, a right-wing political novice from Granbury who won the runoff with 58 percent of the vote.

The big lesson: In 2010, Republicans run at their peril if they don’t bow to tea party activists and Christian conservatives and steer their principles to the far right.

Whatever else you can say of the party’s far right wing, they’re dedicated, game for action. And many mainstream Republicans, not emotionally primed or intellectually attuned to voting in a special, somewhat complicated runoff election, are not.

Sibley won big in McLennan County but not as big as he needed to turn back the Birdwell juggernaut elsewhere in the 10-county district. It was like what some folks said about Wacoans, Baylor football and the Big 12 a week or two ago. Wacoans are happy Baylor plays football in the Big 12, but you’d never know it by the lack of fans in the stands.

On Tuesday, not enough Waco fans were in the stands for David Sibley, even though he gathered some big names to support his bid to hold on to the Senate seat for Central Texas. Former President Bush, legendary Baylor coach Grant Teaff and prominent liberal Democrat and local philanthropist Bernard Rapoport all lent support.

Bush gave a speech and raised a pile of cash at a fundraiser among the power elite of Waco, but this didn’t extend to a broad public appeal on his friend’s behalf. And Rapoport’s surprising robo-call support for conservative Republican Sibley prompted a vicious, misleading robo-call attack from the opposition, easily the most shameful point of the entire campaign and a sterling example of why people are repulsed by politics as usual.

In the end, though, Sibley’s experience as a legislator and high-powered lobbyist became a liability impossible to overcome in today’s toxic political environment. One Birdwell supporter told me afterward that Sibley was “nothing but a money man” and he was glad Birdwell beat “Waco’s man.”

Some question the political wisdom of Sibley’s “SOS” ad featuring Coach Teaff urging Central Texans to “save our seat” — a TV spot trotted out late that may have rankled some in northern counties.

But more than anything, the election proved the power of small but dedicated factions in the Republican Party to make a difference in elections if they can provoke runoffs, when only the most devoted and faithful of voters show up at the polls.

Because many of the rest of us can’t be bothered or counted upon, it’s their chance to score that crucial home run.

They got their home run Tuesday. And they deserve credit for having the perseverance, zeal and focus to make it happen. In doing so, they may well have sparked a new era in Central Texas politics.