Michael Soto, who represents District 3 on the State Board of Education, got a small hint of how awful election night would be during early voting. A man in his 60s approached him in El Charro Restaurant in Alice and said his wife's maiden was Soto – so he voted for the first-term incumbent.
The guy clearly meant to be encouraging. It didn't work.
"I thought, 'Oh, no. There are far more Perezes than Sotos,'" he said. "That was my one moment of genuine fear."
And it proved to be amply justified. Soto, a 42-year-old associate professor of English at Trinity, lost to political newcomer Marisa Perez in Tuesday's Democratic primary by a yawning margin – 33.4 percent to her 66.6 percent.
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