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| Frost wins House seat for district 24 |
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| Written by Caren M. Penland | ||||
| Wednesday, 06 November 2002 12:00 AM | ||||
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All indications pointed to a victory for Rep. Martin Frost, D-Dallas, in the Congressional District 24 race Tuesday. The incumbent was vying for his 13th term in the U.S. House of Representatives. District 24 cuts through Arlington, Dallas and Fort Worth and includes UTA. Voting results, though, were skewed because of an error in Tarrant County voting machines. At midnight, Frost held 66.3 percent of the votes from 52 reporting precincts. There are 238 precincts in the district. Frost’s Republican challenger, Mike Rivera Ortega, held 32.4 percent of the votes. Ortega said the glitch in the system is not likely to change the outcome of the race, which officials said would be determined today. “Early voting is a good indication of who’s going to win the overall election, so I don’t think this problem will affect voting results at all,” he said. Ortega, 41, said the district deserves a new representative after 24 years of leadership under Democrat Martin Frost, 60. “After a while, you’ve got to realize that if nothing has changed — whether you’re Republican, Democrat or Green Party — then you need to change who your representative is,” he said. Ortega said his campaign brought to light many issues that his opponent had not yet addressed in Congress, including environmental concerns such as cleaning up Joe Pool Lake and improving water quality rights in Cedar Hill. “Whatever the outcome of this election, we’ve raised questions that needed to be addressed. It’s changed for the best because these issues were raised,” he said. Frost said in a statement that traditional energy sources, such as natural gas, crude oil and coal, would continue to meet the majority of our energy needs for the foreseeable future. “We need to provide greater market stability in the oil and gas industries to help maintain and increase domestic production, and to deter wild price swings that hurt American families,” he said. He said he knows that it is possible to protect are wilderness areas and provide incentives to reduce pollutants in the air, such as CO2, while increasing energy production, if legislators reject the extreme anti-environmentalism of many Republican proposals. Frost is chairman of the Democratic caucus, the third ranking in that party. He announced during his campaign that he would try for the majority leader position in the House. Ortega said, should he lose, he would not run for election next term. Views: 67 | E-mail
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 31 August 2009 05:21 PM ) | ||||
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