Ellington

In what was largely seen as an upset victory, Ciro D. Rodriguez beat Republican Representative Henry Bonilla in a runoff election, adding one more Democrat to the new House majority secured in November, when Republicans suffered their worse Congressional losses since the Watergate era, says CQPolitics.com. Texas' 23rd runs along the border in southwestern Texas, reaching into the southern portion of San Antonio. Its original boundaries were thrown out by a federal court because the district was only 51 percent Hispanic, which would be unrepresentative of the area; it was redrawn in August to be approximately 61 percent Hispanic. Rodriguez and Bonilla are both Hispanic; Bonilla was the only Mexican-American Republican in the House, although his conservative views drew more support from the non-Hispanic population in his district than from Hispanics.

He becomes the 30th Democratic pickup of the year in the House, with one more disputed House race left to be decided -- Florida's 13th, where Democrat Christine Jennings is disputing her narrow loss to Republican Vern Buchanan. Potential problems with computer voting booths in that race -- there appear to be 18,000 undervotes in areas that would lean Democratic -- may well set a tone for debate in the new Congress about the efficacy of electronic voting devices and a need for voting machine "paper trails."