Fort Worth Business Press, June 2, 2014 Vol. 26, No. 21 | Page 24

election 2014

24 June 2 - 8, 2014 | fwbusinesspress.com

Burton defeats Shelton in GOP District 10 race
n Dave Montgomery Austin Correspondent

C

onservative activist Konni Burton,
armed with the backing of U.S.
Sen. Ted Cruz, rode a wave of tea
party support May 27 to seize the Republican nomination for the Tarrant County
state Senate seat now held by Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis.

Burton, a 50-year-old tea party leader from Colleyville, easily defeated State Rep. Mark Shelton in the
runoff election to lead Republicans into a contentious
fall campaign for the District 10 seat, which Davis has
held since January 2009.
Burton h ad 60 percent of the runoff vote, while
Shelton, who ran for the seat in 2012, had 40 percent.
Burton jumped into the lead as soon as the results of
early voting were counted, and never trailed.
Burton now faces Fort Worth neighborhood leader
Libby Willis, who won the Democratic nomination
outright in the March 4 primary. Burton and Shel-

Burton

Cruz

Davis

ton were first and second, respectively, in a five-way
Republican primary contest that centered heavily on
which candidate offered the best chance to help Republicans wrest the district from Democrats.
“We’re going to take a couple of days off and then
we’re going to hit the ground running again,” Burton
said in a telephone interview about 10 minutes after
Shelton called her to concede. “We’re going to stay just
as focused and run on the same conservative principles that I’ve been running on.”
Willis, 54, the daughter-in-law of the late Democratic State Rep. Doyle Willis of Fort Worth, said Burton
“deserves congratulations for being the nominee.”
But Willis added, the unfolding general election race

Shelton

Willis

“is going to be about the clear differences between us
and it’s clear that she and I disagree about a lot of
things.”
Burton’s strong showing was part of a tea party tide
that also included Dan Patrick’s victory over Republican establishment incumbent David Dewhurst in the
runoff for lieutenant governor and state Sen. Ken Paxton’s triumph over State Rep. Dan Branch in the GOP
runoff for attorney general.
Burton, a former wedding consultant, has been a
long-time tea party leader in North Texas. She was
among the first wave of conservative activists to campaign for then-underdog Cruz in the 2012 U.S. Senate
See Burton u NEXT PAGE

“We’re going to take a couple of days off and then we’re going to hit the
ground running again . . . We’re going to stay just as focused and run on the
same conservative princples that I’ve been running on.”

– Konni Burton,
in a telephone interview about 10 minutes after Shelton called her to concede