Both Michael Cloud and Eric Holguin had surreal, yet busy mornings.
“I woke up to over a hundred plus notifications, emails,” said Holguin. “People were calling me at 3:30 a.m. to congratulate me.”
I’m certainly still processing it all,” said Cloud. “Still returning messages, a lot of thank you’s to be said to a lot of people.”
Democrat Holguin and Republican Cloud will now go head to head in the general election for Texas’ 27th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Both know they’ll need to connect with a variety of voters to win in November, and that starts with listening.
“I’ve often said that the first job of a representative is to listen,” said Cloud via Skype. “I definitely need to continue to listen to hear the hearts of voters.”
“I want to talk to Republicans, I want to talk to Independents, I want to talk to Libertarians, really listen to their concerns and see how we can work together to address those concerns,” said Holguin.
After spending months campaigning for their respective party’s nominations, both Holguin and Cloud now face another five months of what amounts to an extended job interview with district voters.
“It’s going to be a lot of phone banking, block walking, really organizing our volunteers,” said Holguin, who defeated Raul “Roy” Barrera in the Democratic primary runoff. “Getting endorsements from our Texas Congressional Delegation and national organizations, really putting in the work to make sure we’re successful in the general.”
“There’s still a lot of trust to be earned, there’s still a lot of votes to be earned,” said Cloud, who defeated Bech Bruun in the Republican Primary.
