Former Rep. Pete Sessions (R) won the GOP runoff in Texas’s 17th District on Tuesday, leaving him well placed to return to Congress and complete his comeback bid.
Sessions defeated health care executive Renee Swann by 54 percent to 46 percent, with 89 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press. He will now be the favorite to replace retiring Rep. Bill Flores (R) in a safe Republican district.
Sessions lost by over 6 points to now first-term Rep. Collin Allred in 2018. The Republican was then representing the 32nd District, and his defeat ended a 22-year run in the House.
Sessions switched districts to run, drawing the ire of Flores, who backed Swan and said that Sessions had become detached from his constituents and merely seeking office for political gain.
He sought to use his experience in Washington to his advantage during the campaign, arguing that if elected, he’d start his new term from a position of seniority.
Swann, however, has dismissed Sessions’s experience, saying that her career in the private sector would prove more valuable.
But Swann was taken away from in-person campaigning earlier this month after she announced that she and her husband had tested positive for COVID-19. She tweeted last week that she had not experienced any symptoms.
Sessions will face Democrat Rick Kennedy, who prevailed in his party’s runoff on Tuesday.