{"id":34953,"date":"2014-03-04T22:55:52","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T04:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=34953"},"modified":"2014-03-04T22:58:32","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T04:58:32","slug":"primary-results-republican-railroad-commission-race-goes-to-runoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/03\/04\/primary-results-republican-railroad-commission-race-goes-to-runoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Primary Results: Republican Railroad Commission Race Goes to Runoff"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4223\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Pump jack in Pierce Junction oilfield south of downtown Houston \" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/Tax-Oil-pics-032.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4223\" alt=\"Pump jack in Pierce Junction oilfield south of downtown Houston \" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/Tax-Oil-pics-032-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/Tax-Oil-pics-032-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/Tax-Oil-pics-032-620x465.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/Tax-Oil-pics-032-220x165.jpg 220w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/Tax-Oil-pics-032-138x103.jpg 138w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Dave Fehling\/StateImpact Texas<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pump jack in Pierce Junction oilfield south of downtown Houston<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A four-way primary race has\u00a0narrowed\u00a0to two. Former State Representative Wayne Christian will face off against Ryan Sitton to become the Republican nominee for an open seat on the\u00a0Railroad Commission of Texas, the agency that regulates Texas oil and gas industry.<\/p>\n<p>Christian and Sitton, an engineer who owns a consulting firm that works with oil and gas companies, have mostly campaigned on red-meat issues like criticizing the Obama administration and<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TXRightToLife\/status\/441074105777790976\"> touting their conservative credentials<\/a>, rather than\u00a0rather than highlighting their positions on oil and gas regulation.<\/p>\n<p>In the Democratic primary, Steve Brown,\u00a0a former legislative aide, defeated Dale Henry, and will advance to the general election ballot for November.\u00a0Brown is the only major party candidate so far to suggest that the Railroad Commission should do more to limit the recent surge in earthquakes in Texas linked to oil and gas disposal wells.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Brown and the eventual Republican nominee will be running for the seat currently held by Barry Smitherman, who did not run for re-election on the Commission to pursue an unsuccessful bid for State Attorney general.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A four-way primary race has\u00a0narrowed\u00a0to two. Former State Representative Wayne Christian will face off against Ryan Sitton to become the Republican nominee for an open seat on the\u00a0Railroad Commission of Texas, the agency that regulates Texas oil and gas industry. Christian and Sitton, an engineer who owns a consulting firm that works with oil and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[50],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34953"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34966,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34953\/revisions\/34966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}