Pete Sessions takes big step in bid to return to Congress

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Former longtime Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas passed what may be his biggest test in his bid to return to the House of Representatives.

Sessions – who served 22 years in Congress before being defeated in 2018 by Democrat Colin Allred – won a GOP primary runoff on Tuesday.

WITH HELP FROM TRUMP, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN JACKSON WINS HOUSE GOP PRIMARY IN TEXAS

But the former chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee didn’t run in Texas’ 32nd Congressional District, the suburban Dallas-area district he once represented.

Instead, he ran in the state’s 17th Congressional District, about 100 miles south of his old district and includes the city of Waco. The switch angered retiring GOP Rep. Bill Flores, who backed Sessions’ opponent – health care executive Renee Swann.

Sessions topped Swann by roughly 7 percentage points, according to unofficial vote totals. After Swann conceded, Sessions appeared to take a jab at Flores.

“I am going to represent a powerful district that will be led from the bottom up, not the top down from now on. Mr. Flores liked to get things from the top down, and I am not that way,” Sessions said, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald.

The former congressman will now face off in November in the safe Republican district against Democrat Rich Kennedy, who won his party’s primary runoff election on Tuesday.