Texas: OK given by voters for taxes
In the months of campaigning before the Nov. 2 elections, Republican candidates at the state and local level were unified in their campaign message they delivered in TV ads and stump speeches: a vote for the GOP was a vote for belt-tightening, back-to-the basics fiscal conservatism. County politics, by its nature less partisan and more inclined to workaday issues like road building and jail maintenance, followed a similar script of economic frugality.