The top local stories this evening from KERA News:
Across Texas, seven Democratic challengers raised more money in the latest reporting period than the Republican incumbents they're facing.
The Texas Tribune reports that of those Democrats is Colin Allred. The former Dallas Cowboy raised a million dollars in the second quarter. His opponent, Republican Representative Pete Sessions, raised less than $700,000.
Statewide the fundraising news is mixed. Democrat Beto O'Rourke more than doubled the quarterly total of Republican Senator Ted Cruz. O’Rourke raised $10.4 million in the second quarter, compared to $4.6 million that Cruz brought in.
But Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has raised 4.5 million dollars, 17 times as much as his Democratic opponent, Mike Collier, who raised $265,000 over the last five months.
Other stories this evening:
- Evangelical Christian churches are some of the fastest growing in the country. And 13 percent of American evangelicals are Asian American or Latino. Janelle S. Wong studies talked about how race and ethnicity factor into political identification for evangelicals with Krys Boyd today on Think.
- Amazon’s Prime Day comes as the company figures out where to put its second headquarters. Dallas and Austin are on the short list. They, and all the 20 finalists, use economic incentives like tax breaks to lure businesses like Amazon to town. But do those incentives work? David Brown, host of public radio's Texas Standard, put that question to Nathan Jensen, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
- It’s not the State Fair of Texas, but the other major fair in this region, the North Texas Fair and Rodeo, has expanding dreams. The annual event starts August 17th in Denton, and 200,000 or so people will visit the current fairgrounds, just northwest of Texas Woman's University. Executive Director Glenn tells KERA’s Justin Martin about the fair's history and its plans to move into a new home.
You can listen to North Texas stories weekdays at 8:22 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM.
