Readers of the entire 147-page opinion issued earlier this month by a federal district court striking down Texas’s strict voter identification law as unconstitutional and a violation of the Voting Rights Act might have been too exhausted to realize that the opinion’s very last sentence may be its most important.

AUSTIN — The governor of Texas is not legally required to possess a supreme amount of self-confidence, but a law like that might as well be on the books. Sam Houston governed the state. The last two incumbents, George W. Bush and Rick Perry, ran for president. In the annals of self-confidence, the man likely to succeed Perry next year, Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), fits right in.

Of all the candidates running in next Tuesday’s American midterm elections, only one, it seems to me, really has Halloween potential — which is to say, only one has succeeded in identifying herself closely enough with a specific sartorial semiology that a Pavlovian association is created in a viewer’s mind. See the garment, think the person.

Young Republicans of Galveston County, Texas are apologizing for an event they held over the weekend. They admit that throwing darts at pictures of Democrats went too far. Politics have become divisive, ugly, and many would agree downright nasty over recent years. But some say what happened in League City at a polling place this weekend crossed a line.

But barring some sort of November miracle (or, depending on your point of view, calamity), Texas will remain in Republican hands come 2015. This won’t surprise Wayne Thorburn, a longtime Texas GOP operative and political analyst whose recent book, Red State (UT Press), makes the case that conservative domination is here to stay, at least for a while. Here’s why.

In the last two days, Democrat Wendy Davis has pulled in more than $800,000 from large donors ... The big contributors are all women and earlier contributors, including plaintiff’s lawyer and long-time Democratic supporter Amber Mostyn, who gave $367,000; Houston investor Lillie Robertson, $155,000; Dallas arts patron Marguerite Hoffman, $90,000, and medical consultant Laure Woods, $40,000.

In honor of Election Day 2014, how about a big gulp? The summaries below draw from our fact checks about government spending, voter fraud, abortion, Afghanistan, making a living, Abbott v. Davis, border security, education, Austin-specific topics -- and (hottest for last) Pants on Fire rulings.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is officially throwing her support behind Democrat Wendy Davis, applauding her for running a “tough, strong campaign” for governor.

Yount, who has been an Illinois statehouse reporter for eight years, mentioned the many press passes hanging on his studio wall, 35 miles from the state Capitol in Springfield. He wondered why citizen journalists, including those who are advocates of one cause or another, should be treated differently than traditional journalists who see themselves as objective.

A Pew poll out Wednesday revealed Democrats suffered an 8-percentage-point drop in support from Hispanic voters nationwide since 2010, down to 57 percent. Meanwhile, Republicans gained 6 points over the past four years, with 28 percent now saying they support a generic Republican House candidate. The new survey provided hard numbers for the anecdotal evidence that President Obama's delay of executive action to halt deportations of illegal immigrants is coming back to haunt Democrats.

Hey, Texplainer: I heard that oil prices are plunging – down more than 20 percent since June. Apparently Texas boomtowns aren’t yet panicking, but what does it mean for the state budget?

San Antonio on verge of big water play; Understanding the shale boom; Texplainer: Do falling oil prices threaten the budget?; Settled Into GOP, Lozano hopes to hold district; Hegar, Collier clash on credentials, taxes; Dewhurst asks for price tag to expand border operations.

As the San Antonio City Council prepares to take action on a controversial new water supply project, it remains unclear if the $3.4 billion undertaking — which would pipe in 16 billion gallons of groundwater annually from 142 miles away — is really necessary.

Hawk, a former state district judge, raised $342,441 from Sept. 9 to Oct. 25. Financial reports released this week show she spent $416,886 during the same period and has $239,427 in her campaign account. Meanwhile, Watkins, the two-term incumbent, raised $44,850 for the period and spent $33,379. He has $61,000 left in his campaign account, though both candidates are still raising money.

Rodney Anderson blamed a botched fax for a chain of errors that ultimately led the state Republican Party to retract attack ads and apologize to his Democratic opponent for House District 105. And in his first public comments since the unraveling of his accusations that Democrat Susan Motley was breaking the law by campaigning, Anderson announced that he would not press them further.

Nearly 1 of every 6 dollars that Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, received in campaign contributions came from employees of Ryan LLC or the company’s political committee. The Dallas-based tax firm works to help major corporations, such as Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil and Verizon, secure tax breaks. A Ryan LLC tax consultant represented nearly 60 percent of all incentives approved under the Enterprise Zone Program, which offers tax breaks to businesses that open shop in poor areas, in the last three years, records obtained by The Dallas Morning News show.

With Denton preparing to vote Tuesday on banning hydraulic fracturing within city limits, tension has mounted as rival groups work to undermine each other. The election has turned into a flash point for a national debate on the oil and gas drilling boom. Towns in New York and Colorado have voted in similar bans. But this would be the first such prohibition in Texas, the home of the country’s energy industry, probably setting off a long legal fight if it passes.

Rep. Randy Forbes says he’ll challenge Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas for the House Armed Services Committee gavel. The Virginia Republican told POLITICO he plans to mount a bid after Tuesday’s midterm elections to replace retiring Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) at the helm of the powerful committee.

It has paid for quite a force: Customs and Border Protection not only employs some 60,000 total personnel—everything from desert agents on horseback to insect inspectors at airports—but also operates a fleet of some 250 planes, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator drones the military sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, making CBP both the largest law enforcement air force in the world and equivalent roughly to the size of Brazil’s entire combat air force.

"Completely ignoring the fatal nature of Ebola in horrible ways evidences the callous, wanton disregard for the American lives by President Obama and his appointees took an oath to protect," Gohmert said in a statement. The Texas Republican said the administration should prioritize American lives. "The evidence that the Obama administration is attempting to sneak foreign Ebola patients into the United States is electrifying since they have not even been able to say where the United States military that he sent to Africa could go if they get the Ebola virus," Gohmert said.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) will run for the chairmanship of the powerful House Armed Services Committee after the elections. A spokesman for Forbes confirmed that after months of flirting with a run, the congressman has decided to challenge Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) for the top spot on the panel.

Democratic freshman Rep. Pete Gallego and GOP challenger Will Hurd will be the only two Texans sweating their state’s congressional elections next week.  Gallego is well-known in the area thanks to his tenure in the state House. He also served as the head of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, a group of Texas state representatives who lobby for issues affecting Hispanics.

A cheering crowd of college students welcomed State Sen. Wendy Davis to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Wednesday, where the Democratic Party candidate for governor talked about education funding and made only a passing reference to her famous abortion rights filibuster.

All U.S. military personnel, including about 70 Fort Bliss soldiers, who are deployed to West Africa as part of the U.S.'s effort to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus will be required to undergo a 21-day monitoring period once they return for their mission, U.S. officials said.

Fort Worth was the battleground in the Texas gubernatorial race — at least on Wednesday. Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Democrat state Sen. Wendy Davis met separately with supporters in Fort Worth, encouraging them to vote early or on Election Day on Tuesday.