It's good to know where the various candidates stand to make an informed decision. I don't know if they'll be hosting all three at some point or if he's just he most moderate of the three, and, therefore, the least objectionable.

Texas also has open primaries so it may be in our interest to help determine the candidate in that race, since that candidate will be unopposed in November.

I was both astonished and then rapidly said to myself, "Of course they do." It took several elections with no opponent on the ballot for Sheriff (Oregon counties), and then finally a couple of newspaper (we used to have those) articles that explained that the old sheriff would resign early, which would open up the spot for an appointee, who would become the incumbent. The deadlines for registering for the election were futzed around with ... if you didn't do something, something, before somewhen, you couldn't be on the ballot ...
I'm not sure how they manage to keep any opposition off the ballot completely, but they do. The same with elected judges. You have a choice in the election, of the one person on the ballot.

I vote in the GOP primary. Most of the partisan local races are decided there, and there's a big difference between Republican crusaders and administrators. I vote straight D in the general elections, and trust the rest of the party to choose nominees. So this makes sense to me.

Some of the liberals he'd offended mounted a campaign to crossover in the primary, to help choose his opponent. Needless to say, he lost that election. But the effect for 10-12 years was to discourage Dems from running, because the numbers showed the Rs far outnumbered the Ds. We paid by not being able to get Dems to run for maybe 10 years. Luckily that has finally turned around. In the meantime a Tea Party Republican defeated the conservative Democrat and was re-elected 3-4 terms. Now his even worse wife holds that seat. The Dem voted agains liberal and moderately liberal positions a fair amount. Both Tea Party State Reps voted against them 100% of the time.