The hits keep coming for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm election. But even amid a series of panic-inspiring results for the GOP, a new outcome in Texas stands out.
Democrat Taylor Rehmet pulled an upset in a Fort Worth-area district, beating Republican Leigh Wambsganss 57%-43% in a runoff election in a solidly Republican district.
Let’s break down why it’s a big deal, along with some caveats.
Democrats have been overperforming in special elections by big margins pretty much ever since President Donald Trump won the 2024 election. But Texas is one of the biggest swings to date.
While Trump won the district by about 17 points in 2024, the Democrat held a 14-point lead with nearly all of the vote counted as of Sunday morning. That’s a roughly 31-point difference, on the margins, and one of the party’s strongest recent special election performances.
By way of comparison, the big Democratic overperformances in congressional races that got lots of attention last year were generally in the high teens and low 20s.
Also, this will be the first time a Democrat has represented the northern part of Tarrant County in the state Senate since the early 1980s, according to longtime local political journalist Bud Kennedy.
Many of the biggest overperformances in special elections come in tiny state legislative districts, where larger swings can happen with very few voters. But the 9th District in the Texas state Senate is not tiny.
In fact, it’s bigger than a US congressional district.
There are fewer state Senate districts (31) than congressional districts (38) in Texas. So this district is home to nearly 1 million people, compared with fewer than 800,000 for your average congressional district.
Trump got involved – and it didn’t work
The race was important enough to earn the involvement of the national committees, top statewide Republicans and even Trump.
Trump posted three times about the race in recent days, in clear hopes of juicing Election-Day turnout for Republicans.
But it didn’t work. In fact, in a pretty rare occurrence these days, Democrats actually did better on special Election Day than in early voting. While Rehmet won early voting 56-44, he won day-of voting 58-42, according to results from Tarrant County.
Trump’s call clearly wasn’t heeded.
Wambsganss, a well-connected local political activist, also far outraised Rehmet, a machinist union leader and Air Force veteran.
The most recent fundraising filings last week showed she had raised more than $2.5 million throughout her campaign, compared with less than $400,000 for Rehmet.
The upset is one thing; where it happened is another.
Tarrant County is generally thought to be a major bellwether county, not just in Texas but nationally.
It’s home to major defense contractors and has long been an epicenter of Christian nationalism. It has been strongly Republican for decades and was a hotbed of tea party activism during former President Barack Obama’s term. But it’s also become more competitive in recent years.
If there’s a place where Democrats would really like to make gains, it’s one like this.
It’s also the kind of upset that will probably inject some Democrats with hope of doing the unthinkable: winning a US Senate race in Texas this year. Democrats need to pull upsets in red states to flip that chamber.
But that’s a tall hill to climb, given Democrats haven’t won statewide in Texas since the 1990s. And Democrats’ hopes could rest on the right candidates winning the primaries – especially state Attorney General Ken Paxton winning on the GOP side. Paxton is generally viewed as more beatable than GOP Sen. John Cornyn.
There are some significant caveats when it comes to how encouraged Democrats should feel.
The big one, as always, is that special elections aren’t always predictive of the coming, regularly scheduled election. It’s pretty evident these days that Trump’s base consists disproportionately of voters who don’t turn out as much in lower-profile races.
This race also had a low turnout – likely owing to the fact that it was held on an unusual day, Saturday, during an unseasonably cold time in Texas. There were fewer than 100,000 votes, compared with about 180,000 for the much-watched recent special congressional election in Tennessee. And as noted, that Tennessee race was in a smaller district.
(At the same time, the Democrat also significantly overperformed the usual Democratic vote share in the primary, which was held on the regularly scheduled Election Day in November and which featured higher turnout – nearly 120,000 voters. Back then, Rehmet took 48% and nearly won the seat without a runoff.)
And then there are the local politics.
Wambsganss is a longtime activist who played a significant role in a social conservative push to take control of local schoolboards earlier this decade. But there is evidence that it went too far for voters, who replaced a number of the partisans with more moderate members in later elections.
It seems possible she alienated some moderate voters and even some Republicans, whom Rehmet aimed to flip.
