DALLAS — Democrat Taylor Rehmet may never get the chance to cast a vote from his new seat in the Texas state Senate. But merely affixing his name to a seat that hasn’t had Democratic representation in decades set off alarms throughout Texas and U.S. politics.
His victory in a deep-red Tarrant County-based legislative district is largely symbolic, with Rehmet winning when the Legislature is out of session. But a double-digit Democratic win in a place President Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024, according to data calculated by the left-leaning political site The Downballot, was nonetheless stunning — a “9.5 on the Richter scale,” according to Texas Tribune co-founder Evan Smith.
It’s the latest example of Democrats’ significantly outperforming Republicans compared with the 2024 election result in elections across the country in the last year-plus. A handful of those elections have flipped state legislative districts, like this one, in addition to big Democratic wins in the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia.
In Texas, the result raises questions about whether Republicans’ new congressional map, which was designed to help the party net five additional House seats, can actually deliver victories in seats that weren’t as red in 2024 as the one Rehmet flipped. He can now claim to have been the first Democrat to flip his deep-red seat since 1991, upsetting a conservative political activist Leigh Wambsganss, who outspent him by millions of dollars.
But if you ask Rehmet, he won’t frame it in such partisan terms.
“Maybe my success is I didn’t see things that way,” Rehmet told NBC News. “I saw it as an opportunity to unify Texans. ... We look out for our neighbors, and that means our neighbors and our schools and our communities that are not being able to pay their medication or choosing between medication, food or rent. These are things that are a five-alarm fire. We have to address these issues, and voters are looking for something different. I’m not focused on partisanship.”
On the Republican side, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who was a vocal supporter of Wambsganss’, called it a “low-turnout” special election that should be a “wake-up call for Republicans.”
But election analysis may show that Republicans didn’t have a problem only with turnout, but also with retainment.
“The No. 1 takeaway is Republicans did not lose because of low turnout, not primarily. They lost it because a large number of independents and some Republicans voted for the Democratic candidate,” Republican data analyst Ross Hunt of Hunt Research told NBC News. “This election is definitely a warning bell for the Republicans this fall.”
According to Hunt’s data analysis of the special-election electorate in the 9th Senate District, only 35% of voters in the election were Democratic base voters, compared with 51% who were Republican base voters.
For Rehmet to reach his 57% vote share, many Republicans and right-leaning independents defected, Hunt said.
“You don’t have to be a genius in math to figure out what happened. We have a lot of independents, and some Republicans, voting for the Democrat,” Hunt said.
It’s not yet clear what exact dynamics from this race could bleed over into the midterms, which will have significantly higher turnout. It’s also possible that some of the specifics of Wambsganss’ candidacy, including her local school board activism, triggered an unusual degree of backlash that wouldn’t translate to other races.
But Saturday’s results could be another sign, in addition to the 2025 election results, of Hispanic and suburban voters’ turning sharply against the GOP after they helped contribute to the party’s strong 2024 election.
Democrats’ margin of victory in the Texas special election amounted to a 32-point swing left compared with the 2024 presidential results and a 28-point swing from the 2020 result, according to The Downballot.
A midterm swing of even a small fraction of that size would be a massive boon for Democrats, nationally and in Texas, where state Republicans put themselves on the front lines of the GOP drive to keep the House majority in 2026.
Republican lawmakers carved up the state’s congressional map in hope of netting their party up to five more seats in Congress. When Republicans redrew the maps, they made a bet that they could hold onto the gains Trump and the party have been making among Hispanic voters. But if that support is crumbling, they might not be able to squeeze as much political gain out of the gerrymandered map.
Netting five seats requires toppling Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, two South Texas Democrats in overwhelmingly Hispanic districts who have won tough races before. And Republicans also have to win a new, majority-Hispanic district that runs outside Austin to San Antonio. Trump won all three districts in 2024 by about 10 points — less than his 2024 margin in Texas’ 9th Senate District.
Some local activists cautioned against overinterpreting Wambsganss’ loss as a national political signal, arguing instead that it reflected distinctly local fallout from her role in contentious school board fights that reshaped public education politics in North Texas.
In 2020, Wambsganss co-founded Southlake Families PAC to back school board candidates who pledged to root out critical race theory, which centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions, and what they described as “woke” diversity initiatives in local schools. She later expanded that work as director of Patriot Mobile Action, the political arm of a right-wing Christian cellphone company, which poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into school board races across the region, helping elect slates of anti-DEI Republicans.
Wambsganss’ campaign to put “God back in schools” helped elevate her to national prominence, with frequent appearances on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and other conservative media. But in more recent elections, opponents say, the policies she championed — including aggressive curriculum battles, book bans and public funding for private Christian schools — triggered resistance not just from Democrats, but also from independent and Republican parents who said the fights sowed division and instability in high-achieving suburban school systems.
Laney Hawes, a parent of four in one of those districts and a co-founder of the Texas Freedom to Read Project, said many in Tarrant County had come to see Wambsganss as “the villain of public education.” While Hawes said she was energized by the outcome, she warned that the result was being read too broadly outside the region.
“This win was about parents’ coming together from every notch on the political spectrum and trying to protect our children and our community,” Hawes said. “Even Republicans and moderates were pissed off at her.”
For Rehmet’s team, that is a rare dose of hope in the Democratic Party’s long-plagued pursuit of a more competitive Texas. But the work starts again now to cement his place in the Senate for real legislative business. He will face Wambsganss again in November for a full four-year term.
Both parties hope their colleagues take note of the lessons here.
For Republicans, the message is this: Don’t get comfortable. Even in Texas, in this political environment, they may be playing from behind.
“After last Saturday, no one can take anything for granted,” said Hunt, the data analyst.
Rehmet hopes Democrats learn from his example to sideline partisanship and even platforms, instead letting listening and authenticity lead. After having knocked on more than 30,000 doors, he and his team have heard their fair share — and voters are done with disingenuousness, he said.
“This is much bigger than Democrats. This is honestly such an issue across Texas and especially, I know for certain, in my Senate district — we want organic, honest folks,” he said. “I’m a hardworking person myself. I’m blue-collar. I am an aircraft mechanic, and in my machinists union, I think that we need to support candidates that are genuine and, you know, come from honest work. That’s one of my recommendations to anyone.”
