The messages I received after the Texas Senate District 9 special runoff weren’t what I’ve grown accustomed to after political surprises. No one asked, “How did this happen?” They asked, “Were you surprised?”
When I said, “Not entirely,” the follow-up was telling. They were less surprised that Republican Leigh Wambsganss lost than they were shocked at the decisive — 57% to 43% — defeat she took at the hands of Democrat Taylor Rehmet in a district President Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024. The 31-point swing stunned people; the outcome, for many, did not.
That distinction matters.
As the usual explanations began circulating — weather, turnout, changing demographics, low awareness — I kept thinking about the conversations I’d been having inside the district for weeks. The consensus: rank-and-file Republicans had grown weary of the MAGA populism rife in Texas Republican politics.
The most revealing exchange I had was with a fourth-generation Texan who was following the race closely. He talked like someone who’d reached a limit. He mentioned property taxes being out of control, a Legislature that’s more interested in symbolic fights than cost-of-living basics, and school battles that, in his view, have drifted from stewardship into performance.
I asked the obvious question. Do you think voting for Rehmet fixes any of that?
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“It won’t,” he said. “But I can stomach a sane Democrat a whole lot better than I can being controlled by West Texas billionaires.”
That sentence explains SD-9 better than any voter roll. Texas isn’t turning blue, but some staunch Republican voters are signaling that they are no longer obligated to support Republican nominees. That’s what makes SD-9 a potential canary.
“At the end of the day, the explanation for what happened was not that the Democrats won because of increased Democrat enthusiasm,” wrote Republican data analyst Ross Hunt of Hunt Research on X. “Rather, it was that Republicans lost it because of the failure to persuade swing Republicans and right-leaning independents.”
On paper, Rehmet’s win looks shocking. But it would be a mistake to read too much into the results of the special election and the runoff, said Kevin Kearns, associate professor of political science at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
“These are the most motivated, the most politically attuned, the most politically active people,” he said, referring to the 15% turnout in the Jan. 31 special election runoff. “Democratic voters are highly motivated to turn out to vote, and you’re seeing Democrats overperform all over the place.”
He doesn’t dispute that Republicans and independents likely helped Rehmet’s numbers, however. That’s the signal among the noise.
Rehmet didn’t win because SD-9 became progressive overnight. He won, in part at least, because instead of recycling progressive talking points that go over like a lead balloon in most parts of Texas, he talked about kitchen-table issues, giving Republican and independent voters a permission structure to say, “I’m choosing stability, not ideology.”
Wambsganss carried a different profile for many of the Republicans I spoke to. They saw her as a poster child for what they are no longer willing to stomach from a party they see as largely controlled by the West Texas oil barons Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, two of her largest supporters. They’re also fed up with a Republican Legislature they see as having done nothing to curb sky-high property tax rates, even as they gut public education through vouchers, which Wambsganss has been a vocal supporter of.
For years, Texas Republicans have assumed suburban voters will tolerate almost any nominee as long as there’s an “R” next to the name. SD-9 could be a signal that those days are numbered. When Rehmet and Wambsganss face each other again in November, the rematch will answer whether this was a one-off rupture or the early sign of a broader shift.
If Republicans are content to blame the loss on weather and turnout, they will miss the signal. If Democrats treat it as permanent realignment, they will overinterpret the moment and hand the seat back.
“It would be much more shocking if we see the Democrat win in November,” Kearns told me. “I would expect things to revert back to the Republican winning with somewhere around 55% of the vote.”
Maybe so. But for the fourth-generation Texan I spoke with, the calculation has already changed. He’s not asking whether his party will win. He’s asking whether it still wants his vote.
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