Downtown Fort Worth is seen, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
FORT WORTH — Republican state Senate candidate Leigh Wambsganss once described herself as “Ultra-MAGA,” but in August she deleted the words “Republican” and “Trump Endorsed” from her campaign signs. The once bright red color is now dark blue.
Wambsganss made her name as political director for Patriot Mobile, a Christian nationalist wireless provider that backed fundamentalists in school board elections. She was once considered a shoo-in on the party’s conservative fringe, where Fort Worth politicians have traditionally done well.
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TOMLINSON SERIES: How a major demographic shift is reshaping Texas
Texas is undergoing one of the most profound periods of change since 1820, demographically, socially, economically and politically. In Tarrant County, the last urban county in Texas controlled by Republicans, conservative culture war tropes no longer hit the same. In a shocking upset, Democrat Taylor Rehmet beat Wambsganss in a special election in February.
Texas state Sen. Taylor Rehmet is seen in Fort Worth, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
He is the first Democrat to hold that seat since 1994.
Wambsganss’ new campaign signs look remarkably like those of Rehmet, who is seeking re-election in state Senate District 9 in November.
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Her strategy of running away from her past begs the question: Are voters leaving the Republican Party, or is President Donald Trump’s Republican Party leaving them?
Rehmet thinks it’s the latter.
Texas is going through the most profound demographic, economic and political transformation since the Battle of the Alamo. In this series, columnist Chris Tomlinson explores the hope, strife and anxiety created by this dramatic change of state.
“They’ve lost a lot of folks in the middle. We can talk here all day about Republican-Democrat, but most people are just regular working folks,” Rehmet told me during an interview at his union hall. “They don’t have the luxury to really be super politically active. They’re working two jobs. They’re taking care of their kids. And those are the folks that I think of whenever I’m ready to go serve, because that’s the majority of this district.”
Politicians and activists across the state tell me that divisive politics from extreme politicians are falling out of favor on the right and the left. The outcome in November will reveal where independents stand, but Tarrant County remains the home of some of the most extreme reactionaries in Texas, and they are not retreating.
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Texas supremacy
In a 1941 oral history, my great-grandfather fondly recalled Election Day 1870, when white men chased Black Union soldiers from a polling station in Falls County, where formerly enslaved people were the majority. The vigilantes used their guns to stop Black people from voting.
In the 1920s, my grandfather followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas. Many adult white Protestant men in Texas did, because they believed God intended for them to rule the world.
Soldiers’ Row, a section Fort Worth’s Oakwood Cemetery set aside for Confederate Civil War veterans and their wives, on Aug. 19, 2026.
Jason Fochtman / Houston Chronicle
Soldiers’ Row, a section Fort Worth’s Oakwood Cemetery set aside for Confederate Civil War veterans and their wives, on Aug. 19, 2026.
Jason Fochtman / Houston Chronicle
The Klan controlled Dallas and Fort Worth back then because white people were scared of losing their power and privilege. The KKK soothed anxieties around early feminism, Black progress, the combustion engine and income inequality.
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Many Americans don’t realize Adolph Hitler took inspiration from the KKK for his Nazi Party and leveraged German frustration during the Great Depression to win support. American white nationalists learned from European fascists how to build a leadership cult, using extreme nationalism and growing militarism to win power. Reactionaries have long shared strategies across borders.
DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFT: White colonists ‘invented’ Texas. What happens as the balance of power changes?
Among Texas’ five biggest cities and counties, Fort Worth and Tarrant County have always leaned hardest to the right. The last Democratic president to win a majority of votes in Tarrant County was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, though Joe Biden carried a plurality in 2020.
Tony Ortiz publishes and edits Current Revolt, a right-wing daily newsletter focused on Texas, and he’s witnessed how people are reacting to the change. He said his readers are most concerned about immigrants in North Texas, especially South Asians and Muslims.
Tony Ortiz, executive editor of Current Revolt, poses for a portrait in Houston, Thursday, June 11, 2026.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
“The demographics have changed, the culture has changed, and they are noticing this with mosques, with temples, with different types of restaurants, and I think people are naturally resistant to change,” he told me. “The place where they grew up is changing, and to them, it doesn’t feel like Texas anymore.”
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“There is definitely a fight back against that change,” he added.
Tarrant County’s diversity index –– which measures the chance that two people at random have different racial identities –– has grown from about 65% in 2015 to nearly 70% in 2024, outpacing the state.
While whites still make up the largest share of the population in Tarrant County, the increasing diversity can be attributed to a declining white population and a growing Hispanic population.
Residents have packed suburban city council meetings across North Texas to block new mosques and temples. Ortiz said right-wing influencers have provoked protests, shouting matches and even fistfights to produce content seen by millions across the country.
“A lot of this is like a sudden realization of an entire demographic realizing that they are becoming the minority,” Ortiz said. “You blink and you’ve got all of these temples and restaurants and mosques and different driving habits and different languages, and you think, ‘Whoa, what happened?’”
“You think, ‘I need to do something,’ but you’re a little late in doing something. You should have been doing something maybe five, seven or eight years ago,” he added.
The outside of East Plano Islamic Center is seen in Plano, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
Ortiz, who acknowledges his Mexican American identity and calls himself brown, doesn’t think it’s about race or ethnicity.
“I think it’s an assimilation issue,” he said. “You have this issue when all of these cultures begin overlapping on top of each other, and it creates what you are getting now, a lot of friction.”
The demographic trends, though, will not change. He said the Republican Party of Texas is mostly older white people, and the party must change to remain relevant.
“The Anglo sphere is becoming much smaller compared to somebody who looks like me,” Ortiz said.
Old ideas get new life
Native Texan and Tarrant County resident Thomas Rousseau loves America, defends liberty and promises to make America great again by reforging the European race into “a new collective capable of asserting our rights and cultural independence.”
The 27-year-old has achieved global notoriety by rallying hundreds of white men to don blue shirts, khaki pants and white masks as members of the Patriot Front, a paramilitary fascist political movement.
They have little faith that they can win at the ballot box.
“The organization believes in the ethnic interest of Americans as those descended from the original European settlers of this land,” Rousseau says in a recruitment video. There “is a vital need for the men of the nation to take an active role in organizing patriotic politics beyond the electoral process. The time in which our nation’s challenges could be conquered by voting alone has long since passed.”
Thomas Rousseau and other members of the Patriot Front assemble on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial as people attend the annual March for Life rally on the National Mall on January 24, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
Since Trump came into office, Patriot Front’s reactionary ideology has slowly seeped into mainstream conservatism in Texas.
From Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s effort to reverse LGBTQ rights, the Republican Party of Texas’ platform increasingly aligns with Patriot Front, something Rousseau celebrates.
Railroad Commission candidate Bo French, who previously served as the Tarrant County Republican Party chairman, won the GOP nomination by calling immigrants and Muslims “third-world savages” and “subtards.” He frequently calls people “homos” and “retards.”
“We are fighting a civilizational war against the forces of evil,” he posted on X. “Marxists are violent. Islamists want to conquer us. The Red-Green alliance will not stop until they destroy us. We must stop them dead in their tracks right now before it’s too late.”
He’s called on the Trump administration to denaturalize and deport U.S. citizens, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Texas Tribune journalist Carlos Noguera Ramos and the first Muslim elected to the Texas Legislature, state Rep. Salman Bhojani, D-Euless.
Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French introduces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during a rally at the Tarrant County Republican Party headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas on Monday, January 6, 2025.
Emil T. Lippe/For The Texas Tribune
French is the most successful Texas candidate yet from the Christian nationalist movement. He’s worked closely with West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who financed his campaign, and he’s participated in their True Texas Project. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the white, Christian nationalist movement an anti-government, anti-democratic hate group, something True Texas acknowledged with glee.
French participated in the True Texas Project’s 2023 conference, where organizers accused Democrats of a “war on white America” and advised participants to stop apologizing for “white supremacy” because it is “your heritage and historical way of life.”
This month, the group held a conference with state lawmakers to propose laws banning Muslim dress in schools and the sale of food that complies with Islamic teachings. They also want public schools to teach lessons on the “violence and political domination of Islam.”
State Sen. Bob Hall, who represents a swath of North Texas, warned conference-goers that Muslims are conspiring to replace white people with non-white immigrants.
“It’s coming after us,” Hall proclaimed. “We’ve got to get in the way of it, and we’ve got to stop it.”
If you can’t beat ’em
One way to stop immigrants, non-whites and minorities is to manipulate elections. Conservative politicians have long used district boundaries to retain power.
Before 1973, the Texas Legislature would draw small legislative districts with one seat in majority-white areas. But wherever Black people and Hispanics lived, they drew massive districts with two or more seats in a way that guaranteed a white majority would elect all the lawmakers. The system lasted until the U.S. Supreme Court declared mega-districts unconstitutional.
In 2026, though, a conservative Supreme Court rolled back voting rights just as non-Hispanic whites were becoming the minority in many places, including Texas. White conservative lawmakers have since redrawn district lines to maintain white rule under the guise of political partisanship.
Another way to maintain power is to control who gets to vote. Abbott and Paxton have frequently and incorrectly claimed that voter fraud is rampant.
In July, Abbott named a new special adviser for election integrity: Nate Schatzline, a former megachurch pastor from Tarrant County who is ultra-right and denies that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
Religious beliefs are crucial to justifying right-wing Texas politics. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is a prime example, frequently proclaiming the United States is a Christian country and that his understanding of the Bible takes priority over political ideology or party.
Theology professor David Brockman grew up in Tarrant County and has spent decades studying the intersection of religion and politics, most recently as a scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He’s documented how the political movement to turn the United States into a Christian nation has become mainstream among evangelical Protestants with the help of megachurch pastors.
David Brockman speaks at his home in Fort Worth, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
“Tarrant County has had a pretty steady membership in evangelicalism,” he told me at his home in Fort Worth. “There is a strong motivation to convert others to Christianity. And so that tends to bring with it an idea of the superiority of Christianity over other religions, so they are less open to religious diversity.”
Right-wing nationalists also reject diversity within Christianity, so much so that Patrick called Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, a seminary student, a blasphemer. They believe their Christianity is the only true religion and all others are heretical.
Another example is Tarrant County’s elected chief executive, Tim O’Hare, whose title is county judge. The evangelical Christian and church deacon is the only Republican in charge of an urban county, and he is doing everything to get reelected with the full backing of True Texas Project.
Since taking office in 2022, he’s cut funds to nonprofits fighting discrimination against minorities and LGBTQ people. He’s also reduced the time allotted for public comment at county meetings.
In 2025, he spearheaded the redistricting of the county to favor Republicans and eliminate a district that favored African American candidates. Recently, he and Republican colleagues passed a resolution to cut the number of Election Day polling stations by a third, mostly in poor neighborhoods, and stopped providing free bus rides for poor residents to reach the polls.
Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare speaks to a crowd of thousands during a rally in honor of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025, in downtown Fort Worth.
Elias Valverde II/Dallas Morning News
“I don’t believe it’s the county government’s responsibility to try to get more people out to the polls,” O’Hare said at the time.
Turnout is not O’Hare’s priority because, like the rest of Texas, Tarrant County’s population is diversifying and support for conservatives is shrinking. In February, the GOP’s worst nightmare came true when Rehmet won SD 9.
The long shot
No one gave Rehmet much of a chance when he set out to represent Tarrant County in the Texas Senate. But the Air Force veteran, machinist and union leader was talking to his neighbors, and he learned they were fed up with divisive politicians who care more about ideology than constituents.
“We all want similar things. We all worry about similar things,” Rehmet said. “We share a lot of the same commonalities, and we have a lot to gain together. When we stand together, we’re a lot stronger. And, really, we need more accountability of our government.”
Rehmet won January’s special election with help from independents and some Republicans. For many, Wambsganss became a villain for helping Christian nationalists take over school boards and trying to divide the Keller Independent School District in two, with the wealthy on one side and lower-income students on the other.
State Sen. Taylor Rehmet, D-Fort Worth, waves as he’s recognized during a news conference at Bell Manor Elementary School on Friday, Aug. 14, 2026, in Bedford.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
She may have changed her political branding, but scratch the surface, and Wambsganss remains a conservative culture warrior.
From the Alamo to the Fort Worth Stockyards, Texas has produced revolutionaries and reactionaries who have struggled for the state’s soul. Most people, though, are in the middle, trying to make a living and care for their loved ones.
While most Texans shun racists and fascists, too often fearful people fall victim to organized bigotry. Craven demagogues come along during tumultuous times and convince us they have all the answers, and those who disagree are at best fools and, at worst, evil.
We follow them at our country’s peril.
Adriana Rezal contributed to this report.
Award-winning opinion writer Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his “Tomlinson’s Take” newsletter at houstonchronicle.com/tomlinsonnewsletter or expressnews.com/tomlinsonnewsletter.