Voters in Tarrant County’s Texas Senate District 9 will have the chance to pick a new state senator in a special election on Nov. 4.
The election — sometimes called a “jungle primary” — is nontraditional in that all candidates who file to run for the seat will appear on November’s ballot, regardless of party affiliation. It has drawn two Republican candidates and one Democrat.
The winner would need to earn the votes of a majority of voters in the northern Tarrant County district to win the seat that former Sen. Kelly Hancock held until the North Richland Hills Republican resigned to become acting state comptroller.
The GOP candidates are John Huffman and Leigh Wambsganss, while Democratic candidate Taylor Rehmet is hoping to pull off an upset in a district that favored Republicans by about 20 percentage points in the last two election cycles.
Political Points
They’re vying for a district that includes more than half of Fort Worth’s residents, the entirety of Keller, North Richland Hills and Southlake, as well as small slices of Arlington and Euless. About 46% of Tarrant County residents reside in the district. The off-year election is expected to have low turnout.
The campaign has broadly been defined by the two Republicans arguing with each other, creating optimism on the left that Democrats will pick off a seat that has been held by a Republican since 1991.
“Given that these two very prominent people are spending a lot of money taking each other down, I think that it makes Taylor’s chances very realistic,” Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Allison Campolo said in an interview. “And if not an outright win for him, which would obviously be our preferred outcome, then at least him advancing to the runoff.”
A candidate must amass a majority of voters to win. If none can do so in the Nov. 4 election, it will head to a runoff in December between the top two vote-getters. Early voting begins Oct. 20.
Both Campolo and Republican Jeremy Bradford, a political consultant and former executive director of the Tarrant County Republican Party, said that the election appears destined for a runoff. However, they differed on whether a Democratic candidate would advance that far.
“There are certainly Democrats in the district,” Bradford said, “but I think it’s enough Republican district that it comes down to a runoff between Leigh (Wambsganss) and Huffman.”
The presumptive front-runner in the race is Wambganss, a Southlake resident who works as a vice president of the Grapevine-based wireless company Patriot Mobile. The wireless company is heavily involved in politics, pitching itself as a conservative-aligned company that donates portions of its revenue to conservative causes, such as preserving bans on abortion and fighting gun control.
Wambganss, a former broadcast journalist, has also led the company’s political action committee. Her efforts drew national attention in 2022 after the organization’s financial backing led to its preferred candidates taking over the majority in four North Texas school districts.
Wambsganss has garnered endorsements from leading Republicans, including President Donald Trump, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
State Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, initially raised his hand to run for the Senate district, but bowed out shortly after Wambsganss announced her candidacy.
“That she can just get a sitting state House member out of a race with a word, that’s very telling,” Campolo said.
In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Wambsganss, 58, said Schatzline and she agreed she should be the Senate candidate, while he would seek reelection to his House seat.
“We literally prayed about it the night before the final decision was made,” Wambganss said. “I mean, what a great guy to say, ‘Yeah, I need to stay over here, and you need to do this.’ I would have never filed against him. I would have never split the vote.”
Huffman, her Republican rival in the race, is a Southlake real estate developer who has tried to distinguish himself from Wambsganss by focusing his messaging on his experience as an elected official. Huffman served on the Southlake City Council, including three years as mayor.
“My experience as a mayor, my experience as a city councilman, has prepared me to step in and do the job day one for a couple of reasons,” Huffman said in a phone interview. “First of all, the voters don’t have to worry about what I’m going to do in office, because they can see what I’ve done.”
Huffman said his record indicates a commitment to cutting property taxes. While he was mayor, the city’s property tax rate fell more than 20%.
Huffman, 42, has also accused Wambganss of being against school choice — shorthand for using tax money for costs related to private schools. Enacting such legislation was the centerpiece of Gov. Greg Abbott’s agenda, and earlier this year, the Legislature delivered a school choice package that will divert billions of public dollars to private schools in the coming years.
He pointed to a March 2025 letter from the Grayson County Republicans to the Legislature opposing a school choice proposal due to fears that the injection of taxpayer money into private schools would lead to government regulation.
Wambsganss said she signed on to the letter chiefly over concerns that public money would be distributed to undocumented immigrant children to pay for private school education. She said she worked with Schatzline to add a provision to the bill that banned any money going to undocumented immigrants and supports the package Abbott signed into law this year.
Rehmet, the lone Democrat in the race, has been happy to stand by while his Republican rivals trade jabs.
“It’s a win-win for me,” said Rehmet, 33, who is an Air Force veteran, union organizer and aircraft mechanic working on F-35s for Lockheed Martin. “I literally get to focus on doing the work that’s needed to win an election, and that means talking to the voters, not about the other opponents.”
The race is Rehmet’s first time seeking public office. He said the desire to pursue public service arose from his work as a union organizer, culminating in his presidency of both his local and state chapters of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
Rehmet’s campaign messaging has not strayed far from his experience with labor organizing. His focus is on workers’ concerns and the economy, Rehmet said in a recent interview.
“Democrats are not expecting votes,” he said. “They’re coming out, and they’re asking for them. They’re organizing, and the GOP should be very worried.”
Rehmet described his campaign strategy as an “all of the above” approach to reach voters. But he faces a significant challenge in matching the campaign spending of Huffman and Wambsganss, who have far outpaced him in fundraising and spending.
Wambsganss has amassed the most campaign cash, including large donations from conservative political action committees, cash from Patriot Mobile and $200,000 of her own money, which she loaned to her campaign, according to campaign finance reports.