{"id":148886,"date":"2026-02-03T10:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T10:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/148886\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T10:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T10:19:07","slug":"whats-next-for-texas-gop-after-shockwaves-of-democratic-flip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/148886\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s next for Texas GOP after \u2018shockwaves\u2019 of Democratic flip"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the days since Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a state Senate seat<\/a> in historically red Tarrant County, Texas politicos have been deciphering what this upset victory means for Republicans come November.<\/p>\n

State Senate District 9, which includes most of Fort Worth and the northern portion of Tarrant county, has been a GOP stronghold<\/a> since the early 1990s. But in Saturday\u2019s special election for the seat, Rehmet beat Republican Leigh Wambsganss by double digits. The Air Force veteran and union leader\u2019s win came despite Wambsganss outspending the Democrat<\/a> by $2 million.<\/p>\n

A mere 15 months ago, President Donald Trump won the district by 17 percentage points. But Rehmet secured his Texas Senate victory with 57% of the vote, marking an almost 30 point party swing since the election in 2024. \u201cWe proved that when leaders take communities seriously, listen to voters, and fight for working people, new outcomes become possible,\u201d Rehmet said in a statement after the victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cTarrant County has really been a hotbed for Texas Republicans pushing further and further to the right,\u201d said Luke Warford, a political strategist and founder of Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund. \u201cI think, honestly, Tarrant County residents have just gotten frustrated with that, and frustrated with the extremism.\u201dBeyond the county\u2019s borders, the special election\u2019s results should \u201cbe setting off some warning bells\u201d for Republicans across Texas and beyond, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cModerate Republicans, during the past few election cycles, have tended to hold their nose and vote for the more conservative candidates \u2014 who perhaps they did not agree with, but sided with them over their Democratic rival,\u201d Jones told Houston Public Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this election, some of those more moderate Republicans voted Democratic or stayed home,\u201d said Jones.<\/p>\n

This, coupled with President Trump\u2019s declining approval rating<\/a>, is why Warford believes people are frustrated with the county\u2019s leadership and the economy.<\/p>\n

Joshua Blank, the research director for the Texas Politics Project, says the dramatic blue-to-red flip in Texas Senate District 9 is reminiscent of what happened in 2018, the last midterm election during a Trump Presidency.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we look at the economic views at that time\u2026they’re much more negative now than they were in 2018,\u201d Blank told KERA. \u201cWhen we looked at presidential job approval, it’s much more negative now in the state than it was in 2018 \u2014 and that [midterm election] was a banner year for Democrats.\u201dWhile he said the election is sending \u201cshockwaves\u201d in some Republican circles, Blank sees it as \u201canother piece of evidence that Democrats have wind at their sales.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another takeaway, according to Blank: How Texas\u2019 Hispanic population voted on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we’ve seen, as the economy has not improved in voters’ eyes, is that that coalition has snapped back, essentially, to sort of pre-Trump levels, where, in general, Hispanics are leaning back towards Democratic Party,\u201d Blank said.<\/p>\n

But there is time for that to change before voters head to the polls in November. While he agrees with numbers, Sergio Garcia-Rios of UT Austin\u2019s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy believes Democrats should still remain skeptical.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn’t necessarily expect this to translate immediately to the same. I think the direction is there,\u201d Garcia-Rios told The Texas Newsroom. \u201cAnd now Democrats, if they really want the Latino vote, they still have to continue to work with them. Because they can’t rely forever on Latinos bouncing back from discontent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Scheneider of Houston Public Media and KERA\u2019s Ron Corning contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the days since Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a state Senate seat in historically red Tarrant County, Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[62060,62061,8236,62062,11571,52514,11572,27,5600,29,28,13029,11567],"class_list":{"0":"post-148886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-democratic-upset-texas","9":"tag-fort-worth-politics","10":"tag-gop","11":"tag-hispanic-voters-texas","12":"tag-leigh-wambsganss","13":"tag-tarrant-county-election","14":"tag-taylor-rehmet","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-texas-democrats","17":"tag-texas-headlines","18":"tag-texas-news","19":"tag-texas-republicans","20":"tag-texas-senate-district-9"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}