{"id":150698,"date":"2026-02-04T15:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T15:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/150698\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T15:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T15:28:11","slug":"taylor-rehmet-wins-texas-state-senate-seat-in-trump-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/150698\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Rehmet Wins Texas State Senate Seat in Trump District"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tConservative activist Leigh Wambsganss spent the last five years building a reputation as a force to be reckoned with when it came to Texas<\/a> schools. In 2021, the former news anchor and\u00a0 Miss Oklahoma runner-up launched a campaign<\/a> to oust her local school board over a proposal to address racism in the majority-white school district. (The plan, which included a \u201cdiversity council\u201d to help make the school more inclusive, was created after a viral video captured white students shouting the n-word at a party.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWambsganss raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of a slate of school board candidates who replaced the sitting board in its entirety and blocked the DEI plan. She was hired by Patriot Mobile Action, the Christian cell phone company\u2019s political action committee, the following year as the PAC sought to replicate her success, recruiting and bankrolling<\/a> the candidacies of far-right school board members across the state of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSteve Bannon was among those who hailed the model as one Republicans nationwide should be following. But that might have been poor advice.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Saturday, Wambsganss lost her second race in a row to Democrat Taylor Rehmet<\/a> for a state Senate seat in deep-red Tarrant County, Texas. The runoff took place after Rehmet won a three-way match-up last November. This is a district that Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2024; this weekend, Rehmet \u2014 who will be the first Democrat to represent the district in 35 years \u2014 won it by 14. And he won running on a platform that placed the funding of public education at its very center.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRight now public education is really under attack,\u201d Rehmet told Rolling Stone two days after his upset victory. He focused his campaign on issues that local parents told him they cared about: the Texas Education Agency\u2019s takeover of Fort Worth\u2018s school district, and a school voucher \u201cscam\u201d that diverts funding from public schools to charter schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have to stay local, and we have to stay out of the campaigns of outrage \u2014\u00a0we don\u2019t need to politicalize the schools,\u201d Rehmet said. \u201cSchool races are non-partisan. They need to stay that way. \u2026 We need to just make sure that we focus on what the community needs. And schools right now? They need help.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tRehmet is not a parent himself \u2014\u00a0unless you count his \u201cbaby boy,\u201d a french bulldog named Samson. The 33-year-old grew up the only child of an airplane mechanic and a beautician in Garland, Texas, before enlisting in the Air Force, where he spent four years stationed in North Dakota, \u201cturning wrenches on B-52 bombers.\u201d He returned to Texas, where he eventually got a job as a machinist for Lockheed Martin. He joined the union, and later rose to be president of the local and state chapter of that union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRunning those races for union leadership, he said, was not all that different from the Senate race. \u201cPeople who are frustrated and angry? They always vote,\u201d Rehmet said. \u201cWhether it be a union election or a state-level election or an election just like this one in Texas district nine. People use their vote as their voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRepublicans are feeling that anger. After losing the initial race in November,\u00a0the party worked hard to boost Wambsganss\u2019 candidacy ahead of the run-off. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urged Republicans to \u201cplease, please, please, please\u201d turn out in a radio appearance last week, and Trump issued a similar plea on Truth Social, imploring his Texas supporters, \u201cPLEASE MAKE A PLAN TO GET OUT AND VOTE FOR LEIGH WAMBSGANSS IN THE JANUARY 31ST SPECIAL RUNOFF ELECTION!\u201d (Trump distanced himself from Wambsganss while speaking to reporters after her loss on Sunday. \u201cI\u2019m not involved in that. That\u2019s a local Texas race,\u201d Trump said.)<\/p>\n

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\n\tThat support was not lip-service either: Wambsganss\u2019 outraised and outspent Rehmet nearly 10 to one \u2014 her campaign reported spending $2.4 million dollars between July and January, compared to the $242,173 spent by Rehmet\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis upset may have been a surprise nationally, but it was not internally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy scrappy team \u2014 it was all local folks, I didn\u2019t get any outside consultants, nothing like that \u2014 we had our numbers, we felt good about them,\u201d Rehmet said. \u201cYou can\u2019t always accurately measure it, but you feel it every time you go to a door, every time you have a phone conversation with an undecided voter, and that gave me the confidence that I had the trust of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRehmet\u2019s victory continues a nationwide winning streak for Democrats at the state legislature level: the party flipped 25 Republican-held seats in 2025, while Republicans failed to win a single seat held by a Democrat. The party broke a supermajority in Mississippi, won a supermajority in the New Jersey Assembly, won a Democratic trifecta in Virginia, and hung on its one-seat majority in the Minnesota Senate. Democrats appear determined to compete in Texas this year: For the first time ever this year, the party is running candidates<\/a> on every single ballot line at the state and federal level.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tRehmet will serve out the remainder of Republican Kelly Hancock\u2019s term, which is set to end in January, but it\u2019s unlikely he\u2019ll have the chance to vote on or introduce legislation \u2014 the legislature is out of session for the rest of the year. An election, to be held in November, will decide who is sworn in when the new session begins in January 2027. (Both Rehmet and Wambsganss are running in that race as well.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIt will undoubtedly be a higher turn-out race, but Rehmet feels good about his chances. \u201cI won in November and I won the other day,\u201d Rehmet told Rolling Stone. \u201cI would say what I\u2019m doing is working, and I know it\u2019s working because it\u2019s what I would want to see from a politician whenever I was on the shop floor, working, turning wrenches.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss spent the last five years building a reputation as a force to be reckoned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11572,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-150698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-taylor-rehmet","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150698","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=150698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}