GOP's Loss of TX Senate Seat in District
that's Microcosm of State Cause for Panic
Capitol Inside
February 1, 2026
Texas Republicans are privately blaming President Donald Trump for the GOP candidate's historically awful performance in a state Senate runoff election that Democrat Taylor Rehmet won by nearly 15 percentage points on Saturday in a district that's been a darker shade of red than the state as a whole.
The Democrat's amazingly easy win in the special Senate District 9 runoff begs the question on how Republicans who've run the state for two dozen years could be so out of touch with the electorate in the largest Texas county that Trump carried in 2024?
But Leigh Wambsganss' dismal showing in a special Senate District 9 race that she'd entered as a prohibitive favorite was truly a team effort for which Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and other Republicans will be prime targets for the finger-pointing that's already under way in earnest.
SD 9 is a microcosm of the Lone Star State politically more than any other senatorial district here. The Tarrant County district that Rehmet will represent for remainder of 2026 if not longer was 50 percent white, 29 percent Hispanic and 12 percent Black when the Senate's current map was drawn in 2021. The Texas population was 40 percent Hispanic, 39 percent white and 14 percent Black based on a census estimates in 2025.
Trump beat Kamala Harris by 14 points in the 2024 general election in Texas with more than 56 percent of the statewide vote. Trump garnered 58 percent of the vote in SD 9 that year when he defeated the Democratic vice-president there by 17 ponts. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz captured more than 53 percent of the statewide vote in 2024 when he scored less than 55 percent in SD 9.
That's why the special conpetition in SD 9 was the ultimate bellwether for the 2026 midterm vote in Texas and across the nation as well as the first significant election in the second year of Trump's fireworks-filled second term. As the voters in Senate District 9 go, so has gone the rest of the state during two dozen years of Republican rule that could be on the brink of ending if the runoff vote on Saturday was a telling sign for the fall.
The Republicans have nine months to pick up the pieces in an attempt to regroup before Wambsganss gets a shot for redemption in a general election rematch with Rehmet as the only members of their respective parties on the March 3 primary ballot in SD 9.
The folks in Tarrant County probably shouldn't be surprised if the Republicans try to find a way to replace Wambsganss as the nominee for the falll there. That could be a possibility if she suddenlhy fell ill, died or simply moved out of the district for some reason or another.
Republicans on the ground in SD 9 say Wambsganss was a lousy candidate who regurgitated talking points on culture war topics regardless of the audience. Business groups say she had nothing to offer in meetings with them on the subjects of tariffs, affordability and other subjects that are the driving issues for the 2026 vote.
Worried GOP loyalists should take it up with Patrick if they think Wambsganss was that bad of a candidate. The Southlake Republican was the lieutenant governor's hand-picked candidate for the special SD 9 competition after the job opened up with Abbott's appointment of then-incumbent Kelly Hancock as the state comptroller last summer.
Eight or more of the Republicans on the current Senate roster had Patrick paving the path to seats in the east wing
for them at the polls. Patrick had a perfect record with Senate candidates in Republican districts before he annointed Wambsganss to be the heir apparent in SD 9. To be fair, Patrick poured a quarter-million dollars or more into the Wambsganss campaign with a PAC he controls as a conduit. Wambsganss had five times more to spend on the race than Rehmet - thanks to the lieutenant governor who got her into the race. .
Abbott deserves some of the credit for the Democrat's improbable victory in the Senate runoff as well. The governor set the stage for complacency on the eve of Saturday's OT vote when he assured fellow Republicans that there was no need to worry because Wambsganss would win. Abbott has never had to run from behind - and now in hindsight - it appears that he was clueless with the ill-timed boasting at the finish line.
Even more incredibly - perhaps - Republicans at the Wambsganss "victory celebration" last night were still saying as late as 10:30 p.m. that she was going to win the runoff election with a surge of support on election day. That was a bold call in light of the fact that Rehmet led Wambsganss by a dozen points in the early vote and expanded the advantage as the election day ballots were counted. Then around midnight or shortly thereafter, the Associated Press and CNN both projected that the Democrat would be the winner.
But none of this would have mattered if the most embarrassing defeat for the Republicans in modern Texas history was really on the president as the backlash for his economic policies and immigration policies that have culminated in ICE and Border Patrol agents killing fellow American citizens in Minnesota in the past few weeks.
That's why the Republicans in Texas have massive cause to be terrified about their prospects here in November when Abbott and Patrick will be up for new terms in races that they can expect to be way more competitive than they thought the special contest in SD 9 would be. Rehmet's win could have been an aberration in a district the GOP will reclaim in the fall.
But the Republicans' lock on statewide races in Texas could be on the verge of ending if the GOP really fumbled the SD 9 seat away as a consequence of the president. The Republicans will still control the Texas Senate in 2027. But Democrats would take the Texas House back with a net gain of 14 seats or more in November if the SD 9 runoff vote was the bellwether election that everyone thought it woiuld be.
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