I’m still not sure what to expect in this runoff.
Taylor Rehmet
Even some of his most passionate supporters were surprised by the number of votes Democrat Taylor Rehmet received in the November special election for Texas Senate District 9.
His competitors, Republicans Leigh Wambsganss and John Huffman, each had mountains of cash and the backing of major PACs and political players across Texas. Even so, Rehmet, an Air Force Veteran and president of the state’s International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter, won nearly 48 percent of the vote—nearly enough for an outright win.
The Tarrant County seat, which covers the suburbs of Keller, North Richland Hills, and Southlake, plus part of Fort Worth, was left open by longtime Republican state Senator Kelly Hancock, who resigned earlier this year to become the acting state comptroller. Last year, President Trump won that same district by 17 points.
“That is not something you might’ve seen as recently as two cycles ago,” said Jason Villalba, a former North Texas Republican legislator who now runs a think tank focused on Latino voters, citing the area’s growing diversity. Backlash to the right-wing Republican candidates was another reason, experts say.
Now, the January 31 runoff pits Rehmet against Wambsganss, a conservative activist and executive with Patriot Mobile, the Christian nationalist cell phone carrier in North Texas. It’s a race that encapsulates the most turbulent political storylines in Tarrant County, statewide and nationally. The special election in a solid-red district is the sort of off-cycle contest that, in the Trump era, serves as a bellwether for the national political climate. That’s especially so in this district, smack dab in the largest battleground county in Texas.
“As Tarrant County goes, so goes Texas,” former Trump consigliere Steve Bannon, who is stumping for Wambsganss, recently said on his podcast. “And as Texas goes, so goes the world.”
EJ Carrion, a progressive activist based in Fort Worth, was chilled by those words from the one-time Trump strategist. He was also motivated. “If Tarrant County is the battleground for a democracy, then Fort Worth is the front lines,” he said.
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Wambsganss’ politics are part of an increasingly powerful hardline faction in Tarrant County Republican politics, which has long been a hotbed for right-wingers. In the November election, she bested Southlake Mayor John Huffman, who had backing from more establishment elements of the state GOP as well as with big-money casino interests. The True Texas Project, whose endorsement Wambsganss lists on her website, is an influential Tarrant County-based organization that once claimed there is a “war on white America.”
Brian Mayes, a local Republican strategist, said Wambsganss’ failure to best Rehmet and secure the 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff shows that people, including some GOP voters, are fed up with the school board controversies that have dominated North Texas politics in recent years. Candidates backed by Patriot Mobile’s PAC suffered big losses in the May 2025 elections, Mayes pointed out.
“I think their policies were so extreme, they caused so much trouble on the school board, that in just a short time period, voters were like, ‘Okay, yeah, we’ve seen enough. We’re done,’” Mayes said.
That’s the main bit of analysis we get, the rest of it is pretty vibes-based. I figure we’ll get some more coverage of this runoff, perhaps with some more data or at least speculation on data, as we get closer. It really would resonate if Rehmet won, even if he subsequently lost in November and never got to cast a vote in the Senate as a result. (See Dan Barrett’s HD97 special election win in December 2007, which did presage big Democratic gains in 2008 even as he failed to retain his seat, for an analog.) And if all he can muster is a normal-sized 42 percent or so, well, we’ll need to understand what that means, too. The Texan, not my favorite news outlet but here they are, has more.
UPDATE: And now the Fort Worth Report weighs in.
The Democrat’s near-win in November is a telling indicator for Texas and the nation, said Keith Gaddie, a political professor at Texas Christian University.
Such a gain in Tarrant County, which is commonly regarded as one of the nation’s largest Republican counties, does not bode well for the GOP this November and beyond, Gaddie said.
He said Democrats hope Tarrant’s changing demographics with its fast-growth and urbanization — coupled with what they see as a fracturing Republican Party and national unrest over President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, immigration and international relations — could tip the county in their favor.
“Whoever wins will declare that it’s a bellwether, and they will declare they’ve got a mandate,” Gaddie said. “But, irrespective of who wins this runoff, if I were the Republicans, I’d be looking at what’s happened in Tarrant County, and I’d be worried.”
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The runoff results will largely depend on candidates’ ability to mobilize voters, although statistically, Rehmet has the upper hand, said Gaddie, who has published studies on the science of runoff elections.
“If you get a candidate that breaks 40% and leads by 10-percentage points (in the initial election), there’s a 19 in 20 chance they’re gonna win the runoff,” he said. “Rehmet met both of these criteria — 48% of the vote, and he led by 12 points.”
The crunch point is a candidate’s ability to mobilize voters, which could prove difficult, he said. Tarrant County runoffs typically see about 20,000 fewer voters than the main election, and elections are very rarely held in January, he said.
I’ll be honest, that kind of talk makes me a little nervous, like we’re tempting fate. All I can say is that I hope this is more of a typical runoff.