When Kelly Hancock stood down from the Texas state Senate last June to take up the position of acting Texas comptroller, Republicans thought they had the race to replace him in the bag. After all, the northern part of Tarrant Country, which contains the city of Fort Worth, hadn’t elected a Democrat as state senator since 1983. In 2024, Trump had won the district by 17%. Despite the recent string of special election victories for Democrats, Governor Greg Abbott struck a decidedly “what, me worry?” tone when asked about voter turnout. In the run-up to Saturday’s vote, he told CBS News: “I’m not concerned… We know there are more Republican voters than Democrat voters there.”

And yet, by the time the votes were all counted, Democrat Taylor Rehmet had defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss with 57% of the vote to her 43%. It was not so much a loss as a drubbing.

With Rehmet’s background as a veteran, aircraft mechanic and union leader, the Democrats had finally managed to find their holy grail: a working-class candidate who wasn’t a ridiculous cosplayer. Rehmet’s messaging wisely eschewed ideological conflict and focused instead on solving material problems. As he said in his remarks after learning about his victory: “This isn’t red vs blue […] This is about helping working folks. This is about lowering costs.”

Wamsganss, on the other hand, might be labelled a “colourful character”. As Loretta Leigh Bowman, she had a starring role in Offerings (1989), a Halloween knock-off where a deranged killer leaves body parts on her doorstep because she was nice to him when he was a child. A few decades later, she found herself serving as Chief Communications Officer for Patriot Mobile (“America’s Only Christian Conservative Wireless Provider”), while enjoying a parallel career as a political activist.

She was, for a while, a very successful combatant in the Texas school board wars that raged at the start of this decade. She co-founded a PAC which funded several candidates who won their elections with 70% of the vote. However, some of those activists lost their seats in subsequent elections, suggesting that Wambsganss and co. may have gone further in their Christian conservatism than many voters were comfortable with. During the Republican primary for the seat she just lost, she accused her Republican rival of doctoring a photo of her to make it look as though she was wearing an inverted cross. “This is demonic!” Wambsganss declared.

This is perhaps the kind of thing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was warning against when he took to X to say that Republicans “should be clear-eyed about the political environment when going into the midterms”. Wambsganns herself called it a “wake-up call”, while complaining that “too many Republicans stayed home”. Trump rather amusingly pretended he didn’t know there was a special election on, after previously giving her his “Complete and Total Endorsement”. When asked about the result by reporters at Mar-a-Lago, he replied: “I don’t know […] I did not hear about it. Somebody ran it where?”

Rehmet will now serve out Hancock’s term, although he will have little to do as the Texas state legislature is not in session. Another election will be held in November, when Wambsganss will once again be the Republican candidate. Whatever happens, however, there can be little doubt that Saturday’s surprise victory will further fuel Democrats’ excitement and reanimate their dream of “turning Texas blue”. And, when it comes to the big race for the United States Senate in November, it will lead to an onslaught of frenzied coverage that will surely make the media’s fawning treatment of Beto O’Rourke in 2018 seem restrained by comparison.

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Daniel Kalder is an author based in Texas. Previously, he spent ten years living in the former Soviet bloc. His latest book, Dictator Literature, is published by Oneworld. He also writes on Substack: Thus Spake Daniel Kalder.

DanielKalder

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