Texas Nice Time: What The Heck Just Happened In That Special Election?

A 32-point swing in a solid red state seat is what!

Texas had a special election on a Saturday, and it sounds like Republicans’ popular-as-skunk-juice policies came around and bit ‘em like a rattlesnake hid in the toe of a clodhopper!

In a special election for the Ninth District of the Texas state senate, Democrat Taylor Rehmet beat Republican Loretta Leigh Magee Wambsganss 57 to 43 percent. That’s a district Donald John Trump won by 17 points in 2024, making a nearly 32-point shift, holy guacamole! In a district the Democrats haven’t won since 1991, and after Wambsganss spent about 10 times more, and was endorsed by Trump himself. These are numbers that appear to represent not just Democrats being energized and independents flipping, but also disaffected Republicans staying home. We wouldn’t be surprised if that level of shift involves pissed-off registered Republicans taking time out of their Saturdays to go express their dissatisfaction.

Claremont Institute fellow/conservative polling consultant Ross Hunt summarizes:

Sad fart noise!

Democrats have been pulling off one upset after another since Trump opted to ignore The Affordability in favor of focusing on being Dictator On Day One and building his beautiful ballroom. But this is the most shocking Republican special election loss yet, and it’s surely goosing the old man and every other Republican running in the midterms right in the taint but good.

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This Is One NICE TIME!

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This district is no tiny tumbleweed either, it covers nearly a million people in Tarrant County, and includes a large part of Fort Worth. Fort Worth! Famous residents of the area past and present include Walmart heiress Alice Walton and members of the Marshall family, as in the former in-laws of Anna Nicole Smith. It’s home to the pentecostal and hyper-political Mercy Culture Church, whose pastor believes Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton are demons, literally.

Not for nothing, the county is 43 percent white, 35 percent Hispanic, 14 percent Black and 7.5 percent Asian. Is all that immigrant hate starting to get old yet? Not all Hispanic residents are immigrants or children of immigrants, as Texas was claimed by six countries over the years, including Mexico until 1836, but racists and DHS morons don’t give a shit about that while out harassing people trying to go about their days shopping at the Walmart.

Yep, Trump’s approval has been cratering with everyone, especially around economic issues. Even Hispanic Trump voters approve of him 12 percent less than they did at the start of his current term. Though, strangely, his approval with Hispanic voters overall actually went up between December and January, from -39 to -22.

Let’s not forget the importance of the quality of the the candidates themselves. The theme of this election could also be summed up as, If you were a carpenter, and I was a douchebag! Taylor Rehmet is an Air Force veteran and labor union leader, and Wambsganss’s life hasn’t had much else in it besides rabid conservative culture-warrioring.

Though in 1988, she was a finalist for Miss Oklahoma USA, and in 1989 had a role in a horror film called Offerings. (“Ten years ago, the local kids pushed John to the brink and he’s been in a sanitarium ever since. But now he’s free … free to release all those savage frustrations on his long-lost ‘friends.’”) But then later in the ‘90s, going by Leigh Magee after marrying a firefighter, she found her calling, inserting herself into a city-incorporation controversy for a town where she did not actually live.

Later she remarried a Mr. Wambsganss, who became the mayor of Southlake, and she sold real estate on the side. But she mainly focused her efforts on school-board Karening, specifically taking a bold and successful stand against the “woke” Department of Education trying to address civil rights violations in the Southlake School District, like students chanting racial slurs at Black visiting football players, and Black students being racially harassed at school. Wambsganss led a charge to take over school boards, which especially caught on during COVID.

Mrs. Wambsganss was so good at doing all that she was named chief communications officer of Patriot Mobile, the patriotic cell-phone service company that uses some of its proceeds to take over more school boards.

Could it be that even in deep Texas voters are getting sick of Republicans’ culture-war caterwauling, and the way they’ve been staunchly ignoring The Affordability and The Healthcare or ANY of the issues that voters say are their main concerns?

We will find out in November!

[G. Elliott Morris / Texas Tribune / Baptist News]