Trump voters turn to prayer after Republican rout

Supporters attend a watch party for Republican US Senate candidate and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during US midterm elections in Dallas, Texas, US, November 3, 2026. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare

While much of the country celebrated the removal of Republican incumbents and the defeat of GOP challengers on Tuesday, the Pampas’ Senior Citizen center in Texas was a place of mourning.

“If there’s one thing that we can definitely say, that we are not happy with the election,” said patron Stephen Porter, speaking with New York Times reporters this week.

“In deep-red Texas, conservatives are trying to make sense of what just happened to their longtime Republican stronghold,” reports the Times. “We visited a men’s bible study as they gathered for the first time since the election.”

This particular group of senior men have been coming together in the small town of Pampa, Texas, for coffee, fellowship and prayer every Thursday morning for the last decade. This Thursday meetup was the first since the election that washed Republican majorities in the House and Senate out to sea.

“Yesterday, some of my friends came in to the senior citizens’ and they were all dressed in black, because they said it was, they were in mourning,” said Porter. “Everyone here is a full-blooded American, I can assure you. We love our country.”

They’re all Christians and they’re all conservative, reports the Times, and now they’re having to deal with Democrats sweeping every statewide race in Texas, from the governor’s office to the US Senate — something that hasn’t happened since these men were seniors.

“The Democrats seem to have some kind of agenda. First of all, they’re going to attack our president,” Porter added.

“I’m concerned about our state,” said patron Jay Johnson. “I know you were talking more about on the federal level, but I’m concerned about our state.”

Stuffed deep in the red territory of the Texas panhandle, Pampa is hundreds of miles from blue Austin and the Mexican border areas that went all in for Democrats on Tuesday, reports the Times. In Roberts County Republican senatorial candidate Ken Paxton won with 91 percent of the vote over Democrat James Talarico despite Talarico swamping the controversial Paxton in most other areas of the state. (The vote in the largely rural county was only 414 votes to Talarico’s 30, however.)

“I moved down here because Seattle and Washington and Oregon were just way over the top for me,” said Tom Hickey. “I came down here because it was a red state.”

Hickey and the rest of the men fear for what they think the blue wave might mean for Texas, the Times reports.

“I saw what governors, blue governors did to the states that I grew up in. Just from my experience and from what I’ve lived. We’re going to see taxes going up,” said Hickey. “There’s going to be a war on harvesting animals. There’s going to be a war on farming and war on everything. And I only say ‘war’ because it’s for lack of a better term, it’s just not very freedom-conscious.”

“L.B.J. came from Texas and he was as Democrat as you can get,” argued Rick Amerson. “So that doesn’t mean what’s happened here is changing anything about Texas itself.”

“When you look at a map of Texas as it is just so, still so red, but unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of transplants coming in from areas that don’t believe like we do right here,” complained James Schaub, speaking of the influx of new voters from blue states (like his friend Tom Hickey, as a matter of fact.)

The Times points out that Democrats campaigned on some of the “same things these men care about: lowering property taxes and saving family farms.” But the Texas these seniors have lived with their whole lives is changing. Hispanic Texans, long part of the state’s history, now outnumber white Texans, for starters.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it shakes out,” said Mark Taylor.

Still, the group is a prayer group, above all things. And the Times reports they are also dedicating prayer to the Democrats who now control the state.

“The Democrats may be opposed to what the Republicans have, but they are Americans,” said Porter. “We’re hoping and praying that their ideas will be to improve our country. Make it better.”

“Amen is right,” Porter finished, after the conclusion of a hymn.

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