In September 2024, Texas Rep. Ramón Romero was at a fundraiser in Fort Worth for Kamala Harris when he met a young labor leader named Taylor Rehmet.
The Air Force veteran and union machinist told Romero he was mulling a run for public office. A lot of people think about running, Romero recounted telling him, but he offered to help should Rehmet actually file.
The two stayed in touch, and Rehmet decided last summer to run in a special election for a ruby red Texas Senate district in Tarrant County that no Democrat had represented in nearly half a century and that President Donald Trump won by more than 17 points in 2024. When Romero mobilized to help Rehmet court Latino voters — many of them from the same Fort Worth neighborhoods he represents in the House — he saw a serious first-time candidate meeting power brokers, talking to voters on front porches and running a long-shot bid like he could win it.
On Saturday, Rehmet did win it, in part thanks to a spike in support from the Latino vote.
He defeated conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss — whose campaign far outspent Rehmet — by a decisive 14-point margin in a stunner that reverberated from Texas to Mar-a-Lago, refreshing Democrats’ dreams of a blue Texas and rattling Republicans as they brace for more aftershocks in November.
Rehmet’s upset victory, according to interviews Sunday with half a dozen people who supported or worked on his campaign, is explained by a variety of factors, including the combination of Latino and suburban backlash to once-fringe conservative policies that have taken root in Tarrant County and Washington; a MAGA opponent who drove some of those policies and embraced them on the campaign trail; and a message from Rehmet, centered on his union background, that won over working-class voters, independents and even some moderate Republicans.
Instrumental to Rehmet’s victory was the backing he received from Hispanics, who account for slightly more than one in five eligible voters in the district. One analyst found that Rehmet outperformed Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, by more than 50 points in some of the largely Hispanic areas of Fort Worth. The remarkable shifts occurred as those voters witnessed immigration agents in recent weeks kill two Americans while trying to carry out the president’s promised mass deportations. And those same voters, some observers noted, believed Trump would help their financial standing more than what he has delivered in his first year in office.
Up against Rehmet was a ferocious campaign fueled by some of the GOP’s biggest heavyweights — Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Trump among them. They backed Wambsganss, who’s set to get a rematch against Rehmet in November for a four-year term, as Rehmet’s victory was only to complete the remaining 11 months in a term Republican Kelly Hancock left to become Texas’ acting comptroller.
“He is a hard worker. People think that you can just win elections. You’re gonna have to really work it, and he did,” Romero, who block-walked for Rehmet, said in an interview Sunday. “I had more Republicans — people calling me saying, ‘I voted for Rehmet.’ ‘I voted for Rehmet.’ ‘Hey, I just want you to know — I voted for Rehmet.’”
To be sure, the election was unique. It was held on a Saturday in January, with no other candidates on the ballot, following a cold snap that affected campaigning and early voting. The singularity limits what can be gleaned from Rehmet’s stunning upset. But as the blame game among Republicans grew louder on Sunday, it also became clear that the 32-point swing for Democrats could not be simply dismissed as irrelevant.
Still, some Democrats counseled restraint in interpreting the results.
“I don't think that Democrats should think that just because Taylor won last night, that it’s New York City time. It's not New York City time. It's not Vermont time. It's not LA time,” said U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, a Fort Worth Democrat, noting that Texas is far from becoming one of the country’s liberal bastions. “If you are a candidate running in a tough race in a place like Texas, it does not mean that you can start California dreaming.”
By numerous indications, the election should have been a sleepy one. Aside from Trump’s margin in 2024, the district has been reliably red: Per one analysis, Republicans have carried it by an average of nearly 19 points in 44 state and federal contests since 2018.
The first indication that the race would be a live one arrived in November, when Rehmet finished three points shy of winning the seat outright.
In both rounds, but especially in the runoff, Texas GOP leaders went to bat for Wambsganss, tapping into their own funds, block-walking the district and ringing alarms about the race, saying they needed to keep the seat red and away from a radical Democrat.
In all, Wambsganss’ campaign reported raising $2.6 million, almost two-thirds — $1.6 million — of which came from three of the most powerful and loaded groups in Texas GOP politics. Texans United for a Conservative Majority, started by right-wing West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, gave her campaign nearly $603,000 — more than Rehmet’s entire campaign haul of some $570,000.
The Texas Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC started by Patrick, who oversees the state Senate, added $463,250. And the influential tort reform group Texans For Lawsuit Reform PAC added $550,000.
Rehmet’s campaign knew it simply could not raise the same amount of money, his campaign strategist Jake Davis said in an interview Sunday.
But the camp was also not interested in a strategy that involved matching Wambsganss dollar for dollar, Davis said. Knowing they would be outgunned on the advertising airwaves, Davis instead sought out to assemble a staff of Texans from across the state, based them in Tarrant County and identified a north star of knocking on 40,000 doors.
Every week, they worked backward from that target — spending time with people in their living rooms, kitchens and driveways. The staff received training on active listening, Davis said. If a voter had a question the volunteer did not have an answer for, Rehmet’s team would run it down — sometimes calling the candidate himself in front of the voter.
“We had to stay relentlessly disciplined,” Davis said. “Every single dollar, every hour, every volunteer shift, had to have a purpose. There were so many un-sexy decisions that we had to make.”
Of course, the campaign received help, like from Romero — as well as from Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic darling who shattered fundraising goals and expectations in 2018 when he almost unseated U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
O’Rourke’s political group, Powered by People, helped register people to vote in the district, stayed in touch with them to encourage them to vote and called and texted 30,000 voters eligible to vote by mail. In an interview Sunday, the former El Paso congressman credited Rehmet’s campaign for the victory — and struck an optimistic tone for Democrats in November.
“I don't think any Republican is safe right now,” O’Rourke said. “I think the people of Texas have absolutely had it and are looking for change.”
Bo French, until recently the Tarrant County GOP chair, blamed poor turnout among Republican voters.
“I see a lot of Republicans blaming everyone from the Governor to the county party,” French wrote on social media. “Republicans need to wake up. When you stay home during local elections and special elections, Democrats win. You can't blame others for your failure to vote.”
Some party superiors see a serious threat. In an early Sunday social media post, Patrick vowed to keep fighting and take the seat back in November.
“Low turnout special elections are always unpredictable,” Patrick wrote. “The results from SD 9 are a wake-up call for Republicans across Texas. Our voters cannot take anything for granted.”
Trump, for his part, distanced himself from the loss, spinning heads in the process after he had posted three different get-out-the-vote messages in the 48 hours leading up to the election.
“I’m not involved in that,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “That’s a local Texas race.”
As political observers tried to make sense of the upset, a range of theories emerged to explain what still remained inexplicable to many as the dust settled: It was a referendum on Trump, it was a response to socially conservative policies, it was a response to the hard-right turn of local GOP leaders, it was a poorly run GOP campaign, and onward.
John Huffman, the Republican former Southlake mayor who finished a distant third in the November election, chalked it up to “failed opportunities to unify.”
“There was no outreach to the 19,000 voters who supported our campaign in November,” Huffman wrote on social media. “Nor did Leigh's campaign reach out to me until days before early voting began, leaving no time to unify Republicans or broaden the coalition. When she and I finally did meet, she ended the conversation almost as soon as it started.”
On paper, Wambsganss’ envious conservative bona fides were unmatched by many GOP candidates seeking office in Texas.
She is the chief communications officer for Patriot Mobile, a cellphone company that has helped back the Christian conservative school board candidates who overhauled libraries, curricula and raised hell in board meetings across the state about what children are taught.
She had the backing of party state leaders and the district’s former state senator.
“They could have built her in their garage,” veteran Texas Democratic operative Matt Angle said. “Taylor Rehmet is just an absolute reflection of that district. Leigh Wambsganss is an absolute reflection of national MAGA. The voters decided which one they like, and it wasn't a close call.”
Still, political observers reiterated the uniqueness of the election and the challenges of trying to draw conclusions from an election that only drew a sliver of registered voters.
Jason Villalba, a former Republican state representative who now leads the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, predicted Latinos — “the most important swing vote in the country,” he said — will continue to vote in surprising ways in coming elections. He cautioned that such voting trends “in today’s climate move at light speed.”
“I don't think you can take what happened last night and say, that's gonna hold into November, and these numbers are now static and nothing’s going to change,” Villalba said. “It’s early. This was a strong indicator that Hispanics are moving back toward Democrats.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.