Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) has a new spin to explain away the huge GOP loss in a reliably red district outside of Fort Worth.
Speaking to CNN on Monday morning, Sessions said the loss has nothing to do with a huge shift, but with too many Republicans running.
Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a seat that has been held by a Republican in the Fort Worth/Tarrant County area for more than 3 decades, CNN said. In a race against Republican Leigh Wambsganss, the Democrat, a pro-union veteran, made a colossal shift for a district Trump won by 17 points in 2024.
While Republican leaders in Texas are seeing it as a wake-up call, Sessions said it's due to something very different.
"Well, John, first of all, the success of the rain dance has a lot to do with timing," Sessions said to CNN host John Berman.
Berman read a post from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who similarly said that a swing like that "can't be dismissed."
"And what happened is there was a huge snowstorm — ice storm, really, that hit North Texas and Central Texas. But let's go back to Gov. DeSantis point. Special elections are special," Sessions explained.
"And what happened is that, as I understand it, there was one Democrat and two Republicans running against each other," he continued. And it was a battle between the two Republicans, and a group of people simply decided they were not going to come participate, because in the end, this Democrat received more than 50 percent of the vote. So it is — it is listening to the music and waking up and finding out we need to be better. We need to understand what we're doing."
However, there were not two Republicans running in the general election. Like many races, this one had a primary election where the GOP had two candidates running against each other. The winner of that election then ran against Rehmet.
In the end, there was one Democrat who ran against one Republican.
"No, that ain't no ice storm," said data analyst Harry Enten later in the show on Monday.
"But this was a miscalculation by the people on the ground," Sessions claimed. "And I don't know any of them. But what I will say is you should not lose any election in North Texas like this."
Berman asked if there was anything larger at play, citing the Wall Street Journal report asking, "How does a Republican lose by 14 points by 14 points? And a safe, conservative Texas Senate seat that President Trump carried by 17 points? Answer. When there's a voter backlash against the Trump administration, notably, its mass deportation debacles. What do you think of that analysis?"
Sessions agreed that Americans were "suffering" after watching the shooting deaths of two people in Minneapolis, leaving "a mess." But, the lawmaker explained that despite having his party control the House, Senate and a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, "it's harder for the president to be able to have things go his way right now. And is this a sign of what's ahead? It could be. It could be unless we recognize inside our party that we have to be a little bit more thoughtful and balanced about what we do."
