Supporters attend a watch party for Republican Senate candidate and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during midterm elections in Dallas, Texas, November 3, 2026. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare
The Republican Party suffered a historic wave of defeats in this year's midterms, but as one New York Times columnist argued, there was one loss in particular that dealt them a "huge psychological blow."
Writing about the seismic shifts in Tuesday night's election results, Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote that the brutal Democratic sweep of Texas was perhaps the most devastating and debilitating loss for the GOP. Not only did James Talarico secure a dominant win in the state's much-watched Senate race, but Gina Hinojosa also won a shock victory over GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, with Democratic wins in the lieutenant governor and secretary of state races cementing the party's historic night.
Citing a recent warning from one of the Lone Star State's GOP leaders, Goldberg argued that these losses threatened to wreck the very "foundation" of the Republican Party as modern voters know it.
"If Talarico alone won on Tuesday night, it would have been an earthquake," Goldberg wrote. "Texas hadn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. In 2024, Donald Trump won the state by nearly 14 points. But now that Talarico and Hinojosa have both won, along with other Texas Democrats up and down the ballot, it’s hard to overstate the scale of the psychological blow to Republicans. Texas, after all, has long been a dependable political anchor for Republicans, much as California is for Democrats. 'Texas is the foundation of the Republican Party in America,' the state’s right-wing comptroller, Don Huffines, warned in a post on X last week, amid an early vote showing Democratic strength. 'When the foundation breaks, it ALL falls apart.'"
Huffines' words certainly seem prophetic in hindsight, Goldberg argued, given the scale of the GOP's shocking losses all over the country.
"Huffines didn’t know how right he was," she added. "On Tuesday, the foundation of the Republican Party dropped out all over the country, leading to victories in contests Democrats barely dreamed of winning — not just Kansas and Ohio, but South Carolina. Still, that shouldn’t overshadow what brilliant races both Talarico and Hinojosa won."
She later concluded: "It will take some time to fully digest the lessons and consequences of the staggering rout Republicans suffered on Tuesday. But in addition to being a repudiation of Trump, it was also an overwhelming rejection of the tech barons he’s allied himself with. Talarico and Hinojosa’s campaigns were leaps of faith, premised on the conviction that Texans wanted something more than billionaire bootlicking and hatreds amplified by social media algorithms. 'We have a lot more work to do if we’re going to defeat the billionaire megadonors who have taken over this country,' Talarico said back in Round Rock in September of 2025, when his underdog campaign had just begun. 'But this is an incredible start.'"
