Democrat Flips Texas State Senate Seat in Double-Digit Upset, Republicans Sound Alarm for Midterms

On Saturday night, in a conservative stretch of Texas near Dallas, a union machinist and Air Force veteran named Taylor Rehmet won a special election for the state senate by more than 14 percentage points. The seat had been held by Republicans for decades, and the result handed it to Democrats.

Rehmet's opponent was Leigh Wambsganss, a Republican activist whom President Donald Trump had urged voters to back. On Saturday, Trump called her a "true MAGA Warrior" and pushed supporters to turn out. On Sunday, Wambsganss congratulated Rehmet in a statement and described the outcome as a "wake-up call" for Republicans, local and national. "The Democrats were energized," she said. "Too many Republicans stayed home."

Trump, for his part, stepped back from the result on Sunday. He said he had not been involved because it was a "local Texas race," and added: "I'm not on the ballot, so you don't know whether or not it's transferable."

The seat was vacated by a four-term Republican. The district leans more Republican than Tarrant County as a whole, which Trump carried by 5 points in the 2024 presidential election. Joe Biden had won the county in 2020 by fewer than 2,000 votes.

The outcome was not wholly a surprise. In the November election that sent the race to a runoff, Rehmet finished first with 48 percent, while the Republican vote was split between Wambsganss and John Huffman. Wambsganss said she expects to beat Rehmet when the two meet again in November for the seat's full four-year term.

Democrats framed the win as part of a pattern. Since Trump began his second term, the party won governors' races in New Jersey and Virginia in November, flipping Virginia back. In December it took special elections in the more conservative states of Kentucky and Iowa. In Tennessee, Republicans held off a Democratic upset in a congressional special election after House Speaker Mike Johnson, worried about his slim majority, rallied national Republicans. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin wrote on social media that Democrats are "building on our historic overperformance, and we're not slowing down."

The stakes arrive in November, when the midterms decide control of Congress and are often read as a referendum on the White House. Republicans hold the U.S. House 218-213 with a handful of seats open, and that margin will narrow once Christian Menefee is sworn in. Menefee, a Texas Democrat, also won on Saturday, filling a vacancy in a longtime Democratic district whose previous representative died in March. The Republican-held Senate, at 53-47, is a harder target, though party leaders are encouraged by Democrats who have won in competitive states such as North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska.

Republicans have their own contests to sort out. Trump has encouraged primary challengers to some incumbent senators, including Louisiana's Bill Cassidy. In Texas, he suggested on Sunday that he will endorse in the three-way Republican Senate primary among incumbent John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Representative Wesley Hunt. "I like all of them," he said.

Democratic strategists urged the party to keep its focus on affordability. Meghan Hays, a former Biden campaign and White House official, told Reuters the win was a rejection of "the chaos that Trump is creating," and said Democrats must stick to kitchen-table issues with real solutions. The first test of that advice is the November rematch in Texas.