I’m not one to typically employ the writerly first person, but after last night please allow me the indulgence. Eight years ago, having moved to Texas to cover the 2018 midterms for the Texas Observer, I traveled across the state tracking what would be a blue wave of historic proportions. On Election Night, I watched from the minor league baseball stadium in El Paso as an upstart Democrat named Beto O’Rourke came within a hair’s breadth of winning a statewide seat in Texas for the first time in a generation.
On those coattails, fueled by mass resistance to Donald Trump’s first presidency, Democrats flipped a dozen state House seats and a couple state Senate seats, and made inroads all across the Texas suburbs. It felt like the long-lost Democratic cause in Texas was on the precipice.
Instead, that Sisyphean rock kept falling back to solid red ground. In 2020, Democrats’ sky-high hopes fell flat hard. In 2022, no dice. In 2024, a major regression. The one-party-ruled red empire of Texas appeared as unbreakable as ever.
Then, in this year of 2026, with the seeming snap of a finger, it all vanished.
Ken Paxton—that ethically and morally impaired man who finally proved that he is not, in fact, made of Kevlar—lost by a dozen points to a Democrat named James Talarico. And it didn’t stop there. Relatively early in the night, Governor Greg Abbott—running for an unprecedented fourth term at the helm of the State of Texas—conceded to Gina Hinojosa as his powerful fiefdom crumbled to dust. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, also seeking a fourth term, fell too. So did every single Republican running for statewide office. Attorney General? Gone. Railroad commissioner? Bye Bo French. Texas Comptroller? Toast. Texas Agriculture Commissioner? Adios. Texas Land Commissioner, gone. Texas Supreme Court? Now a narrow 5-4 GOP majority.
Control of the Texas House, which Republicans have held for over 20 years now? Democrats are now on the verge of running the show in the lower chamber come January—with certain members already filing their speakership papers last night. And if not for some sound gerrymandering of the hard-right Texas Senate, Democrats would be about to enjoy a trifecta of power. The congressional gerrymandering of 2025, meanwhile, done in an attempt to deliver Donald Trump five more red seats in Texas, fell apart as Democrats ran the table in South Texas and beyond.
The full scope of Democrats’ utter rout of Texas is still being tabulated, but it was a bloodbath in every sense. To say it feels surreal—unreal—is an understatement. What was one day earlier the most powerful, entrenched Republican state government in the nation is now packing its bags, destined for the exits in two months. Looking back to 2018, a cycle that perhaps presaged 2026, it all looks rather quaint.
So, what the hell happened? How did this decadent red empire of Texas so thoroughly disintegrate in the course of one cycle? How are we actually looking at not just one or two statewide flips for Democrats, which alone would’ve been a gargantuan victory, but a Blue Texas? How did a true political revolution upend the Lone Star State in one fell swoop?
I was not at all expecting the outcome we saw on election night–I don’t think anyone really was.
But many things do come to mind. One cannot help but look back at the past several years, at how Republicans in charge doubled town on a politics of delivering pain and retribution to their perceived enemies, of electoral and legislative hubris (some of it earned), of casual corruption, of extraneous extremism, of an increasing indifference to those not in the GOP club. Culture wars about gender, book banning, and so on. Ramming through a private school voucher program to please out-of-state activists. An ongoing refusal to invest in the public education system and a willingness to let a broken property tax system fester cycle after cycle, promising always that the next election would be the one to deliver relief.
Or maybe it was mostly the $4+-per-gallon gas prices and a president who ran against forever wars going to war—not yet forever in duration but possibly on its way—while engaging in the most brazen sort of self-dealing and personal enrichment and launching an indiscriminate domestic police campaign against hard-working immigrants. Maybe it was one of the most anti-incumbent election waves in American history. And maybe it was everything.
To be a bit indelicate, whatever happened, it happened very fucking loudly here in Texas. And it happened all at once.
For Republicans here, there will be plenty of time for sorting the blame and meting out the recriminations. Trump has already begun to blame everyone but himself. And there is time, though not as much, for sorting out just exactly what the Democrats who now find themselves on the verge of running Texas will do.
But on the former count, soon-to-be-former Texas Comptroller and right-wing hardliner Don Huffines—who primaried Greg Abbott in 2022, a bid that helped usher in a rightward lurch in state government—got a head start last night.
“I blame it on our leadership; I just do,” Huffines said in a speech at his campaign event last night, citing the top leaders seeking fourth terms in office. “I blame this on Greg Abbott, I blame it on Dan Patrick. … I hope they’re happy. Because now we’re all going to suffer. … People are tired of the Republicans being in office.” He went on to lament how Abbott and Patrick’s promises to reduce property taxes this cycle only served to remind voters that they haven’t gone down in a dozen years.
Ending his somber/angry rant, Huffines said there’s a “lotta great patriots” who still care about what happens in Texas. “What are we gonna do? Who are we gonna call?” Huffines said, seemingly to himself, cueing up his anger.
“There’s no one left.”
The post And Poof. There Goes Red Texas. appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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