In a stunning victory, Democrats swept nearly every race from the statewide level down to countywide offices in Tarrant County, an urban center that was considered a pivotal battleground county this cycle and that has historically been the largest Republican-controlled county in the country.
Early vote totals showed a rout for Democrats early in the evening, with Senate candidate James Talarico pulling just shy of 60 percent, about a 22-point margin over Ken Paxton, along with every other statewide Democrat winning as well. Democratic County Judge candidate Alisa Simmons beat her opponent, County Judge Tim O’Hare, a controversial hardline Republican, by about 16 percent, signaling the first win for a Democrat at the county level since 1986.
“The results are a total repudiation of the Republican extremism that’s taken hold of Tarrant County Republican leadership recently,” Brandon Rottinghaus, political science professor at the University of Houston, told the Texas Observer Tuesday night. “There were Republican voters who felt conservatives were taking it too far and Democrats who were happy to vote against the GOP, and that’s a toxic mix that’s going to make Republicans suffer.”
Ahead of the Election Day rout, Tarrant was expected to be highly competitive turf. Top statewide candidates, including Talarico and Paxston, along with Governor Greg Abbott, all made the rounds around Tarrant in the first days of early voting.
Traditionally a GOP stronghold, flickers of a changing political dynamic in the North Texas county, which encompasses the cities of Fort Worth and Arlington and several booming suburbs, began when voters there favored Democrat Beto O’Rourke for U.S. Senate in 2018. The prospect of a possible purple-ish wave continued in 2020 when Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, albeit by a razor-thin margin. In 2024, Democrat Colin Allred won Tarrant over incumbent Ted Cruz by less than 2,000 votes (though Trump carried the county by 5 points) again stoking the idea that the tides may be turning.
On election night, that swing to Democrats exploded beyond belief. “This moment of stunning Democratic wins has shifted Tarrant to more closely reflect the rest of the urban centers in Texas,” said Rottinghaus.
In addition to countwide offices, Democrats appear likely to flip at least six GOP-held state House seats and at least one state senate seat based in Tarrant, along with some GOP congressional seats that include portions of the county. This is all part of a much larger statewide electoral for Democrats.
Rottinghaus partly attributes this to population dynamics. An expanding racially and ethnically diverse electorate–including more educated and younger voters in Tarrant–and changes among suburban voters’ appetite –offers more opportunity for Democrats to win. The county is a “test” of whether that suburban political change is reaching local races, said Rottinghaus.
Perhaps moreover, Tarrant County’s shift can be seen as a rebuke of its growing extremism. Increasingly an epicenter of the Christian nationalist movement Tarrant is home to the highly influential Mercy Culture, an evangelical church that encourages conservative Christians to run for office, as well as Patriot Mobile Action and the True Texas Project, two right-wing activist groups that have helped influence local races. The county is also home to Bo French, former Tarrant County GOP Chairman and candidate for Railroad Commissioner, whose overt racism and fascism even repelled Republican Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, who publicly endorsed his opponent state Representative Jon Rosenthal.
Texas Senate District 9
This political shift is no more evident than in the race for Texas Senate District 9, which pit right-wing hardliner Leigh Wambsganss against Democrat Taylor Rehmet to replace a seat vacated by Republican state Senator Kelly Hancock (who resigned to become acting comptroller) after serving 12 years in office.
In a surprising upset earlier this year, Machinists union leader and Air Force veteran Rehmet bested Wambsganss, chief communications officer for Patriot Mobile, a Christian nationalist cell phone carrier, by a 14-point victory during a January special election, marking the first Democrat to win that seat since 1991. The victory–deemed a “wake up call” for Republicans by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick—energized Democrats and worried the local GOP.
The win earlier this year was a harbinger of what was to come on election night when Rehmet, severely outspent by his conservative opponent, held on to that victory.
Endorsed (and funded) by ultra conservative Patrick and backed by the True Texas Project, Wambsganss has been buoyed by powerful interests, seeing heavy funding from PACs including Texans For Lawsuit Reform and the Texas United for a Conservative Majority, backed by right-wing megadonors, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks.
Wambsganss claimed she’d focus on reducing property taxes, data center reform, and improving public safety—and undoubtedly would make extremism a guiding principle, with gun rights, anti-abortion, and anti-transgender platforms priority issues on her campaign website. Especially if the past is any indication: The right-wing activist helped drag the local district into school board culture wars in the name of “Judeo-Christian values” in 2021 with her Southlake Families PAC and in 2022 when Patriot Mobile poured hundreds of thousands of dollars to prop up conservative candidates that opposed lessons that promoted LGBTQ and racial inclusion.
Amid the president’s unpopularity and her runoff loss earlier this year, Wambsganss–endorsed by Trump–recently sought to distance herself from her “ultra MAGA” label.
Meanwhile, Rehmet has focused less on attacking Wambsganss and more so on talking affordability for the middle class and getting back to the kitchen table basics, vowing to reduce health care costs, increase state funding for teachers, help create child care subsidies, and lower property taxes.
County Judge
In Tarrant County, a Democrat hasn’t served as county judge in 40 years. But on Tuesday evening, Democrat Alisa Simmons made history by prevailing over opponent County Judge Tim O’Hare, who conceded the race before 9 p.m.
In 2022, Simmons, the longtime president of the Arlington NAACP, beat her Republican opponent in the most competitive precinct in the county. When the GOP sought to redistrict the county seats to gain a supermajority, redrawing her seat to nearly guarantee themselves a victory this year, the Precinct 2 commissioner instead opted to campaign to lead the Court. She told the Observer in July she’ll fix the county budget, target governmental inefficiencies, and “serve the people” sans the influence of political or religious ideology.
O’Hare, former head of the county’s Republican Party and mayor of Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas, has steadily pulled the Tarrant County Commissioners Court further right during his tenure. When the seat was vacated by R. Glen Whitley after his 30 years on the Court, conservatives got behind O’Hare, who toppled the more moderate former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price in 2022. Backed by funds from the deep-pocketed right-wing megadonors Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, O’Hare’s time on the Court has been marked by a descent into culture wars and a hardline shift to the right. His brand of extremism attracted several lawsuits ranging from allegations of civil rights violations to attempts at gerrymandering.
As county judge, the incumbent helped lead the charge to suppress voting by cutting down nearly 100 polling locations, supported closing voting sites on college campuses, and launched an “election integrity unit” in response to the county’s vote for a Democratic presidential candidate. He stripped funding to non-profits that empower low-income, at-risk children of color and groups that publicly support LGBTQ rights and racial equality.
District Attorney
Republican District Attorney Phil Sorrells lost his spot in the face of a second challenge against Tiffany Burks. In 2022, Burks lost to Sorrells by about 6 points.
A former prosecutor in the DA’s office from 1999 to 2021, Burks told the Observer in September she believes Sorrells is part of an “old boys network” that doesn’t truly represent the people. Burks wanted to more closely investigate the high number of Tarrant County jail deaths (which reached 80 since 2017) and hoped to create a new diversion unit within the office that helps those struggling with addiction and homelessness connect to services rather than keeping them stuck in the jail pipeline. She campaigned for more accountability and transparency in an office that she sees as lacking strong leadership.
Tarrant saw the highest turnout in its history for a midterm election cycle. Democrats managed to sweep the county despite GOP efforts to thwart voting: The Republican-led Commissioners Court, which voted to cut down 92 polling locations—about a third of all sites—on Election Day, forcing voters to face longer wait times than usual on Tuesday.
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