Even some of his most passionate supporters were surprised by the number of votes Democrat Taylor Rehmet received in the November special election for Texas Senate District 9.
His competitors, Republicans Leigh Wambsganss and John Huffman, each had mountains of cash and the backing of major PACs and political players across Texas. Even so, Rehmet, an Air Force Veteran and president of the state’s International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter, won nearly 48 percent of the vote—nearly enough for an outright win.
The Tarrant County seat, which covers the suburbs of Keller, North Richland Hills, and Southlake, and part of Fort Worth, was left open by longtime Republican state Senator Kelly Hancock, who resigned earlier this year to become the acting state comptroller. Last year, President Trump won that same district by 17 points.
“That is not something you might’ve seen as recently as two cycles ago,” said Jason Villalba, a former North Texas Republican legislator who now runs a think tank focused on Latino voters, citing the area’s growing diversity. Backlash to the right-wing Republican candidates was another reason, experts say.
Now, the January 31 runoff pits Rehmet against Wambsganss, a conservative activist and executive with Patriot Mobile, the Christian nationalist cell phone carrier in North Texas. It’s a race that encapsulates the most turbulent political storylines in Tarrant County, statewide and nationally. The special election in a solid red district is the sort of off-cycle contest that, in the Trump era, have served as bellwether for the national political climate. That’s especially so in this district, smack dab in the largest battleground county in Texas.
“As Tarrant County goes, so goes Texas,” former Trump consigliere Steve Bannon, who is stumping for Wambsganss, recently said on his podcast. “And as Texas goes, so goes the world.”
EJ Carrion, a progressive activist based in Fort Worth, was chilled by those words from the onetime Trump strategist. He was also motivated. “If Tarrant County is the battleground for a democracy, then Fort Worth is the front lines,” he said.
It would be difficult to find a more far-right candidate than Wambsganss, who was an architect of the Southlake ISD school board takeover. (Wambsganss’ campaign did not respond to the Observer’s questions for this story.)
In 2020, she co-founded Southlake Families PAC, which funded school board candidates who killed the school district’s anti-racism plans. Patriot Mobile, the conservative Christian wireless provider where Wambsganss works as chief communications officer, has a PAC that also bankrolled right-wing school board candidates in Southlake, Grapevine, Keller, and Mansfield.
Wambsganss’ politics are part of an increasingly powerful hardline faction in Tarrant County Republican politics, which has long been a hotbed for right-wingers. In the November election, she bested Southlake Mayor John Huffman, who had backing from more establishment elements of the state GOP as well as with big-money casino interests. The True Texas Project, whose endorsement Wambsganss lists on her website, is an influential Tarrant County-based organization that once claimed there is a “war on white America.”
Brian Mayes, a local Republican strategist, said Wambsganss’ failure to best Rehmet and secure the 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff shows that people, including some GOP voters, are fed up with the school board controversies that have dominated North Texas politics in recent years. Candidates backed by Patriot Mobile’s PAC suffered big losses in May 2025 elections, Mayes pointed out.
“I think their policies were so extreme, they caused so much trouble on the school board, that in just a short time period, voters were like, ‘Okay, yeah, we’ve seen enough. We’re done,’” Mayes said.
Rehmet agrees that he couldn’t have done as well as he did in the November race without some Republican voters casting ballots for him. In an interview with the Texas Observer, Rehmet said that his opponent’s background creates a stark contrast in the runoff. “This is about values. If you look at me and you look at my opponent, we have totally different values. It’s about who’s going to answer to donors and who’s going to answer to the people.”
Still, Rehmet heads into the runoff at a significant monetary disadvantage, according to the last campaign finance reports from November. He raised $160,000—with his largest contribution coming from the Machinist union’s PAC at $15,000—and ended with less than $47,000.
As of that same date, Wambsganss had spent over $1.3 million and received a total of $2.2 million. (The next campaign reports are not due until a week before the special election).
Her top donor is Texans United for a Conservative Majority, which is financed by far-right megadonors Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks and provided over $400,000 to her campaign. She also received more than $350,000 from a PAC funded in part by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and another $300,000 from the Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC.
Mayes, the Republican strategist, said he expects even more money to pour into both sides of the race during the runoff—especially in its final weeks. “I think their plan is to not change any policy positions and to just double down on the spending,” Mayes said of the Wambsganss camp. With their spending, he added, the goal will be “to overwhelm the Democrat opponent with door knockers, texting, phone calls, the usual stuff you need to do in a runoff to get to vote, vote. And I think she’ll go even more negative.”
Meanwhile, Alexander Montalvo, a longtime grassroots organizer in Tarrant County, says “people power”—local organizing and get-out-the-vote messaging, for instance —was the key to Rehmet’s first victory. It’s the key to the runoff, too.
“The most powerful thing that we will ever have is people,” he said. “I mean, our vote is powerful. Our dollars are powerful. All these assets we have that we can utilize are powerful, but nothing’s more powerful than just people.”
Rehmet also emphasized how eager he is to reach across partisan lines. He’s spent months canvassing and making phone calls with voters, he said, and that means regular conversations with conservatives and registered Republicans. “I couldn’t have gotten 48 percent if I didn’t have conservatives believe in wanting something different,” he said.
During her campaign, Wambsganss has largely focused on two issues: property taxes and public safety. In a November interview with CBS, she talked at length about giving Texans “property tax relief” and increasing the homestead exemption. Wambsganss’ website says she wants to ensure public schools are fully funded; it also touts her role in “one of the most impactful fights against Critical Race Theory in the country, advancing parental rights and transparency in education.” On election night in November, Wambsganss told the local CBS News affiliate: “My message has been consistent. I have over thirty years of fighting for faith, family and freedom.”
She added, “Texans are really, really sick and tired of being taxed out of their homes. Texans want secure borders. They want to support their first responders. And all parents in Texas want a good education for their kids. And the Republican message and the conservative policies and laws are good for all Texans.”
For his part, Rehmet told the Observer that he wants to increase teacher pay and hire more teaching assistants, as well as crack down on corporate price gouging and expand access to affordable healthcare and childcare. But first, he’ll have to win the January 31 runoff, then be elected once again later in 2026 before beginning a full state Senate term the following year.
Supporters like Carrion know they’re in for a difficult fight in the weeks ahead, especially since powerful right-wing political machines—at the local, state, and national level—are lining up behind Wambsganss. Carrion finds it particularly frustrating that the Fort Worth Professional Firefighters Association, a labor union, endorsed Wambsganss instead of the candidate with strong union bona fides.
“They endorsed the book ban lady,” he said. “Like Fahrenheit 451. Do we remember what firefighters did? They burned books. It’s a little too real.”
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