Convenience Big Store: Texas Republicans get a wake-up call in North Texas.

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Texas is still a red state, but the stunning election results in Fort Worth on Saturday show that a blue spine continues to grow along Interstate 35, threatening the GOP's hold.

When Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Trump-endorsed Leigh Wambsganss, he won an area in North Texas that President Donald Trump had just carried by 17 percentage points in 2024.

What's worse for Republicans is how Rehmet did it. About 50% of the voters who showed up in the special election in Tarrant County previously voted in a GOP primary, which should have given Wambsganss an edge.

Instead, Rehmet dominated with independents and peeled off enough past GOP voters in winning a seat that a Democrat hadn't held since Ronald Reagan was president.

"From the very beginning, this campaign has focused on the real issues people face every day: lowering costs, protecting public schools, and restoring trust in a broken political system," Rehmet said on election night.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said the results are a major warning sign for all Republicans in Texas. Just because someone has voted in past Republican primaries, you can't count them in your column when there is a "national down draft" developing.

"You have to go out and earn every vote," he said.

Tarrant County is like much of the rest of the blue spine along Interstate 35. Prior to 2018, Republicans won the 22 counties that stretch from Laredo to the Oklahoma border by over 300,000 voters. But since 2018, Democrats have increasingly won these urbanizing and diversifying counties.

And it is where voter registrations are growing fast.

Since 2018, Texas has added 2.7 million more voters, with over 1 million just along I-35 alone.

When Democrats can boost turnout along that blue spine and Harris County — the place with the most Democratic voters in Texas — it becomes a dangerous one-two punch that Beto O'Rourke used in 2018 to get within 2.6 percentage points of winning Ted Cruz's U.S. Senate seat.

"This is another data point in a series of data points that suggest 2026 is going to be a good year for Democrats across the country and a good year here in Texas," Luke Warford, a Texas-based Democratic strategist, said about the Fort Worth race.

Warford, founder of a group called the Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund, said Democrats are in a position to pick up seats in the Texas Legislature if the momentum coming out of Fort Worth can be sustained into the fall.

Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter

jeremy.wallace@houstonchronicle.com

Who's Up, Who's Down

A daily stock market-style report on key players in Texas politics.

Up: Christian Menefee.

The Houston Democrat dominated Saturday's run-off election for the 18th Congressional District and was on Capitol Hill by Monday night to be sworn in. Menefee will be a member of Congress at least through the remainder of 2026. His election makes House Speaker Mike Johnson's life a little more complicated. Republicans now have a 218 to 214 edge in the House, meaning he cannot afford even two Republicans breaking ranks on any vote.

Down: Donald Trump.

So much for his endorsement being a golden ticket to victory in Republican areas. While Republicans still want his endorsement in GOP primaries, his support for Leigh Wambsganss in Tarrant County clearly didn't make much of a difference. She lost the Texas Senate District 9 seat handily to Democrat Taylor Rehmet on Saturday in a runoff election. Making matters worse, Trump didn't even remember making the endorsement. "I'm not involved in that. That's a local Texas race," told reporters in Florida on Sunday. He later said just because people supported him, it isn't always "transferable" to other GOP candidates.

What do you think? Hit reply and let me know.

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What else I'm reading

Who is Taylor Rehmet, the Democrat who just shockingly won a seat in the Texas Senate? Sarah Bahari at the Dallas Morning News has more on the 33-year-old Air Force veteran and mechanic at Lockheed Martin and how he became the face of one of the Democrats' biggest legislative victories in years.