Taylor Rehmet, a union leader and U.S. Air Force veteran, won in a special election to fill an empty Texas Senate seat. Solid red Senate District 9 (SD9) in Tarrant County is a Republican stronghold.
In 2024, President Trump carried the district by 17 points.
In a speech at his election night party on Saturday, Rehmet thanked his supporters.
“Tonight, this win goes to everyday working people,” he said.
“Taylor is ready to lead with compassion, strength, and common sense.”
In a statement, Republican Leigh Wambsganss said the outcome was a “wakeup call” for Republicans (are they woke now?). Still, she promised things would turn out differently in November, when she and Rehmet battle each other again for a full four-year term.
“The dynamics of a special election are fundamentally different from a November general election,” Wambsganss said. “I believe the voters of Senate District 9 and Tarrant County Republicans will answer the call in November.”
I wonder how many Republican votes they missed because President Trump continues to delegitimize the popular method of voting by mail?
As the President is claiming mail-in ballots are fraudulent and insecure (because Putin says so), Republican PACs and Conservative organizations are running ads urging their voters to vote by mail. It must be so confusing to their voters.
Campaign Priorities: Republican
Rehmet beat Wambsganss by 14 points. According to her campaign website, she ran on a culture war issue: protecting “women’s sports and private spaces” and other priorities that don’t help voters:
- Support the oil and gas industry in Texas
- Support law enforcement
- Protect the Second Amendment
- Secure the southern border.
The only priorities that might help some Texans in the district are: “Increase the Homestead Exemption to lower taxes” and “Ensure every child gets a good education.”
“It’s clear as day that this disastrous Republican agenda is hurting working families in Texas and across the country, which is why voters in red, blue, and purple districts are putting their faith in candidates like Taylor Rehmet,” Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “This overperformance is a warning sign to Republicans across the country.”
Campaign Priorities: Democrat
Rehmet ran on an economic populist agenda. Here are the priorities listed on his campaign website:
Veterans Affairs
Taylor Rehmet is a veteran who knows firsthand what it means to serve and what it feels like to be forgotten. He believes our duty to veterans doesn’t end with a folded flag or a ceremony, it means real support for the challenges veterans face after service.
Taylor will fight to fully fund mental health care, job training, housing, and support services for veterans and their families across Texas. He’ll push for programs that prioritize housing the unhoused, create career pathways in public service, and ensure every veteran is buried with dignity and honor.
Truly Affordable Housing and Tenant Rights
Housing isn’t a luxury, it’s a right. Taylor will fight to make housing affordable for the people who actually live and work in Texas, not the developers and hedge funds pricing them out. He supports statewide rent stabilization, tenant protections, and deep investment in public and nonprofit housing that working families can actually afford.
Taylor believes renters deserve dignity, transparency, and power and he’ll work to stop corporate landlords from turning Texas neighborhoods into profit machines.
Worker Rights, Unions, and Jobs
As a union president and machinist, Taylor believes the backbone of Texas isn’t the boardroom, it’s the workshop floor. He knows the best way to raise wages, protect jobs, and ensure dignity on the job is through strong unions and worker power.
Taylor will lead efforts to repeal anti-union laws, expand collective bargaining, and bring good-paying, union jobs back to Texas communities. He supports reclassifying gig workers to guarantee benefits and will fight for apprenticeship pipelines that create career paths for the next generation.
Public Education and Vocational Training
Taylor is a proud graduate of public schools and believes every student deserves a real future whether it’s college, the military, or a skilled trade. He’ll fight to reinvest in public education, expand high school vocational programs, and reverse the privatization of Texas schools by way of tax-payer dollars. Taylor believes in rebuilding the pipeline between schools and good-paying jobs, and he knows we must treat educators with the respect and resources they deserve. He supports fully funding public schools and ending voucher schemes that drain them.
Land Conservation and Environmental Justice
Texas is home to some of the most breathtaking land and natural resources in the country and Taylor believes it’s our responsibility to protect it for future generations. He’ll fight to stop the selloff of public lands to developers, safeguard water access, and invest in rural conservation jobs.
As a lifelong Texan and steward of the land, Taylor believes environmental justice must include the people who live closest to the land, farmers, ranchers, rural communities, and Native American tribal authorities. He’ll prioritize clean air and water no matter your zip code.
Redistricting and Voting Rights
Every Texan deserves fair representation. Taylor will fight to end racial and partisan gerrymandering by pushing for an independent redistricting commission and ensuring communities of color aren’t cracked or packed out of power.
When precinct lines are drawn behind closed doors to silence working families, that’s not democracy, it’s theft. Taylor supports legislation that increases transparency in the redistricting process, creates enforceable protections for minority voting blocs, and strengthens the Voting Rights Act.
Transportation That Works For Texans
Texans deserve to get to work and get home without wasting hours stuck in traffic or going broke at the toll booth. Taylor supports bold investment in infrastructure, widening roads where needed, modernizing public transit like TEXRail, and building smart, long-term transportation systems that grow with our communities. He’ll fight for walkable neighborhoods where seniors, veterans, and working parents can move freely without relying on a car, and he’ll work to secure funding for high-traffic corridors like 121, 820, and 183.
Taylor also believes it’s time to revisit Texas’s broken toll road pricing model. Families in Senate District 9 and across the state are paying outrageous fees just to get to school, work, or the grocery store. Infrastructure should serve people, not drain our wallets and Taylor will fight to deliver real relief to the people footing the bill.
Education and School Governance
We need schools that teach, not culture-war battlegrounds. Taylor will stand with teachers, parents, and students to invest in neighborhood schools, protect public education from privatization, and keep extremist politics and religious ideology out of the classroom.
Rehmet supports teacher raises, mental health staff in every school, and strict oversight to prevent school boards from banning books or invading student privacy. The future of Texas depends on what we teach our kids today and they deserve the truth.
Property Tax Relief
Property taxes are crushing working families while billion-dollar corporations get carve outs and breaks. Taylor will fight for a fair tax system that shifts the burden off homeowners and renters and demands big business pay its fair share.
He supports capping appraisal spikes, expanding exemptions for veterans and seniors, and closing corporate loopholes that drain local school funding.
“Families shouldn’t be taxed out of their homes just so lobbyists can keep their perks.”
Public Safety and the Fentanyl Crisis
The fentanyl crisis is devastating families across Texas and Taylor believes we need to get serious about both justice and recovery. He’ll fight to hold traffickers, dealers, and bad actors accountable to the fullest extent of the law. If you’re poisoning our kids and cashing in on suffering, you’re part of the problem and there will be consequences.
But Taylor also knows addiction is a disease, not a moral failure. He supports expanding access to mental health care, fully funding recovery programs, and making life-saving tools like Narcan widely available.
Every Texan deserves a fair shot, a second chance, and a system that doesn’t throw people away. Real public safety means protecting our communities and helping people get back on their feet.
Who Do the Policies Help?
The difference between the candidates in terms of their priorities is stark. Rehmet is focused on improving the lives of Texans in the 9th District. Wambsganss is focused on culture wars and the Texas fossil fuel industry.
I hope every Democratic candidate in the country is taking notes. While some of us were pushing candidates to run as economic populists, establishment Democrats were claiming only moderate Democrats could win a race in a red state.
Establishment Democrats
The establishment Democrats in Congress claim a Progressive, populist agenda like Rehmet’s could never win in a red State.
Democratic leadership should have learned from Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of New York City who ran on “affordability” as a Democratic Socialist and never betrayed his authenticity.
Instead, they continue to back establishment, centrist politicians who act like corporate robots in elections. Fingers-crossed that they come to their senses before the midterms and the 2028 Presidential election.
Campaign Finance
Even though the Wambsganss campaign spent over $700K compared to Rehmet’s $70K, the amount of money you raise doesn’t matter when you’re an authentic candidate who is running to help the voters.
“We have an opportunity to really show that if you have a good message and you stick to voters and what they want, listen, that you can win an election as an underdog, that you can overcome millions and millions spent against you,” Rehmet said in an interview Friday.
As long as you’re doing the right thing, you can get elected.
Taylor Rehmet
He’s right, but will Democratic leadership learn the lesson and come up with a winning strategy before the 2026 midterm elections?
