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Monday, Feb 2, 2026 - Posted by Rich Miller

* You probably saw this development over the weekend. From the Texas Tribune…

Democrat and machinist union leader Taylor Rehmet won the special election Saturday to represent a solidly red Texas Senate district that President Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024, a stunning upset that injected a fresh and urgent sense of a panic into the GOP from the Texas Capitol to the White House heading into November’s midterm elections.

With ballots tallied from all but a handful of voting centers, Rehmet had 57% of the vote, besting the 43% for his GOP opponent, conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss, who vastly outspent Rehmet as Republicans including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick mounted a furious funding push in a bid to tilt the election in their favor in the final days.

Patrick, the Senate’s powerful presiding officer, had raised alarm bells about the race and urged Republicans to turn out — as did Trump, who posted three separate get-out-the-vote messages on social media in the 48 hours preceding the election.

This is not a transferable result. It was a low-turnout special election held on a Saturday during unusually miserable winter weather. The Republican candidate had serious flaws. Texas is its own world. Etc.

* But just for snicks, I asked Isabel to look at what would happen here if all Republican-held Illinois state legislative districts that Trump won by as much as 17 points (or that Trump lost) in 2024 flipped to the Dems.

Purely hypothetically, the Illinois House Democrats would pick up 19 seats (for a grand total of 97 out of 118), and the Senate Dems would gain 8 (for a total of 48 out of 59).

Again, this ain’t happening. It’s just a little math exercise. And ten months is an eternity in politics (maybe ten eternities, or forty, or three hundred). Things can always change. But, if there is no radical DC course-correction or a drastic improvement in the economy, you’ll very likely be saying goodbye to a bunch of Statehouse Republican incumbents come November.

* Whatever the case, I’m guessing the Republicans are pretty relieved that the Democrats passed a bill to ban parties from appointing candidates after the primary to vacant legislative ballot slots. Some of those above-mentioned Republican-held districts have no Democratic candidates on the ballot.

12 Comments

- Bears Fan - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 10:42 am:
Also, the Texas Legislature does not even meet at all in even numbered years unless a special session is called

- JS Mill - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 10:44 am:
=Some of those above-mentioned Republican-held districts have no Democratic candidates on the ballot.=

A real tactical error imho.

- Bears Fan - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 10:45 am:
Question though - is any other state as allergic to special elections as Illinois is? The only time we have them is for Congress because the US Constitution & Federal law mandate it. For everything else we have appointments or selection by committeemen

- Homebody - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 10:48 am:
Special elections can always be weird, but it also can’t be understated how unlikeable the GOP’s positions are nationally. There will always be a very specific base for right of center authoritarians in the US, but much of their electoral success comes from convincing the “normal” middle of the road voters to give them a chance after everyone forgets how bad they were the last time they were in charge.

But the current administration is going even farther and more openly into plain old fascism that it is making a significant chunk of swing voters squeamish. Dems shouldn’t take anything for granted, obviously, but there is real push back.

- King Louis XVI - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 11:19 am:
Saturday’s contest was a runoff after Rehment won 47% over two Republicans in November. Wambsganss failed to consolidate GOP vote. So not a strict special election.

- H-W - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 11:36 am:
=== A real tactical error imho. ===

I second that. The assumption that Democrat candidates cannot win against the likes of Jil Tracy and Norine Hammond may be mostly true. But that does not mean democrats do not exist in such places, nor does it prove they cannot win (remember John Sullivan, anyone?).

Not running candidates may save money, but it does not gauge the level of support for ideas and change, not does it gauge the level of discontent among citizens in those districts. Using uncontested results and proxy votes for presidents and Congressional candidates (Mary Miller, Darin LaHood, Mike Bost) to assess support for state-level candidates does not translate into unwillingness to support change at the local level. It is a circular form of reasoning that ignores temporal shifts among the electorate.

The rural downstate is a mess, and currently, republican politics is to blame at both the federal and the state level. The republican candidates today are not accomplishing anything at the local level, and simply blaming the Governor for their own failures.

But I digress. And I am anything but an expert in politics. I do not even pretend to know how the game is actually played. I just hate that I am unrepresented except at the federal level.

- SpiDem - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 11:45 am:
All caveats about low turnout aside, it’s far more important to look at the makeup of the electorate.

Ross Hunt, who runs the largest political consulting firm in Texas, looked at the electorate and found the following:

“Of those who voted in the TX SD-9 runoff, 50%+ were GOP primary voters or at GOP HH; only 35% were Dems or at Dem HH.”

When half of a Texas electorate is GOP, and the Democrats win the race by 14% points, that is a very serious warning sign for the GOP — especially when combined with the run of off year and special elections that occurred throughout 2025, which almost universally wen’t very bad for the GOP.

Having lived through 1994, there were warning signs for sure — but not nearly of the magnitude we have seen over the last year.

- Alton Sinkhole - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 11:57 am:
Nominating real, local, union leaders instead of social media activists is the path forward for Dems.

- ChrisB - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 12:37 pm:
I did read that there were some extremely local politics at hand in this race. Basically, the newly elected school board secretly planned to split the district, pitting the rich area, which would keep all of the resources, against 3/4s of the rest of the school district, which would have to rent out facilities to provide services. The dividing line was the train tracks. Literally, the “wrong side of the tracks” split. Plan gets leaked and a lot of people who just voted for the school board get really really mad, and go scorched earth on anyone associated with the plan.

Guess who owned the consulting company that recommended the plan. That’s right, the GOP candidate.

This is why I love local politics. The tea is amazing.

- Alton Sinkhole - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 12:53 pm:
==So not a strict special election.==

Yes it was? A special election is an election held outside the regular cadence of elections. Which this was. Just because it was a runoff doesn’t make it not a special election

- btowntruth from forgottonia - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 1:23 pm:
Fun Illinois math exercise.
And what happened in Texas,weather and turnout notwithstanding,does NOT bode well for the GOP.

- Norseman - Monday, Feb 2, 26 @ 2:25 pm:
Understand the caveat, but one can hope. (Like winning the lotto.)

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