Just how badly did Republicans do in two Texas special elections last weekend?
Not as badly as apocalyptic headlines in liberal-leaning outlets would suggest — but badly enough that Republicans nationwide have to learn some searing lessons.
Although the GOP lost both races, one was for a U.S. House seat that’s been in Democrats’ hands for decades: Christian Menefee’s victory narrows the GOP’s congressional majority, but only because that safely blue seat had been vacant since Rep. Sylvester Turner died last March.
The other contest, which yielded an upset, was for a Texas state senate seat that will be up for election again before the legislature convenes.
In other words, the victorious Democrat, Taylor Rehmet, won’t get to vote on anything before Texans get another vote on him, and the November race that really matters is certain to have stronger turnout than last Saturday’s special election.
The trouble is Rehmet didn’t just win, he won by more than 14 points in a red-leaning Ft. Worth-area district.
Democrats and much of the media converged on the same message: this was a district Donald Trump won by roughly 17 points in 2024, so the swing away from the GOP was more than 30 points, a staggering humiliation that augurs a Republican wipeout in November.
But comparing presidential elections to state senate elections — and a January special election, at that — is absurd.
Never mind presidential years: Saturday’s turnout was pitiful even in comparison to typical off-year state legislative races.
Merely 94,000 or so people voted last weekend, barely a third as many as participated the last time the seat was up in a general election, back in 2022, when nearly 278,000 ballots were cast.
The advantage the party opposing the White House historically enjoys in midterms applies all the more in special elections: the opposition is always more motivated, and it takes especially intense motivation to get voters to the polls in January after a winter storm.
Add the fact the real contest for this seat is the one in November, and Saturday’s winner doesn’t actually get to attend the legislature, and the scenario for maximizing the protest vote and minimizing Republican turnout was perfect.
On top of that, the GOP was divided. In the special election’s first round last fall, two Republicans vied against each other as well as Rehmet, allowing him to beat them both, and wounds from the intraparty rivalry hadn’t healed by the time of the runoff.
Yet all this only means the Republican performance was abysmal, not prophetically catastrophic.
The party can count on doing better in November, but better won’t be good enough unless the GOP gets its act together.
In Texas and around the country, the last thing Republicans should do is swallow the Democratic line that fixes the blame for the GOP’s woes on Trump and his agenda.
In fact, Democrats won in Texas by borrowing from Trump’s playbook: Rehmet ran as a populist and went all-out to secure the working-class vote.
He played up his background as a machinist, union member (and leader) and veteran.
Trump is president today because he’s a master at winning blue-collar voters who like him but don’t like the Republican brand.
When Trump’s on the ballot, his personal brand is strong enough to boost his party downticket, but in midterms, Republicans are on their own again.
Indeed, they get the worst of both worlds: anti-Trump voters turn out to punish his party, while pro-Trump voters who don’t feel much connection to the GOP itself stay home in droves.
Republicans have to overcome this by making Trump’s brand their own, giving his working-class voters reasons to vote for them on their own merits without Trump on the ballot.
And they have to do it while maintaining party unity — unlike in Texas — despite free-market conservatives’ unease about populism and the tendency of some religious conservatives to think social issues are enough to win on without a pocketbook pitch to the working class.
It’s in typically red regions like Texas’ 9th senate district that the GOP is most hazardously complacent because those are places the old formulas have worked best for the longest time — which leaves an opening for Democrats to go after the working-class votes Republicans ignore.
The GOP isn’t just lazy, it’s scared. Keeping social and economic conservatives together in a single coalition is hard enough; why complicate it by trying to squeeze in populists as well?
Trump, of course, has answered that: because it’s what’s necessary to win nationwide, and increasingly that’s what it takes to win in places like Texas, too.
With or without Trump on the ballot, the GOP’s survival now depends on the coalition he pioneered.
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