Democrats Seize Power in Texas, Ending Decades of Republican Dominance

The Texas Tribune

AUSTIN, TX — Everything has changed. 

A blue tsunami of epic proportions swept through Texas on Tuesday night, decimating the largest, most influential red state and ending the longest statewide shutout of any political party in the country. Democrats up and down the ticket won seats they haven’t been viable contenders for in decades.

Gov. Greg Abbott, the most powerful and well-resourced governor in modern Texas history, was unseated by Gina Hinojosa. Attorney General Ken Paxton, who in past elections cast off impeachment, indictment and infidelities, fell to James Talarico in his bid for the U.S. Senate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the iron-fisted ruler of the Texas Senate, went down to a little known state representative. Republicans lost the attorney general’s office, one of the most influential conservative legal positions in the country. The new congressional map Republicans drew yielded them no gains — in fact, they lost one seat overall. 

The only question remaining in the wee hours of Wednesday morning was whether Democrats would take control of the Texas House, and by what margins.

As the floodwaters recede, Texas’ first divided government in decades is left in its wake. Democrats will have to learn how to govern a state that has become the eighth-largest economy in the world since they last held this much power in the 1990s. Texas Republicans will be left to sort through the wreckage and chart a new path back to power. 

First, both sides will have to emerge from what seems to be a collective shell shock gripping the governing class of the Lone Star State. 

It was a devastating night for Republicans nationwide. Deep red Texas had proven impervious to blue waves in the past, which perhaps explains Republicans’ willingness to take on extra liabilities this cycle, like running scandal-plagued Paxton for U.S. Senate, and Bo French, known for what some perceived as racist social media posts, for railroad commissioner. After a bruising primary, the victors declined to rebuild bridges with the party’s more moderate, establishment types, and they simply never found their footing after being blamed for welcoming in data centers and Flock cameras. 

Democrats, used to falling short of the hype that Texas might turn blue, were hopeful this year. Talarico led Paxton in almost every poll for months, pulling gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa and the rest of the statewide ticket within striking distance of their Republican opponents. They had someone running in every seat for the first time in modern history, preparing for some edge case flips. 

But nothing could have prepared either side for what happened Tuesday night — a full flip of statewide political control.

Based on pre-election night projections, Jason Villalba, a former moderate Republican state House member and president of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, put together a model that showed Talarico winning and Hinojosa coming close. As the night went on, he shifted his projections to a better outlook for Democrats.

But he never could have imagined the wipeout that so thoroughly sidelined his party. 

“I consider myself pretty plugged in, pretty astute and advised, and today caught me off guard in a way that I never expected, and I think that’s true for both sides,” he said. 

“It’s a new day,” he said. “But what tomorrow holds? I have no idea.” 

“Clear repudiation”

It was hard to believe Mayes Middleton was going to lose. Middleton, a wealthy oil and gas magnate and conservative state senator from Galveston, ran for attorney general vowing to continue the record of right-wing legal victories that has come to define the agency on the national stage. He self-funded his primary, spending almost $20 million to define himself as “MAGA Mayes,” then sat back, and went largely silent during the general election. 

Meanwhile, his opponent, state Sen. Nathan Johnson, cobbled together enough money to run a few statewide ads promoting his plans to focus on the agency’s bureaucratic functions. Johnson also hammered Middleton for his fealty to the president, a risky proposition in a state that voted for Trump by 14 percentage points in 2024. 

But on Tuesday night, Middleton called Johnson to concede, handing the reins of the largest red state attorney general’s office to the other team. The effects will be cataclysmic for the conservative legal movement that has come to rely on Texas to bring risky lawsuits challenging Democratic administrations, blue states and private corporations. 

“No one ever thought he would be even close to losing. No one thought it. No one talked about it,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP consultant. “He was a rock solid candidate and that tells me this is about something bigger than the candidates we put up or the races they ran.” 

The election was a clear repudiation — that’s the phrase several GOP political consultants used — of Trump’s recent policies. The crushing cost of groceries and gas hit the Republican brand especially hard. The war in Iran, immigration enforcement, and outrage over data centers didn’t help. Those factors helped contribute to shocking losses for Republicans in South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa, too.

“Voters spoke about that and people are frustrated,” state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, said at the Abbott downtrodden watch party Tuesday night. But these are issues, he said, that Texas leaders “have no control over.” 

Texas Republicans should hope that this election was decided by a lot of Republicans choosing to stay home, or even cross party lines, in rejection of Trump, Steinhauser said. The only other alternative would be that the state suddenly found a whole lot more Democratic voters, which would make these victories more durable in the future. 

What comes next

The last time Democrats held most of these statewide seats, Talarico was in kindergarten. The party has spent most of the last three decades playing defense, trying to do harm reduction on right-wing legislation and cobbling together uncomfortable coalitions with their least-partisan Republican colleagues. 

All that changes now. 

As governor, Hinojosa will have the power of executive action, the ability to call special legislative sessions, appoint people to boards, commissions and judicial vacancies, and veto legislation she disagrees with.

Lt. Gov. Vikki Goodwin will oversee the Senate, a role Dan Patrick has wielded with an iron fist. But Republicans are expected to maintain a majority of that chamber, and already, there’s talk of finding ways to curb her authority on crucial roles like deciding what legislation to bring to the floor of the chamber. 

As attorney general, Johnson could decide to reverse the state’s position on, or drop entirely, controversial lawsuits that Paxton got the state embroiled in. He could also join blue states in bringing lawsuits against the Trump administration. Suing the federal government is certainly something that the agency knows a lot about. 

Comptroller Sarah Eckhardt will hold the state’s purse strings, overseeing the $1 billion school voucher program she and the rest of the legislative Democrats voted against approving. Agriculture Commissioner Clayton Tucker will be responsible for programs designed to support farmers, and shape policy around data centers and rural Texas. 

These are big, historic wins that will change the state’s political landscape overnight. And also, Texas still remains a conservative state, with many fossilized bastions of Republican power that will take more than one election to unearth. Many of these candidates ran on promises of moderation; they’ll now have to decide whether to honor that, or take these results as an endorsement of their party writ large.

Hinojosa, at least, is indicating she plans to find ways to work with the party that spent tens of millions of dollars to keep her out of office. 

“We did not end one era of single-party rule to usher in another,” she said at the Texas Tribune Festival in September.