Texas GOP wins big: 5 things to know

In the end, it wasn’t close at all.

On election night, Texans handed sweeping victories to the Republican Party that controls the state, and in particular its ascendant MAGA faction.

As Vice President Harris performed far worse across the state than President Biden did in 2020, Democratic hopes quickly fizzled. 

In addition to a decisive loss for Democratic Senate challenger Rep. Colin Allred, the party failed to flip the last major urban county outside its control and lost ground in its key strongholds, from Harris County to the Rio Grande Valley. 

Republicans on Tuesday night declared total victory.

“President Donald Trump’s victory ensures that America’s future will be brighter and more prosperous than ever,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) wrote in a statement. 

“The Trump-Vance Administration will cement America’s energy dominance, crack down on crime, secure our borders, and restore American strength, prosperity, and success once again.”

These were not upsets, as such: While the margin of Allred and Harris’s loss outpaced the close polling earlier in the race, neither was favored to win the Republican stronghold. 

But it was down the ballot where state Democrats received their biggest rejection: losing a series of races in the Texas suburbs and the Rio Grande Valley that the party had hoped would provide some bulwark against the rise of a MAGA faction that seeks to use institutional reforms to relegate them to permanent minority status.

Here are 5 things to know.

Harris, Allred did far worse than predecessors

Despite perennial Democratic hopes that a blue Texas is just around the corner, President-elect Trump beat Harris by a staggering 14 points — more than twice the 6-point margin by which he beat President Biden in the state in 2020, and about 2 points more than the margin by which Trump won in 2016.

For Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the margin was closer, though still decisive: a victory of 8 points. That was far larger than the closest polls — or the senator’s increasingly plaintive late-campaign messages — had suggested.

That means that nearly three-quarters of a million Trump-supporting Texans split their tickets and voted for Allred — in addition to the million who voted for Libertarian Sen. Ted Brown, who ran under the slogan “The Better Ted" and called for "an Ellis Island-style immigration system that welcomes people."

The gap between Cruz and Trump suggests that Allred’s campaign did peel off some conservative Texans, and that Cruz was a drag on the Republican ticket — but not nearly to the extent that Democrats would have needed to win.

MAGA is on track to take full control of the state Legislature

One of the biggest Texas political stories of the past year was the attempt by Abbott, state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), the state’s powerful — and internally divided — trio of statewide leaders, to purge conservative Republicans who had voted with Democrats to kill school vouchers.

Divisions between the MAGA faction in state government and the state Senate, and a highly conservative but more business-centric faction in the House, flared into open conflict with the failed 2023 impeachment of Paxton. 

In the pivotal vote, a far-right pressure campaign threatened state senators with primary challenges if they voted to impeach Paxton.

In the primaries that followed, the three state leaders began a complex and somewhat uncoordinated campaign to purge Republicans in the relatively independent state House who had defied them on Paxton and vouchers.

The insurgent primary candidates largely swept the field of these incumbents, leaving behind a heavily divided party — and one that, to state Democrats, seemed rife with pickup opportunities as MAGA allies bumped off moderate Republicans in purple districts.

One of the few survivors — after the most expensive primary fight in state history — was state House Speaker Dade Phelan (R), who fought Abbott on vouchers and led the impeachment of Paxton. In the legislative session that begins in January, he will face a well-funded challenge from state Rep. David Cook (R) and would likely need Democratic support to fight him off.

When that session begins, a small but important power bloc will be the Republican signatories of the Contract with Texas, which accuses Speakers like Phelan of “[colluding] with Democrats to advance progressive policies and stop Republican priorities.”

To avoid this, the contract signatories call for an end to the state Legislature’s unusual collegiality, which currently splits up committee chair positions evenly by party — rather than leave Democrats out — and makes sure that no Democratic bills reach the floor before all GOP bills have been considered. 

Of the letter’s 24 signatories, 15 are new Abbott-, Patrick- or Paxton-backed members who won their races last night, and who will join the Legislature in January, right on time for what are likely to be bruising fights over the Speakership, school vouchers and the role of Democrats in state government.

Their new strategic position will be enabled in large measure by Democratic failures.

Democrats failed to pick up — and lost ground — in key cities and suburbs

Democrats went into this election hoping to complete their takeover of the state’s five big urban counties — and expand into the purpling suburbs around them. 

This largely failed. Harris underperformed Biden in Harris County, where Democratic incumbents barely won in what the Houston Chronicle called “shockingly close” races in what had been seen as a Democratic stronghold, and significantly underperformed Biden in the suburban county of Fort Bend. 

In general, Trump beat Harris by 100,000 votes in these counties, and of the 10 biggest Texas suburban and exurban counties, only three — Fort Bend, along with Williamson and Hays outside Austin — went for Allred.

Harris also lost Tarrant County, the state’s third-largest urban county and one that Biden narrowly won but the ascendant far right sees as its center of power.

In that county, Democrat Patrick Moses, who challenged MAGA-aligned Bill Waybourn (R) for the key strategic position of sheriff — a bellwether position in the other urban counties — lost by 8 points.

And conservative and former state Rep. Matt Krause (R), a proponent of putting the Ten Commandments in public schools, flipped a commissioner’s court seat, giving the right a majority in the nation’s most populous Republican county.

Those victories, which come in a county under the aegis of avowed culture warrior and county Judge Tim O’Hare, will likely push Tarrant County further right, The Texas Tribune reported.

Meanwhile, Democrats failed to flip key state legislative seats in the center and suburbs of Dallas, as well as the suburbs of Austin, that would have allowed them to complete their takeover of those urban counties and the contested hinterlands that surround them. 

Democrats lost races in Denton, Williamson and Dallas counties — though, in a rare bright spot for the state party, they did successfully hold state Rep. Mihaela Plesa’s seat in Collin County, home of Paxton, the attorney general.

Rio Grande Valley now in play

Flagging support for Democrats among Latino men — not to mention a massive influx of cash into border communities by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) — meant Harris failed to take key blue counties in South Texas, which also voted down Texas House Democrats.

In general, Trump beat Harris by a narrow 9,000 votes along the border. The vice president lost every single border county except for Presidio, whose most populous city is the art colony of Marfa, and Democratic El Paso, though she held a few sparsely populated South Texas counties such as Dimmit and Jim Hogg, which are just in from the Rio Grande. 

That included losses in Webb County, home of Laredo, a longtime party bastion in the Rio Grande Valley, in what Texas Observer Editor Gus Bova called an example of a “Democratic nightmare in South Texas.” Webb County is the home court of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D), who won despite being currently under federal indictment.

Allred did better in the region, suggesting that some of his messaging on the border connected with voters. The Dallas congressman and local native won Webb as well as populous Hidalgo and Cameron counties, home of the border-straddling metropolis of McAllen-Reynosa and Brownsville-Matamoros — but by far less than past Democrats.

These losses were most substantive and, for Democrats, disappointing when it came to control of state government.

Democrat Solomon P. Ortiz Jr. appears to have lost his Nueces County seat, and Cecilia Castellano — the target of raids by Paxton — lost to Don McLaughlin, whose campaign cited a “new wave of support for Republican values in traditionally Democrat territories.”

The Democrats also failed to reclaim Rep. John Lujan’s (R) seat in South Texas.

On the state Senate side, Republican Adam Hinojosa flipped the body’s only competitive seat by edging out state Sen. Morgan LaMantia (D) on South Padre Island. Hinojosa, like McLaughlin, was endorsed by conservative South Texas Democrats.

“The election results in our District are nothing short of historic. Our campaign has changed the balance of power in South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley,” Hinojosa said.

In general, Trump beat Harris by a narrow 9,000 votes along the border.

Paxton supporters take the state’s highest criminal court

In 2022, Paxton received a decisive rebuff from the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals, whose conservative justices ruled his office could not unilaterally prosecute election fraud — but would have to work with local prosecutors.

At the time, Paxton declared he was the target of “lawfare,” called on his supporters to call the court en masse and swore revenge on the justices who had ruled against him. In the primary elections earlier this year, he backed far-right opponents to three sitting justices — all of whom won. 

One of these, Barbara Hervey, told the Tribune after her primary loss that “Darth Vader is not supposed to win the war in those movies.”

All of the Paxton-endorsed candidates won their races on Tuesday, removing a power base that has served as an occasional block on the attorney general.