Tarrant County remains the last large ‘purple’ holdout in Texas

Most recently, 34-year-old Democrat Taylor Rehmet upset a Republican who had the backing of Trump and the state GOP establishment in a Jan. 31 special election for a state Senate seat that Republicans had held since before he was alive.

Rehmet, running on working-class values in a struggling economy and shrugging off GOP culture-war attacks, swamped MAGA-aligned Leigh Wambsganss by a margin of 57-43. That swing became the stuff of national headlines just as the 2026 midterm cycle was gearing up.

That infused the Tarrant County Democratic Party with a burst of optimism that erased the sting of the 2022 and 2024 elections, said its chairwoman, Allison Campolo.

“The energy is really palpable,” Campolo said. “We’re selling out events, cramming people into places (and risking violating) fire codes.”

Political experts say the shifting politics are driven in part by the county’s changing demographics, which track broader statewide trends.

In the early 2000s, more than 60% of the county’s residents were white. After the 2020 census, white residents accounted for less than 43% of the Tarrant County’s population. Hispanic residents made up almost 30% and Black residents comprised 17%. 

Zachary Donnini, head of data science at VoteHub, said that growth in the Hispanic population is fueling the political analytics organization’s projection that Talarico will win Tarrant County by as much as 7%. The forecast, he said, is based on several factors, including polling, fundraising prowess and shifts in the mood of the electorate.

Donnini noted that Donald Trump made seismic gains among Latino voters in Texas in 2024, but that pendulum has now swung back.

State Rep. Ramon Romero, a Democrat who represents a heavily Latino district in Fort Worth, agreed. Nearly all of the policy initiatives by the Trump administration in Washington and Republican leadership in Austin have cut against Latino voters, Romero said.

“People are very upset about you know the disrespect towards the Latino community,” Romero said. “With 4-and-a-half dollar gas and $6 diesel, with immigration enforcement, jobs being lost and all the things that the Republicans have done for so long, this thing that’s about to just explode.”

Among the prominent Republicans to notice the shifting political energy was Cruz, who is not on the ballot this cycle but went to the Fort Worth suburb of Grapevine in early September to energize the supporters of behalf of County Judge Tim O’Hare, who is seeking a second term.

“Tarrant County has a bull’s eye on it,” Cruz said at the Sept. 2 rally. “The left wants to flip this county. We can’t let that happen. The men and women who will save Tarrant County are the men and women who will save Texas.”

“We’re dealing with people that literally believe socialism and communism is the answer,” O’Hare said at the rally with Cruz. “We’re going to make sure it does not take root in the state of Texas.”

Paxton so far has campaigned in suburban Dallas and in the rural countryside west of Fort Worth. His campaign did not respond to a question about whether he plans to visit Tarrant County.

But his ads are flooding the airwaves. According to AdImpact, Paxton and his allies have spent more than $23 million in the Dallas-Fort Worth media market since July, promoting the attorney general’s efforts to go after human traffickers and attacking Talarico for defending transgender Texans’ rights.

Talarico is making a big push in the county, too.

 In August, he filled a 100,000-square-foot arena in Arlington where he unveiled his economic plan that calls for strengthening organized labor unions, providing universal child care and ensuring paid family leave for illnesses and childbirth. He was introduced by former Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, a Republican who broke with his party to endorse the Democrat, and by the city’s mayor, Jim Ross, an independent.

A month later, Talarico was joined at an event in Fort Worth by billionaire Mark Cuban, the former owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, to talk about breaking up health care and pharmaceutical monopolies.

The next day, Talarico joined Alisa Simmons, who is seeking to become the first Black woman to preside over the commissioners court, on the campus of the University of Texas at Arlington outside one of the voted places targeted for closure. Both Democrats insisted that their objection to slashing the number of voting locations across the county, from 316 to 224, was rooted in their concerns for voting rights. But the joint appearance on a Sunday afternoon underscored the importance Democrats are placing on Tarrant County.

“They (Republicans) are worried that the people of this county are rising up to use their voices, to use their power, to take on corruption and get this economy back on track,” Talarico told reporters. “Nothing terrifies them more than people who show up to vote and people who show up to hold elected officials accountable.”

U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, a Fort Worth Democrat who decided not to seek an eighth term after his safe Democratic district was carved up by GOP redistricting, said the race between Talarico and Paxton is driving much of his party’s energy both in Tarrant County and across the state. But he expects that Democrats’ excitement will carry down the ballot.

 “It’s the economy and inflation. A lot of it is Trump. But a lot of it is what’s happening locally,” Veasey said in an interview. “There’s a lot of excitement for Democrats up here.”