Texas Democrats celebrate a historic upset. But they’ve been here before | Opinion

FORT WORTH

To Tarrant County Democrats, it was their breakthrough win after 30 years of losing.

The crowd in a Fort Worth bar shouted and cheered every update as their candidate pulled off a stunning midwinter upset in a special election runoff in a ruby-red Republican district.

Even hundreds of miles away, the headlines screamed about a “Democratic shocker” in Tarrant County. Local Republicans blamed their own no-show voters.

The year was 2007.

But state Rep. Dan Barrett of Fort Worth lost the next election in 2008.

He never cast a single vote in the Texas House.

New state Sen.-elect Taylor Rehmet’s voters might not remember.

But Barrett does.

“I’ve thought about the parallels and the differences,” the Fort Worth lawyer wrote by email Saturday as Rehmet stacked up victories from the Parker County line east to Hurst and Bedford and north to Denton County en route to a 57%-43% upset of Republican Leigh Wambsganss.

“Given that his opponent has made this race a referendum on the felon in the White House” — with a written endorsement from President Donald Trump, which Trump says he no longer remembers — Rehmet “stands a better chance of holding on than I did,” Barrett wrote.

Barrett had to work faster than Rehmet.

Under Texas’ old election laws, Barrett had only six weeks to organize for a mid-December 2007 runoff election against Republican Mark Shelton.

In the first round, Shelton had topped five other Republicans, including now-U.S. Rep. Craig Goldman. But more than 7,000 of those voters didn’t come back for the runoff, and Barrett pulled off a 52%-48% surprise in the heavily Republican district.

To the cheering crowd in a Cityview Centre sports bar, it was the greatest moment in nearly 20 years for a Tarrant County Democratic Party that starved while Republicans swept Texas ballots for years under Gov. and President George W. Bush.

But that was the end of the cheers.

Barrett was sworn into the Texas House on Dec. 31, 2007. He worked on off-cycle committee hearings, which Barrett called “hands down the best part of the experience.”

The next November, though, President Barack Obama lost Tarrant County to Republican John McCain, 55%-44%. Shelton ousted Barrett by almost that exact margin.

Barrett’s House career ended after just over a year.

“A lot of time and attention was devoted to the November election — far more than I would have preferred,” Barrett wrote.

Shelton, he added, “raised and spent a massive amount of money.”

It’s almost as if losing erased Barrett from memory.

It’s probably an oversight, but he is not even listed among past members of the House by the Legislative Reference Library of Texas.

When Wambsganss greeted well-wishers Saturday night at an Italian restaurant in North Richland Hills, she didn’t concede defeat to Rehmet.

She simply said, “We’ll be back in November.”

The victory party is brief. Staying remembered takes longer.

This story was originally published February 2, 2026 at 4:24 AM.