Wambsganss unpacks her Senate loss in North Texas: ‘Republicans did not show up’

Southlake Republican Leigh Wambsganss says her Senate District 9 defeat comes down to Republicans not turning out to vote.

“Politics is cyclical, and the bottom line is Republicans did not show up,” Wambsganss said on Monday’s episode of The Mark Davis Show on 660 AM The Answer.

Wambsganss, a GOP activist who works for Grapevine-based Patriot Mobile, whose political arm backs Christian, conservative candidates, was in a Saturday special election runoff against Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a union leader and aircraft mechanic. Rehmet won 57% of votes in a district that Trump led by 17 points in 2024.

Saturday’s upset in what has long been a solidly- red part of Tarrant County has received national attention, as observers wonder what happened and what it means for the 2026 midterm elections.

Rehmet will finish the remainder of former Sen. Kelly Hancock’s term for about a year. The North Richland Hills Republican, who now serves as acting Texas comptroller, resigned in June.

Rehmet and Wambsganss will face off again in the November 2026 general election, each hoping to win a full four-year term.

Leigh Wambsganss discusses why she lost the Senate District 9 runoff

In the radio interview, Wambsganss said 60,000 Republicans who vote in general elections didn’t turn out in the Senate District 9 race. That’s despite pleas from Texas elected officials like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and words of support from President Donald Trump. (Though, the president said Sunday he wasn’t involved in the race.)

A lot of factors are responsible for keeping voters at home, Wambsganss said.

“I think one of them is that Republicans think that they don’t need to,” she said. “They think Tarrant County is invincible, and it’s not.”

Wambsganss said she expects a “substantially different” result in November. Neither she nor Rehmet have March primary opponents.

“I think God allowed this because we, Texas, does need a wake up call,” Wambsganss said, pointing to Trump’s 2020 loss in Tarrant County. He won the county in 2024.

Tarrant is no longer a county where Republicans win 70% or 60% of votes, Wambsganss said.

“It’s more in the 50s, and if Republicans want to win, they’re going to have to fight for it, and we fought and fought and fought,” she said.

Wambsganss and campaign volunteers walked thousands of doors to try and reach people, she said. In the 24-hours before Election Day, volunteers made thousands of calls and texts targeted at high propensity voters.

Wambsganss said she’s been hearing from voters who weren’t aware that the race was happening, several of whom have never voted before. Her campaign is launching an outreach effort, she said.

“That’s what the Democrats do, and l will tell you, Republicans need to get better at it,” Wambsganss said.

Near the end of the interview, Wambsganss also noted that the winter storm during early voting didn’t help. The majority of conservative voters are older, and not comfortable driving on ice and snow, she said.

“I think it was a problem,” she said.

Did Leigh Wambsganss reach out to John Huffman voters?

Wambsganss, Rehmet and former Southlake Mayor John Huffman, a Republican, were all on the November 2025 ballot for the first round of voting in the special election, but since no candidate got more than 50% of the votes, she and Rehmet headed into Saturday’s runoff.

Huffman and Wambsganss largely treated the first election as a Republican primary of sort, where the two GOP candidates engaged in a heated race.

The former mayor shared his analysis of why Rehmet won and Wambsganss loss in the runoff in a Sunday X post.

“Voters showed up last night,” he said. “This was not a turnout problem. The GOP simply failed to meet a broader, less ideological electorate where it actually is in a runoff environment.”

The runoff was “marked by failed opportunities to unify,” Huffman said. He said there wasn’t outreach to the voters who supported him in November.

“Nor did Leigh’s campaign reach out to me until days before early voting began, leaving no time to unify Republicans or broaden the coalition,” Huffman said. “When she and I finally did meet, she ended the conversation almost as soon as it started.”

Wambsganss responded to the post in her interview with Davis.

“Listen, that race is past,” Wambsganss said, noting that Huffman didn’t challenge her in the 2026 midterms. She soon continued, “But my Republican November opponent, who split the Republican vote and caused this runoff, did not have the courtesy, never called to congratulate me, never offered support.”

Wambsganss said she did reach out to Huffman supporters.

“Not reaching out to his people? That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Nothing is further from the truth.”

Her campaign reached out to “every Republican voter,” Wambsganss said.

“This dragging people to the polls, we’ve got to get people to step up and pay attention,” she said.

Wambsganss said November will be a “binary choice” between Republican policies and policies supported by Democrats.