I woke up this morning in a different Texas.The
For most of my adult life, election night in this state has followed the same script. The numbers come in, the maps turn red, and working people get told to wait until next time. In the 2026 midterm election, Texas threw out the script. James Talarico is headed to the United States Senate, Gina Hinojosa is our next governor, and the blue wave everyone said would break on the Red River rolled straight across the state instead.
It’s a new day in Texas. Let’s talk about it.
Talarico wins the Texas Senate race, Hinojosa unseats Abbott
I had a good feeling about Talarico. The former sixth grade teacher and seminarian from Round Rock beat Attorney General Ken Paxton with roughly 55% of the vote, and Paxton conceded a little after 10 p.m. It’s the first time a Democrat has won a U.S. Senate race in Texas since 1988. Trump and his allies poured millions into stopping him and turned him into a national punching bag at rallies across the country. It didn’t work.
Then came the part I honestly didn’t see coming. Gina Hinojosa unseated Greg Abbott, a three-term incumbent, and Abbott called her to concede. She’ll be the first Democrat elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards in 1990, and the first Latina ever to lead this state.
Only the third woman to lead Texas
Hinojosa is only the third woman ever to serve as governor of Texas. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson won the office in 1924, after her husband had been impeached and removed from it. Ann Richards won in 1990, the first woman to be elected in her own right. Then Texas went more than three decades without electing a woman, or a Democrat, to the job.
There’s a full circle here, too. Early in her career, Hinojosa worked as a special assistant to Governor Richards. The last woman to hold that office helped shape the next one.
And Texas wasn’t alone. Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress last night. This wasn’t a fluke in one state. It was a country deciding it had seen enough.
How the Texas redistricting gamble backfired
Remember 2025? At Trump’s urging, Texas Republicans tore up the state’s congressional map in the middle of the decade, aiming to squeeze out five more GOP seats in the U.S. House. Democratic legislators left the state to try to block it. Abbott and the Legislature pushed it through anyway, and the courts let the new map stand for 2026.
It blew up in their faces. Republicans lost four of the five districts they drew to flip, holding only the 32nd in North Texas. Then Democrats flipped two seats Republicans already held. After all that, Texas Republicans will end up with fewer House seats than they started with.
The San Antonio area tells the story. The GOP redrew the 35th District to push out Rep. Greg Casar and hand the seat to a Republican. Democrat Johnny Garcia won it anyway. Republicans bet that the Latino voters who shifted toward them in 2024 were theirs to keep. In South Texas, those voters came back hard.
The Texas map also kicked off a redistricting arms race across the country, and California answered with a new map of its own. Nationally, the same story played out: a scheme meant to protect a thin Republican House majority helped hand Democrats the House instead.
You can draw the lines however you want. You can’t draw your way around people who are fed up.
Democrats didn’t play it safe, and that’s why they won
I’ve been saying this for a long time: be for the people, speak for the people, and the people will carry you. Last night proved it.
This country needed Democrats to stop hedging, and in Texas they finally did. They didn’t hold back. They didn’t apologize. They didn’t run as Republicans-lite and hope nobody noticed.
Talarico called Ken Paxton the most corrupt politician in Texas, said it plainly, and kept saying it. He named billionaires as the problem instead of tiptoeing around the donor class. He talked about his faith without letting anyone else define it for him. Hinojosa ran on taking back Texas schools from state takeovers and said outright that she would fire Education Commissioner Mike Morath to do it.
For years, the consultant class told Texas Democrats to play it safe, keep their heads down, and not scare anybody. That playbook lost for thirty years. What won was conviction. Voters can tell the difference between a candidate who’s reading poll numbers and one who actually means it.
Why this matters for the rest of us
This blog exists because I believe the people who do the work in this country deserve a government that works for them. For thirty years, Texas has been run by and for the people at the top, and the rest of us have been handed the bill: property taxes that keep climbing, a grid we can’t trust, public schools starved to fund vouchers, and health care that depends on whether your employer feels generous.
Talarico ran on a simple idea. Working people of every party have more in common with each other than with the billionaires who profit from keeping us divided. He told folks who hated politics and had never voted that they had a home in his campaign, and they showed up.
Winning was the hard part, but it’s only the first part. Now comes the work of holding the people we just elected to the promises that got them there. That’s what accountability means, and it applies to our side too.
A promise to my daughter
My wife and I are expecting our first child, a little girl. Not long ago I wrote her a letter and made her a promise: that I would do whatever I could to leave her a better world than the one I was handed. A Texas where her rights aren’t up for debate, where her teachers have what they need, and where her future isn’t decided by whoever writes the biggest check.
Last night, I got to keep a little piece of that promise. Not alone, and not because of anything I did by myself. My wife and I voted, and so did millions of other Texans who looked at their own kids, their parents, and their neighbors and decided they deserved better.
So thank you. To everyone who knocked a door, made a call, drove a neighbor to the polls, or stood in a long line after a long shift: thank you. You did this. My daughter will be born into a state that just proved it can change, and that means more to me than I know how to put into words.
Time to start flipping tables
All through this campaign, Talarico closed his speeches the same way. He’d talk about a barefoot rabbi who walked into the seat of power and overturned the tables of injustice, and then he’d say: “It’s time to start flipping tables.”
Well, Texas just flipped the biggest table in the house. Now let’s get to work.
Let’s go!
2026 Texas election: quick answers
Who won the 2026 Texas Senate race? Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton with about 55% of the vote. He is the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race in Texas since 1988.
Who won the 2026 Texas governor race? Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated three-term Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. She is the first Democrat elected governor since Ann Richards in 1990 and the first Latina governor in Texas history.
How many women have been governor of Texas? Three: Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, Ann Richards, and now Gina Hinojosa.
Did the Texas redistricting work for Republicans? No. Republicans lost four of the five districts their 2025 map was drawn to flip, then lost two seats they already held.
Sources
- KUT: Talarico wins Senate race, Hinojosa unseats Abbott
- Houston Public Media: Talarico ends GOP’s 32-year statewide streak
- NPR: Democrat James Talarico wins Texas Senate seat
- NBC DFW: Texas turns blue on wins from Talarico, Hinojosa
- Texas Tribune: Texas Republicans’ gerrymander backfires
- Fox 4: Five takeaways from Texas’ 2026 midterm results
- Axios San Antonio: GOP Texas redistricting backfires
- Fox News: Johnny Garcia wins redrawn TX-35
- Wikipedia: Women in Texas government
- Vote Smart: Gina Hinojosa biography
- Christian Post: Talarico on Paxton, “flipping over some tables”
- Fox 7 Austin: Talarico’s “flipping tables” speech
