Rehmet’s Race

Rehmet has a charismatic conversational style — not the polished magnetism of a Zohran Mamdani, but the easy confidence of a trusted coworker. Since his upset victory, Rehmet has been making the media rounds. In a manner reminiscent of Bernie Sanders, but more thoughtful than reflexive, he redirects questions about Trump or hot-button cultural topics to the fundamentals of his campaign: working-class issues, funding Texas schools, the price of health care, and high property taxes.

In these media interviews, he also emphasizes another dimension of his campaign: “Listening to voters, not just talking at them, but talking with them,” as Rehmet said on CNN. After years of hemorrhaging working-class support, the broad left could do with a lot more of this approach. The Rehmet campaign trained its volunteers in active listening; canvassers were encouraged to hear out voters’ concerns and to call the campaign and even Rehmet himself if they had a question they couldn’t answer. This kind of organizing has deep roots in the labor movement, and it reflects the democratic ethos of the Rehmet campaign. Instead of the typical one-way political pitch aimed at convincing people that you and your side are right, it was a campaign built on a simple question: What does the community need, and how can we get it?

That approach surfaced the key issues the campaign would fight for: fully funded schools, health care, and Texans’ right to join unions. As a military veteran himself, Rehmet could speak credibly about protecting veterans’ benefits — while making the case that all Texans deserve access to critical social services. The message was simple and appealing, and it generated a grassroots ground game that money couldn’t buy. Rehmet nearly won outright last November, and in the January runoff, he beat his opponent 57 percent to 43 percent.

Political pundits and strategists will tell you that if you want to win in red states, you need to run socially conservative on hot-button issues. Rehmet’s campaign didn’t do that. Rather, the campaign argued that politics has become too divisive and that the culture war itself is Exhibit A. Instead of getting bogged down by divisive topics, the campaign stayed focused on the material issues that affect everyday Texans. Not only did Rehmet win, but the groups that have been leaving the Democratic Party — working-class and Hispanic voters — showed up for him.

Despite Texas being home to over thirty million people, the state government has one of the shortest legislative sessions in the country, meeting for only 140 days every two years. Unless Governor Greg Abbott calls a special session, Rehmet will likely not cast a vote before he faces his opponent again. Luckily for Rehmet, the GOP has not handled this loss well, resorting to excuse-making and blaming the voters. And he will likely face the same opponent, whom he has now beaten twice.

That opponent is Leigh Wambsganss, a cartoonish embodiment of Texas MAGA. Wambsganss is the chief communications officer for Patriot Mobile, the country’s only “Christian conservative” cell phone company, based in Grapevine, Texas. Customers complain that service can be spotty, though one three-star review did note that “the agents are US-based and speak proper English, otherwise this would be a one-star review.”

The Tarrant County GOP has long been a hotbed of extremist right-wing politics. Until recently, the chairman of the county party was Bo French, who stepped aside and is now running for railroad commissioner. French became notorious for comments like warning his followers on X to “stay strapped, carry spare mags” to protect themselves from “hoards” that will be “chimping out.” He was talking about the potential expiration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

Despite its ludicrous leadership, the Tarrant County GOP has been a formidable force in recent decades, making Fort Worth the most important Republican stronghold in the state’s urban areas. Though it showed some cracks in 2018 and 2020, Trump still won the district handily in 2024. Leigh Wambsganss was armed with a $2.6 million war chest, the vast majority of that coming from just three sources, including the Christian nationalist oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. Rehmet raised just under $600,000, mostly from small donors.

Rehmet’s victory is a major break from decades of declining working-class political influence in Texas. But those who know Texas’s tradition of radical labor and populist movements shouldn’t be surprised that this breakthrough happened where it did. Over a century ago, a coalition of union workers and farmers came together to build a political movement that shook the Texas political establishment to its core. Could Rehmet’s victory be the first shot in a renewed campaign for working-class power in Texas?

Tarrant County’s Radical Roots

At the dawn of Texas’s radical labor history, Tarrant County and the state were controlled by a different conservative power: the Democratic Party. At the time, the state party was working to lure Northern capitalists into Texas, enticing the railroads with land and a weakened, disempowered workforce. This is not too different from today. But Texans have never been ones to take such affronts lying down. Membership in the Knights of Labor exploded as workers organized to fight back against the railroads.

Thousands of workers joined, fighting for an eight-hour workday, workplace protections, and an end to the hated Southern convict-leasing system that undercut free labor. In 1885, workers won a strike on the Wabash Railroad line owned by Jay Gould, but it was a short-lived victory. In 1886, labor leader Martin Irons called for a strike in response to the unjust firing of railroad workers. But Texas’s business elites, aligned with the government, crushed the strike. Gould hired strikebreakers and called on conservatives in Texas’s government for help. In the ensuing conflict, a violent confrontation at what became known as the Battle of Buttermilk Switch left workers dead.

The Great Southwest Strike was defeated. But that was not the end for Tarrant County. The brutality of the government and business power brought together an alliance of farmers and industrial laborers that would birth Texas populism.

The working people of Fort Worth saw clearly that the ruling Democratic Party would side with the bosses against them, even sanctioning violence against Texans who simply stood up for fair wages and dignity at work. It was this realization that helped Hiram Stokley Broiles become the sixth mayor of Fort Worth. For years, independents, greenbackers, Union Labor Party members, socialists, and members of the Farmers’ Alliance’s radical wing had been searching for an electoral opening. They found it in H. S. Broiles. Challenging the Democratic Party was no small feat, and Broiles and his allies became known as members of the “Dark Lantern Party,” an insult stemming from the fact that they often met in secret to avoid threats of violence from the ruling elite.

Just as with Rehmet’s victory, the people of Tarrant County bucked expectations in 1886 and swept Broiles into office. In office, he pushed to modernize the city, paving roads and cracking down on illegal businesses and brothels. The popularity of this independent labor candidate struck fear into the conservative establishment, especially in neighboring Dallas.

After winning two consecutive two-year terms, H. S. Broiles was unseated. But that wasn’t the end. Broiles had demonstrated that a coalition of working-class people — from the railroads to the countryside — could win power and govern. And it didn’t take long for that movement to grow. Armed with the Cleburne Demands, the growing farmer and labor alliance would form Texas’s greatest populist alternative, the People’s Party. Broiles’s defeat of the conservative establishment was just the beginning of a full-scale workers’ revolt in Texas. The movement won protections for workers, established the Railroad Commission, and gave farmers direct political power, as the People’s Party became the second-largest party in the state.

To defeat this movement, the Democrats had to resort to outright election fraud to keep their grasp on power in 1896. Broiles stood with the Texas radicals after his defeat, becoming a major figure in the People’s Party and, in the twentieth century, joining the next wave of Texas radicals in the Texas Socialist Party.

What we saw last week proved the point once more. In the best-case scenario, this latest spark in Tarrant County could reignite Texas labor and allow working people to reclaim their radical history.