Shock Democratic upset in Texas shows voters still hate book bans

It’s rare that a local race can feel like an earthquake on the national political stage, but that’s exactly what happened over the weekend when Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a special election for the Texas state senate. The suburban ninth district, which sits outside Fort Worth and includes a town called White Settlement, is the very definition of a Republican stronghold. Donald Trump carried it by 17% in 2024. This month, although polling was tight, most observers predicted a Wambsganss victory. Instead, Rehmet decimated his opponent by 14 points, representing an eye-popping swing of 31% swing since the presidential election.

In the aftermath, most commentators have pointed to what is looking very much like a national turn away from Republicans and toward Democrats after a year of Trump’s failures and scandals. That’s certainly a big part of the story, but it’s still probably not enough to explain such a shocking result in a district that has been deeply red for decades. To fill out the picture, it’s important to look at that most local of issues: education.

There are strong signs that Rehmet won in no small part because suburban Fort Worth has long been on the frontline in the culture war over book banning. Wambsganss built her political career advocating for strict censorship in schools and libraries, and her loss signals that, even in this very conservative district, people are getting sick of the far-right telling them what they cannot read.

Oscar-nominated director Kim Snyder was not as surprised as the pundits over Rehmet’s win. She has spent a lot of time in Texas in recent years, both to shoot and promote her documentary “The Librarians,” which premieres on PBS on Feb. 9. The film follows the struggles of school librarians who are facing off against Moms for Liberty and other far-right organizations attempting to purge library shelves of books that portray LGBTQ characters or contain historical information about racism or fascism. Snyder told Salon that the screenings of her movie, even in conservative areas, have been selling out.

“It’s showing that people really care about the issue of censorship,” she explained.

Snyder’s film follows the journey of a Courtney Gore, a Texas mom who initially supported Moms for Liberty, believing their falsehoods about “pornography” in school libraries. She “felt hoodwinked,” however, when she educated herself on the books being banned and realized they were not what she’d been led to believe. Soon, Gore discovered that the book banning campaign was the tip of the spear for what was a larger effort to dismantle public education in Texas that was funded by actors like Wambsganss and shady far-right billionaire donors like the Wilks brothers.

Gore is not alone, Snyder suggested. “A lot of moms were finding” they were being tricked into backing groups intent on “tearing down public education” and ending “separation of church and state,” she explained.

Audrey Wilson-Youngblood is a librarian in Rehmet’s district who used to work for a local school district but was driven out after Wambsganss and her political action committee, Patriot Mobile, helped elect a huge swath of pro-book banning candidates to the school board. Wilson-Youngblood is also featured in “The Librarians,” recounting her story of trying to fend off an all-out war of harassment and censorship aimed at the library staff in her district.

She agreed there is a “relationship” between Rehmet’s win and the backlash to the book bans. Wilson-Youngblood told Salon that screenings of “The Librarians” in the north Texas area have turned into de facto community organizing events due to the “conversations and connections that are formed.” At least one screening, she said, “turned into a candidate forum.” And Democrats aren’t the only ones turning out. She has met both moderates and “staunch generational Texas Republicans” who are “coming because they’re unhappy” with the assault on public schools.

“It can feel very lonely sometimes here in Texas,” Wilson-Youngblood said, but learning that large numbers of other Texans share a distaste for Moms for Liberty’s book-banning agenda has been “emboldening” people and driving them to get organized and vote.

Rehmet, a union leader and first time candidate, credited his win to issues like “lowering costs, health care and focusing on working people.” But he also notably told ABC News that “people are tired of campaigns of outrage.”

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Wambsganss was every inch the wild-eyed book-banning culture warrior he’s obliquely referring to. When the Republican spoke at the 2023 Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia, which Patriot Mobile sponsored, she declared “Our children belong to the Lord, not the government.” Wambsganss added that their school board takeover efforts are “a spiritual war.”

On Steve Bannon’s show in 2022, she argued that all books with LGBTQ characters should be banned on the grounds that it’s “normalizing a lifestyle that is a sexual choice,” even if there’s no sexual content in the books themselves. But Wambsganss’ efforts weren’t just restricted to homophobic censorship. The fear of crossing swords with authoritarian forces in the community got so bad that one school official was recorded saying that if a teacher had a book saying the Holocaust is wrong, they needed to balance it with a book that offered “opposing” views and “other perspectives.” If that sounds paranoid, it’s worth remembering that in 2020, Wambsganss posted that Black Lives Matter protesters “need to die.” With that in mind, it’s not ridiculous for educators to worry that she and her allies would get mad at criticism of historical fascist movements.

Far from running away from so-called “culture war” issues, as overpaid political consultants often prescribe, Rehmet’s victory suggests that anger over MAGA excesses can be harnessed to help Democrats win — including in improbable places. A J. David Goodman of the New York Times wrote before the election, Republicans in Texas have been trying to cede control of local school boards in places like Houston and Fort Worth over to the state. Progressives correctly believe this is part of a larger, radical agenda backed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to decimate public schools entirely, forcing parents to enroll their kids in religious private schools — or go without a decent education altogether. Even a lot of Republican voters do not want to lose robust public education, which is likely why Rehmet got a last minute surge of votes to propel him into a position to protect Texas schools.

As someone who grew up in the Lone Star State, it’s not a surprise to me that a lot of voters somehow found a way to back Trump but not Wambsganss. A lot of voters, especially those who don’t pay close attention to the news, saw the president’s playboy persona and crassness as reassurance that he’s not on board with the religious right’s book-banning agenda. Trump encouraged the false view that he’s a libertarian with campaign lies about how he would protect “free speech.” In reality, his first year in office has seen an all-out war on the First Amendment coming from the White House that includes banning books, destroying museum exhibits, trying to push comedians who mock Trump or MAGA off-air, and suing or even arresting journalists for reporting the news. Still, for people who don’t read real news, which unfortunately includes many Republican voters, the president’s loathing of free speech may not penetrate their consciousness.

Wambsganss, though, is a type of woman who is instantly recognizable to anyone who has lived in the Bible Belt: the crazy church lady who wants total control over the lives of her neighbors, dictating what they read, who they socialize with, how they spend their free time and who they have sex with. While most Republicans in the MAGA era either support or at least tolerate giving miserable theocrats that much power, there are still some holdouts who believe in personal liberty and separation of church and state. As Wilson-Youngblood pointed out, some of them out there want Patriot Mobile and Moms for Liberty to go away — and they may have even been willing to cross party lines in this election to make that happen.

The lesson from Texas’ ninth district certainly won’t apply to every Democrat running in this year’s midterms. Plenty of districts were untouched by the Moms for Liberty nonsense, while others, like Bucks County in Pennsylvania, displaced far-right candidates a couple election cycles ago, draining the issue of some salience.

But Rehmet’s win shows that, at least in some places, MAGA’s threats to peace and freedom on the local level remain a pressing concern. A lot of voters want the culture war chaos to go away, especially when it comes to schools, so the kids can concentrate on learning. In many places, Democrats can win with a message of protecting the right of kids to learn in peace, instead of being the targets of a mind control project run by Bible-thumpers. If it worked in suburban Fort Worth, it’s a strategy that could rack up Democratic wins in other red districts.

The post Shock Democratic upset in Texas shows voters still hate book bans appeared first on Salon.com.