Texas GOP Faces Financial Strain as Fringe Candidates Challenge Party Stability in Critical Midterm Election

Kelly Hancock embodies a classic archetype of the Texas Republican, recognizable across five decades of the state’s GOP history. A businessman who champions small-government ideals and minimal regulatory interference, Hancock’s appearance is reminiscent of a more affluent Rick Perry.

While his stance on social issues might be considered far-right elsewhere, within the Texas state Senate or his suburban Fort Worth district, Hancock’s views align with the mainstream. Over his 12-year tenure, he has become a familiar figure in this political landscape.

Texas has a unique way of accommodating its surplus of ambitious politicians: an unusually large number of statewide elected positions. In Austin, it’s common to encounter officials brandishing lapel pins and supported by taxpayer-funded communications teams, distributing oversized business cards.

Among these roles, the position of comptroller of public accounts stands out as particularly perplexing. The reasoning behind the decision in 1850 to elect the state’s chief financial officer directly remains unclear. However, this role has consistently attracted politicians with statewide ambitions, who are as comfortable with spreadsheets as they are with political maneuvering, much like Kelly Hancock.

Last year, the previous comptroller, Glenn Hegar, transitioned to a significantly more prominent role as chancellor of Texas A&M University. Despite the comptroller’s office managing hundreds of billions in investment funds, it lacks the allure of a college football team—a notable advantage for the Aggies, complemented by a $1.3 million salary package.

The most puzzling statewide elected gig, though, has got to be the comptroller of public accounts. Why it was deemed desirable in 1850 to have direct elections for the state CFO is unclear, but, since then, it has remained a destination for politicians of statewide ambition with more spreadsheets than spurs. Politicians like Kelly Hancock. 

Last year, the previous comptroller, Glenn Hegar, got picked for a much bigger gig as chancellor of Texas A&M University. The comptroller’s office has hundreds of billions of dollars in investment funds, but it has no football team: Advantage Aggies. (The $1.3 million pay package doesn’t hurt, either.)

When Hegar moved up, that opened a spot in the broad firmament of Texas statewide politics. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) tapped Hancock, a likely pick since he has been loyal, has his own money to seed a run for a full term this fall, and, as previously mentioned, the hair. The other factor in Hancock’s favor was that his district is rock-ribbed Republican and would be no trouble to keep red given that he won reelection by 20 points four years ago. No Democrat has won there since the 1990s when it was redrawn to favor affluent, suburban Denton and Tarrant counties.   

Until last week, that is.

To hear Texas Democrats tell it, the victory of Taylor Rehmet in Saturday’s special election to replace Hancock is a repudiation of the GOP and a harbinger of a blue November. Even the state’s Republican lieutenant governor (statewide elected, of course) called it “a wake-up call for Republicans across Texas.” Maybe. Or maybe just a wake-up call for a certain kind of Texas Republican, and not the well-coiffured statehouse slickster kind.

Texas uses a two-step process for special elections. In round one, all the declared candidates participate, regardless of party. If no candidate gets an outright majority, the top two go to a runoff. In the race to replace Hancock, the first round was in November. It saw Rehmet, the lone Democrat, face off with two Republicans: John Huffman, a former mayor of suburban Southlake, and Leigh Wambsganss, a MAGA organizer.

Wambsganss had climbed the ranks of the Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA before landing a gig doing a MAGA-coded cellular service, Patriot Mobile. A former beauty queen and TV news reporter, it was no surprise that she won President Trump’s endorsement in the race. Not that Huffman was exactly John Connally. Huffman wants to “use all means necessary, including our military” to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally and called school administrators “Marxist authoritarians.” That seems unlikely in a place with a median household income of $250,000 and a mall with a Tesla dealership and an Apple store, but you can’t be too careful, I guess.

The top vote-getter in November, though, was Rehmet, an aircraft mechanic at the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, where he became the president of the union local. While Rehmet may have come out on top, there had been more than enough Republican votes to win for the red team in Saturday’s runoff once it was a two-person race.

You expect a little turnout decline from a general election to a runoff — maybe something like the 2,285-vote drop-off Rehmet saw. What you typically don’t see is what happened to Wambsganss: a 21,747-vote decline from the combined Republican turnout in November.

Sky-high Democratic enthusiasm of the kind that has been propelling blue team wins in unlikely locations for the past year explains the size and relative durability of Rehmet’s vote share. But it does not account for the Republican collapse. That Wambsganss did worse by any metric in a two-person race than she did in a three-way contest says some very worrisome things for Republicans in Texas and elsewhere.

Not to take anything away from Rehmet’s campaign — he’s got a good story to tell and presented himself as an effective mainstream alternative — but this was a Republican loss more than a Democratic win. And the reason is no mystery. 

Hancock would have won a snap election against Rehmet. Maybe not by 20 points, but probably without breaking much of a sweat. Even a Republican candidate like Hancock, one that seemed normal and competent, would have probably done fine. Conversely, in a regular election in a presidential year, even a fringe candidate like Wambsganss might have made it through. But what you can’t have is a bad candidate in a bad year, which is what Texas Republicans had.

Midterm primary season kicks off next month, and Texas is among the first to have a high-stakes race, with the ugly Senate battle on the Republican side between incumbent John Cornyn, scandal-soaked fringe favorite Attorney General Ken Paxton and mega-MAGA Rep. Wesley Hunt. 

Week after week in the spring and summer, Republicans across the country will be asked to make similar choices that pit general election viability with status signaling for the party’s activist base. How many Leigh Wambsgansses or Kelly Hancocks make it through to the fall will be what determines whether the GOP has a typically bad midterm for the party in power or gets smoked like a brisket.

Stirewalt is the politics editor for The Hill, veteran campaign and elections journalist and best-selling author of books about American political history.