Did Republican Leigh Wambsganss’ Patriot Mobile ties sway state Senate voters?
A Republican candidate’s role in helping to get conservative candidates elected to school boards in Keller and Southlake was a factor for some North Texas voters in Saturday’s Senate District 9 runoff.
Republican Leigh Wambsganss lost the Jan. 31 Senate District 9 runoff election to Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a union leader and aircraft mechanic, who successfully flipped what’s been viewed as a solidly red area.
Wambsganss is deeply entrenched in local Republican politics and well-known in education circles, as the chief communications officer for Patriot Mobile. The business describes itself as a Christian conservative cell phone provider. Wambsganss used to serve as executive director of the political action committee, but resigned to run for the North Texas Senate seat.
Its political arm was influential in helping elect board members in the Carroll, Grapevine-Colleyville, Keller and Mansfield school districts in 2022 and has continued to wade into local politics in the years since with varied success.
Wambsganss also helped start the Southlake Families PAC in 2020 to combat the school district’s plans for diversity and inclusion. The situation put the city on a national stage. Her husband, Andy, served as mayor of Southlake from 2003-09.
In the days since the election upset, pundits and politicos have wondered what happened and what it could mean for November. One theory is that complacent Republicans stayed at home. Others view the outcome as a rebuke of the White House. Voters expressed frustration with political extremism in interviews with the Star-Telegram.
While it likely wasn’t enough to sway the election one way or another, for at least some voters, Wambsganss’ ties to the politicization of local school boards were a factor.
What voters said about Patriot Mobile
For Buddy Luce, a former Southlake Carroll school board president, Wambsganss’ Patriot Mobile ties were enough to disqualify her from getting his vote.
Luce said Wambsganss has a tortured history with the district, and he can’t support someone who doesn’t support public schools. On Election Day, Luce was protesting ICE near the Southlake Town Hall, one of the most popular voting locations in the county.
“What Leigh Wambsganss has done personally as a wife of an ex-mayor of Southlake to the Carroll ISD is despicable and atrocious, and I’ll never forgive her for it,” Luce said.
Wambganss and Rehmet’s campaigns did not return requests for comment.
Luce wasn’t the only one to take issue with her ties to the group.
In Keller, Patriot Mobile-backed candidates were on the school board during debate over a proposed split of the district, a fight that evoked passionate opposition from many residents. The idea was ultimately tossed out, but was on the mind of Greg Goodrich as he went to vote at Summerglen Library.
Goodrich, a traditionally Republican voter, said he lives “on the wrong side of the tracks.”
“That’s not what got me out here today, and that’s not particularly what got me to vote for [Rehmet], but that has been on the family’s mind here recently,” Goodrich said.
For Jeff Mueller, a Republican precinct chair who was also at the Fort Worth library on Election Day, said Wambsganss’ affiliation with Patriot Mobile wasn’t a concern to him but has been for other voters.
The extremes the group has gone to and the Keller school district divide brought a lot of people out to the polls, he said.
Jacob Folger cast his ballot on day one of early voting, but that didn’t keep him away from the polls on Jan. 31. Standing outside Keller Town Hall, the Rehmet supporter urged those heading inside to vote based on the merits of the person, not party.
He said dynamics related to the split and Patriot Mobile factored into the race.
“Whether it’s one way or another, I think that the Patriot Mobile issue and the school district split has drawn a lot of attention to this area’s politics,” Folger said.
That was true for Michelle Wallace of Hurst, a Democratic voter who supported Rehmet. She said Patriot Mobile has worked to “tear down public education.”
“They have manipulated school boards to get their non-public education candidates on the school board, which is unheard of,” said Wallace, who works as special education counselor for a public school district.
How did Wambsganss, Rehmet perform in suburban school districts?
Voters typically have multiple issues on their minds when they go to vote, said TCU political science professor Jim Riddlesperger.
He expects a reaction to national politics was the biggest contributing factor in the district’s Democratic swing. Something like opposition to the proposed Keller split may have made a marginal difference, but not a big one, Riddlesperger said.
Still, the election results offer insight into how voters from school districts targeted by Patriot Mobile behaved.
In the Keller school district, Rehmet won 53% of votes, according to a Star-Telegram analysis of unofficial election results. In the Southlake-Carroll school district, Wambsganss won 57%. Some of the precincts used in the calculation fall within more than one school district.
Both candidates have included education among their campaign priorities.
“Texas has made great strides in education policy in the previous sessions; however, we must prioritize learning, not indoctrination, DEI, or divisive ideologies,” Wambsganss said in a candidate questionnaire ahead of the runoff. “Our schools need to be fully funded, and teachers need to be paid fairly and equipped with all the tools they need to educate and inspire the future leaders of this state.”
In an interview ahead of the election, Rehmet said he’d heard Patriot Mobile come up a handful of times while on the campaign trail.
“What more I’m hearing is that there’s an overarching theme here: People are wanting something different,” he said. “People are not wanting to campaign in the world of outrage. They want actual, real folks to get elected and to fix the problems that we’re dealing with day-to-day.”
Wambsganss and Rehmet face off again in the November general election.
This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 1:14 PM.
