Patrick blames Republicans for Fort Worth loss. Will that work this fall? | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Patrick blames Republican voters and a GOP candidate for Fort Worth loss
- He urges party unity behind the November Republican nominee to avoid losses
- Patrick warns small turnout shifts could cost Republicans statewide control
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick thinks he knows why Fort Worth elected a Democrat to the Texas Senate.
He knows exactly whom to blame: Republicans.
To Patrick, you are a Bad Republican if you don’t vote for any hardline MAGA candidate chosen by the party poobahs or backed by the two West Texas guys who spend their oil billions trying to impose Christian theocracy.
On the other hand, if you march to the polls in November and vote for every Republican, even the ones who want the government to round up and deport one-third of the U.S. or prosecute in vitro fertilization as if it’s mass murder, then you are an Official Dan Patrick Good Republican.
In recent speeches, including a major appearance in Austin, Patrick has repeatedly blamed Republican voters and a third-place Republican candidate for the party’s Jan. 31 loss in a special election runoff to fill the Fort Worth state Senate seat.
If you’re one of the 21,699 voters who chose one of two Republican candidates in the Nov. 4 special election but then either didn’t show up in the runoff — or, like 1 out of 5 Republicans, outright rejected the party’s candidate — then to Patrick, YOU are the problem.
YOU are what’s wrong with the Republican Party, Dan says.
Not the party’s choice of flawed candidates.
Not its ongoing MAGA lurch.
Not its insistence on teaching Bible scripture in public schools and hanging Ten Commandments posters as political force-fields, but not showing living witness for love, grace or Christian faith.
Patrick continues to single out Southlake Republican Leigh Wambsganss’ loss to Fort Worth Democrat Taylor Rehmet on Jan. 31 in a Senate district dominated in 2024 by President Donald Trump.
The two will meet again in the general election Nov. 3 with the seat really on the line. Right now — partly because Patrick refuses to recognize him or assign him any duties — Rehmet hasn’t really won the seat.
He’s only won a chair and an office until the Senate convenes again Jan. 12.
In Patrick’s keynote speech to the Texas Public Policy Forum on April 8, he continued to openly belittle Rehmet along with those who had supported Southlake Republican John Huffman, a distant third-place candidate in the special election with Rehmet and Patrick’s hand-picked candidate, Wambsganss.
Rehmet, Patrick said, was “a 33-year-old single guy no one ever heard of.”
He made “single guy” sound like a slur.
And if no one ever heard of Rehmet, it’s amazing how he got elected president of the machinists’ union at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, one of the largest mother lodes of votes in Tarrant County.
“[He] just slapped his name on the ballot for the hell of it,” Patrick said.
Then the 11-year Republican lieutenant governor, in the Senate for a total of 19 years, pretended to not even know a Democratic state senator’s name.
“His name is Taylor — “ Patrick paused and squinted into the audience — “REM-ett? Re-METT?”
“I mean, he has nothing to do right now,” Patrick went on.
Unless he wins in November.
And that’s what worries Patrick.
Republicans go into the fall with a ballot that includes some far-right MAGA insurgents — probably Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate, comptroller candidate Don Huffines, maybe Westover Hills Republican Bo “Deport 100 Million People” French for a seat on the commission that oversees Texas energy production.
Republicans generally hold about a 7-point edge in Texas.
A typical election would finish 53%-47% or 54%-46%.
But that means if only about 1 in 12 voters is mad enough at Trump to switch to a Democrat — say state Rep. James Talarico for U.S. Senate, Sen. Sarah Eckhardt for comptroller or Rep. Jon Rosenthal for that energy commission — then Republicans lose a statewide election.
It would be the first since George W. Bush ushered them into their current 32-year winning streak.
If Paxton or Trump’s endorsed candidates like Huffines or Wambsganss lose in November, is that their own fault?
Or Republican voters’?
Here’s what Patrick said:
“We have one nasty race, and I’m just going to call it for what it is, for the U.S. Senate, and it troubles me,” Patrick told the audience.
Win or lose, Paxton or U.S. Sen. John Cornyn should endorse the November Republican candidate, Patrick said:
In other words, Cornyn’s voters should support someone he’s said should be in prison.
“If 10% to 15% of their sides don’t turn out and vote, James Talarico is going to win,” Patrick said, adding that might cost Republican control of the U.S. Senate. He said later that Republicans also might even lose control of the Texas House.
Then, Patrick revisited Fort Worth and Tarrant County and blamed Republicans for not supporting a religious conservative candidate from Southlake.
He said, “74,000 Republicans did not turn out to vote for her and she lost by 14,000 because they stayed home.”
North Tarrant County is “a red district,” Patrick said. ”So, anyone in this room who thinks we’re a red state, [Gov. Greg] Abbott can’t lose, Patrick can’t lose, that’s just not right.”
And Patrick actually said this: “We have more to do. ... We’ve only been in power for 23 years.”
If that ends, it’s clear whom Dan Patrick will blame.
Not Dan Patrick.
This story was originally published April 9, 2026 at 12:11 PM.
