Democrats Swept Statewide Offices in Texas and Georgia [UPDATED]

Two sleeping giants, the Tejano and Black votes, energized two Southern states

Image made in Adobe Photoshop using a base image licensed from Adobe Stock; I needed Photoshop’s generative AI tool to add the labels

The big news last night in Texas was James Talarico winning a Senate seat and Gina Hinojosa surprising the crap out of everyone by beating Gregg Abbott for the Texas Governor’s seat.

These wins fulfilled a whole lot of empty dreams that began with Beto O’Rourke, whose get-out-the-vote infrastructure never went away after his close election loss to Ted Cruz in 2018.

But wait. There’s more. A lot more.

Democrats take over Texas

Take a look at this vote for Lieutenant Governor in Texas:

Dan Patrick has been a pain in the ass for Democrats for years. He’s gone.

Next up: Attorney General, formerly held by serial criminal Ken Paxton, who lost last night to James Talarico.

I don’t even know who Mayes Middleton, who wanted Paxton’s vacated position, is. And I don’t care.

Paxton used public funds to once proudly proclaim on the Texas Attorney General website that he had filed 100 lawsuits against the Biden/Harris administration, mostly because he wanted to be a pain in the ass to Democrats.

Now, the Texas Attorney General's Office is in the hands of Democrats. Ken Paxton might want to book an Aeroflot flight with Trump to Moscow, stat.

What about Railroad Commissioner? I know, that doesn’t sound important, but in Texas, it is. That office doesn’t commission railroads. It regulates the oil industry. How’d that go?

The oil industry in Texas is now answerable to a Democrat.

The Republican, a guy named something or another French, was an avowed racist who made himself famous by complaining about “those” people celebrating a University of Texas football win. Now, we don’t even care about his first name. He will return to beneath the rocks from whence he came.

One reaction I saw on Fox News for the thirty seconds I watched that insipid network came from a Republican who said, “Maybe we should stop nominating clowns.”

What about other Texas state offices?

More Democratic wins:

What about the courts? Ditto.

See the asterisks next to all those Republican names? Those are incumbents. Four losses for Republicans. Democrats are now on the verge of controlling Texas courts. Even the Supreme one, where four of nine justices were up for reelection, and all of them lost to Democrats.

Note: The Democrat was Kristen Hawkins, the Republican was Kyle. Not related

Even the new judicial system that Greg Abbott created to favor the oil industry took a hit.

Yes, Greg Abbott created a new judicial system so that the oil industry could do whatever it wanted.

I’ll let Texas Scorecard explain this, because I cut my thumb opening my fiftieth bottle of beer last night (just kidding, I don’t drink, but if I did, whoowee, would I have a headache this morning!):

The Texas Legislature established Texas’ Fifteenth Court of Appeals in 2023, and it began operating in September 2024. Unlike the First through Fourteenth regional Courts of Appeals, the Fifteenth Court is a statewide court, set up to hear civil appeals involving state government and appeals from the Texas Business Court.

The Fifteenth Court currently has three seats, including a chief justice and two justices, but is set to expand to five seats in September 2027. Justices are elected statewide to six-year terms, of which today’s election was the first. Their terms are not staggered.

When the Court began operations in 2024, Abbott appointed Chief Justice Scott Brister and Justices Scott Field and April Farris to serve for two years, before the first statewide election would take place in 2026. All three Republican justices sought re-election.

For the position of chief justice, Brister was defeated by challenger Jerry Zimmerer (D).

For Place 2, Field was defeated by challenger Tom Baker (D).

For Place 3, Farris was defeated by challenger Marc M. Meyer (D).

So Abbott created a court for the oil companies to rely on when faced with lawsuits. Then Democrats took it over during the Talarico sweep.

How’s that Texas book banning process coming along? Well, until last night, just fantastic — for those who believe in censorship. Then, last night, four Fahrenheit 451 freaks got iced.

Not a sweep, obviously, but censorship took a serious hit last night.

Even the Texas House of Representatives is contested as I write this, with 70 Democratic winners and 60 Republicans out of a total of 150. Even if Republicans hold on to the House, it won’t be by much, and they will need to work with a Democratic governor to get anything done.

They literally won’t know what to do with that information after all these years of Republican dominance.

The only solace for Republicans was the Texas Senate, where they still hold a clear majority. There, incumbents for both parties won overwhelmingly, which is weird, given the results from the rest of the evening.

You can keep up with Texas legislature results here:

https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2026

The Tejano Wave

The Tejano vote in Texas was a sleeping giant.¹ The regime’s insane immigration policies woke it up with a vengeance. If the regime had merely done what the wrecker-in-chief promised during the 2024 presidential election, which was to restrict deportation efforts to criminals, many Tejanos, especially those living along the Rio Grande, would have given a thumbs up. There’s a low tolerance within a large minority of Tejanos for folks who don’t come across the border “the right way.”

Open immigration people like me can critique that all we want, but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground, or opinions. Stephen Miller did that for us.

My main concern about Texas was that it is so easy to vote a straight ticket there. Turns out a lot of people did. For Democrats.

‌Georgia is now Blue

Meanwhile, Georgia has turned blue. Why? How did this happen?

Say hello to Stacey Abrams:

Image from Stacey Abrams’ website

After she lost a close Gubernatorial race to Republican Governor Brian Kemp, she vowed to establish a permanent get-out-the-vote (GOTV) infrastructure in Georgia, especially within the Black community. She accomplished her goal.

You can also call this the “Black Churches Gone Wild” election. Black churches launched a massive GOTV campaign under the banner, “Too big to rig.” And that’s exactly what we got across the nation.

This is not to take anything away from Jon Ossoff, who became a force of his own as he mercilessly took down Trump almost every day during the campaign. But without Abrams, it wouldn’t have mattered. Someone needed to fix the Democrats’ election machine in Georgia, which was broken. Abrams has been working on that problem for years.

The same problem exists in Florida, where Democrat Angie Nixon, who lost a close Senate race, has vowed to do the same thing as Abrams did in Georgia.

In other words, it’s reasonable to say this: You’re next, Florida.

What Ossoff did was just as cool, of course, because his easy win created a coattail effect that swept every single statewide office into Democratic hands. He’s now an obvious leading presidential contender. The fact that Georgia now has a Democratic governor, who would appoint a Senator to replace Ossoff if he runs for president, helps pave the way.

To be clear, Ossoff is not Joe Manchin. He’s a progressive Democrat. Progressives are proving their viability in the voting booth, and Georgia is becoming a template for other Southern states.

As I write this, Democrat Scott Colum is leading by about 30 votes for Senator of Mississippi.

What’s that they say about everything Trump touches?

Impeachment and conviction are now on the table

Republicans will be looking for payback. One beautiful thing about this country is we love us some retribution. Republicans will sputter invectives about Democrats before moving on to the real source of their pain: Trump.

It’s possible that when Democrats impeach Trump again, this time they’ll get a conviction with help from fed-up (and still classless) Republicans seeking to punish someone for their heavy losses.

UPDATE(S)

It’s not just Georgia and Texas. Quoting the New York Times:

The Democratic surge on Tuesday netted at least 330 state legislative seats, from New Hampshire to Arizona, giving the Democrats full control of 22 state governments and making them the majority in a dozen statehouse chambers where they had been the minority party.

The Texas State House of Representatives is officially in Democratic hands, too.

This is huge. Capturing state legislatures takes away the power of Republicans to gerrymander and otherwise circumvent the federal system.

Also: It looks like Democrat Scott Colum has won a U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi.

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Notes

Thanks for reading! The screenshots of election results come from the New York Times:

🎁 Ruminato Gift Link:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/11/03/us/elections/results-texas.html 🎁

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Footnotes

The term Tejano, derived from the Spanish adjective tejano or (feminine) tejana (and written in Spanish with a lower-case t), denotes a Texan of Mexican descent, thus a Mexican Texan or a Texas Mexican. The term received greater currency at the end of the twentieth century than previously with subsequent changes in nuance and usage. It encompasses cultural manifestations in language, literature, art, music, and cuisine.

1. From: Texas State Historical Association. “Understanding Tejano Identity: History and Cultural Significance.” Texas State Historical Association, n.d. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/tejano.

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