A special election runoff on Saturday in the once reliably conservative suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas, has turned into a nail-biter for Republicans, who worry that even a narrow G.O.P. victory in the State Senate race could be a bad sign for their midterm prospects.
The contest has drawn in prominent Texas Democrats, including former Representative Beto O’Rourke, as well as Republican leaders, such as Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s hard-line lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who runs the State Senate.
“I’m very concerned about this election,” Mr. Patrick said in a radio interview last week as he implored conservative listeners to vote. “Please, please, please, please.”
The concern is based on the odd timing of the election, set for Saturday, and the strong performance of the Democratic candidate, Taylor Rehmet, during the initial round of voting in November. Mr. Rehmet, a 33-year-old first-time candidate and local union leader, nearly won a majority of votes — more than 47 percent — in a district that in 2024 favored Donald J. Trump by 17 percentage points.
The race is still a long shot for Democrats. More people voted for either the Republican finalist, Leigh Wambsganss, or her G.O.P. rival in the three-way November election than for Mr. Rehmet. But even a psychological boost could help Democrats, who believe they have their best chance in years to win a statewide race in Texas this November.
“I’ve had several people call this election the canary in the coal mine,” Ms. Wambsganss, a longtime conservative activist, said in an interview in the staunchly Republican suburb of Southlake.
Four years ago, the suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth were at the vanguard of a successful conservative push to take control of local school boards across the country. Nearly a dozen social conservative school board candidates won with financial support from a cellphone company, Patriot Mobile, that has a Christian conservative political arm.
But bans on books and on discussions of L.G.B.T.Q. issues pushed some voters too far. Last year the suburban red wave appeared to crest, when back-to-basics moderates ousted many overtly partisan social conservatives.
Mr. Rehmet’s efforts to connect his legislative race to the school board fight has been made easier by Ms. Wambsganss, who spearheaded Patriot Mobile’s political activism during the 2022 school board elections and still works at the company.
“People were really tired of the partisanship,” Mr. Rehmet said in an interview.
The district of nearly a million residents covers northern Tarrant County and parts of Fort Worth. Democrats have seen gains in the city, which is now among the nation’s most populous, and in its surrounding suburbs.
In 2018, during the last major Democratic wave in Texas, Mr. O’Rourke won Tarrant by a slim margin as a U.S. Senate candidate. Joseph R. Biden Jr. won it in 2020. But the county swung back to Republicans in recent national elections as the school fights raged on.
Last year, the state of Texas moved to take control of the Fort Worth public school system — as it had in Houston — over the objections of many parents, boosting the importance of state legislative races.
“It isn’t just a local issue — it’s a state issue,” said Taylor Duncan, a business consultant who has three children in Fort Worth public schools and who opposed the takeover. “My support is behind the pro-public education candidate.”
Farther north, in the conservative city of Keller, where families often relocate for the quality of local schools, a turning point came after hard-line conservatives on the school board considered splitting the district into an affluent school system and one that was less so. Many parents rebelled and the plan was scrapped, but ill feelings lingered.
In the wake of the debate, Jennifer Erickson, the parent of a 12-year-old, defeated a conservative member of the nonpartisan school board who was elected in 2022 with the backing of Patriot Mobile.
“I was just a mom who got frustrated,” she said in an interview. “They took books out of the classrooms. It was a lot of distraction,” she added, saying she wanted the school board “to be boring again.”
The mayor of Keller, Armin Mizani, a Republican, said that Tarrant “is still a red county,” adding that he was supporting Ms. Wambsganss “as strongly as we can.” (Mr. Mizani is also running for a State House seat this year.)
Mr. Patrick, the lieutenant governor, described Wambsganss as “a hard worker and committed Christian.”
Ms. Wambsganss said her challenge was making sure reliably Republican voters were aware of the oddly timed runoff and would not take the race for granted. Her priorities include lowering property taxes and expanding protections for gun owners who lawfully fire their weapons.
“There is no secret I am a very conservative Republican,” she said.
She attributed the losses in recent school board elections to increased attention and campaign spending from liberal groups. Patriot Mobile has largely stopped supporting school board candidates in recent elections, even as it has contributed to Ms. Wambsganss’s State Senate campaign, the company said.
For Mr. Rehmet, the challenge has been raising his profile and emphasizing his outsider status. He appears uncomfortable with party labels; his burnt-orange yard signs describe him in three words: “Machinist. Veteran. Texan.”
“I’m a working person,” Mr. Rehmet said in an interview, sitting in an empty union hall across from the Lockheed Martin fighter jet plant where he works. “To me it’s not red or blue,” he said, adding, “We have to pick between two identities that already have negative connotations.”
He grew up Republican, he said, because that’s what both his parents were. After joining his union and seeing the benefits he got as a young worker, he began to shift politically because he saw Democrats as being more supportive of organized labor.
Mr. Rehmet has also promised to address rising property taxes and has made his support for public education, including vocational programs, central to his campaign.
Whoever wins the runoff will serve only for the rest of the year. Both candidates are already registered to run in the November election, girding up for a long fight.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
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