After His Democratic Victory in Texas, a New Working-Class Star Rises
Taylor Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and union leader who pulled off a stunning upset on Saturday in a deep red Texas State Senate district, did not grow up focused on politics.
His father was an airplane mechanic. His mother worked in a beauty salon. Both were Republicans. Mr. Rehmet, 33, started to think about politics — and to drift to the Democratic Party — only after he landed a job at a factory in his 20s and began reaping union benefits and workplace protections. He came to believe that more Americans should have the same.
“If we had this, the middle class would be stronger,” Mr. Rehmet said in an interview last month in an empty union hall in Fort Worth, across from the Lockheed Martin fighter jet plant where he works as a machinist. Occasionally the sound of an F-35 test flight shook the building.
A first-time candidate barely known inside Texas let alone outside the state, Mr. Rehmet catapulted to national attention late Saturday when he defeated a hard-line Republican candidate by 14 percentage points. His victory came in a district in and around Fort Worth that President Trump carried by more than 17 points in 2024.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/politics/taylor-rehmet-texas-working-class-democrats.html