2025 was a jam-packed year in Texas politics. It began with the election of a new House speaker for a regular legislative session that saw Gov. Greg Abbott secure his landmark private school voucher program and Republicans check off priorities ranging from tighter bail laws to a ban on land sales to people from certain foreign countries.
The year also brought the devastating July 4 Hill Country floods, which killed over 130 people, including dozens of children and counselors at Camp Mystic along the Guadalupe River. Lawmakers responded by passing a series of bipartisan bills meant to bolster the state’s flood infrastructure and disaster response and improve the safety of camps located in or near floodplains.
During the same overtime legislative session, the GOP-controlled Legislature approved a new congressional map demanded by President Donald Trump and designed to hand the GOP up to five additional seats in the U.S. House during this year’s midterms. Republicans pushed the new lines through over intense opposition from House Democrats, who fled the state to temporarily deny the headcount necessary to pass legislation. A panel of federal judges initially blocked the map before it was restored by the U.S. Supreme Court.
With 2025 behind us, The Texas Tribune’s politics team has compiled five of the top political stories we are watching in 2026, when voters will have their first chance to make their opinions known on the events of the last 12 months.
Who will claim Texas’ Senate seat?
Sen. John Cornyn is facing his toughest reelection bid yet after decades as a U.S. senator from Texas, battling in a three-way Republican primary that has already turned contentious.
Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, two powerhouses in Texas Republican politics, have been slinging mud at each other for months after Paxton announced his Senate bid in April. Challenging Cornyn from his right, Paxton has alleged that the state’s senior senator is out of touch with grassroots voters in Texas and is insufficiently conservative. Cornyn and his allies have already spent tens of millions touting his loyalty to President Donald Trump on the airwaves. And the senator is banking on a bevy of Paxton scandals turning voters off, from the bribery allegations underpinning his 2023 impeachment in the Texas House to his wife divorcing him on “biblical grounds” this summer.
U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a second-term GOP congressman from Houston, complicated the race further with his October entry. Hunt is pitching himself to voters as a younger alternative to either candidate with MAGA credentials — but without the ethical baggage. With three prominent candidates, the Republican primary seems likely to head to a runoff and drag out through May.
On the Democratic side, two candidates are vying for the opportunity to do what has proven impossible for the past 30 years — win a statewide race in Texas. Dallas U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and Austin state Rep. James Talarico emerged from a lengthy list of interested candidates to compete in the March primary. Democrats, enthusiastic about a midterm election in a Trump year and taking advantage of Republicans’ bruising primary, are bullish on the Senate race. The last time Trump was in the White House but not on the ballot, Democrats came within three percentage points of taking down Sen. Ted Cruz.
But any statewide contest in Texas is still an uphill climb for a Democrat. And with several competitive downballot races in November, particularly in South Texas, Crockett or Talarico hope to carry other Democrats in House, legislative and municipal races across the finish line as well. The race to replace Ken Paxton
The race to replace Ken Paxton
Who will be Texas’ next top lawyer? For the first time in more than a decade, it’s guaranteed that Ken Paxton won’t be taking the title. Paxton, who is forgoing reelection to run for Senate, has turned Texas’ attorney general’s office into the conservative legal movement’s strongest state-level ally. Under his leadership, the agency has found new and more creative ways to advance conservative goals, block liberal policies and ensnare nonprofits, corporations and even state agencies in costly, contentious litigation.
Now, four Republicans are vying to take the reins in what promises to be an expensive and potentially bruising primary. U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, leads the pack on name recognition and touts a valuable endorsement from his former boss, Sen. Ted Cruz. State Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, one of the Legislature’s most conservative members and a top GOP donor, is pouring millions of his own money into his race. State Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, is running on her experience as a prosecutor and judge. Aaron Reitz, Paxton’s former right-hand man who left the Trump Department of Justice to run for the seat, is touting Paxton’s endorsement and Trump’s claim that he is a “true MAGA attorney.”
On the Democratic side, three candidates are fighting to reclaim the office after 30 years of Republican ownership. State Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, is running on his experience as a litigator and legislator. Former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski, who ran unsuccessfully for the nomination last cycle, is back again. And Dallas attorney Tony Box, a veteran and former FBI agent and prosecutor, is selling himself as the political newcomer the party needs.
Will Latino voters swing back to the Democratic column?
Perhaps no voter bloc in 2026 will receive as much attention as Latino voters in Texas.
In recent years, the GOP has made inroads with Latinos along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and in the state’s largest metros. President Donald Trump advanced those gains in 2024, almost sweeping the border counties — some of which had not voted for a Republican presidential nominee in more than a century — and complicating assumptions that Latinos are loyal Democrats.
Now the big question will be whether that support for the president and Republicans will remain in place. Early evidence suggests that it might already be in peril.
The Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown has injected fear into Latino communities from the Rio Grande Valley to Lubbock, with anecdotal disapproval from some who sense a betrayal from the president’s campaign promises to deport only hardened criminals. Part of the support for the president also stemmed from a belief that he would help the economy. A year into his presidency, many still feel like the cost of getting by has not improved.
But it is not that simple. A Pew Research Center study of Latinos across the country, released in November, found that while many are increasingly critical of the president, a large divide remains based on how people voted in 2024. A large majority of Latino voters, 81%, who supported Trump still back him and his policies, a slight decrease from the 93% at the start of the president’s second term, according to the study.
The stakes are high. For one, Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional districts with an aim of netting the GOP three to five more seats in the U.S. House. Three of those seats were reconfigured to add Hispanic voters, though critics charge that the districts were drawn to appear as though Republicans are banking on support from Hispanic voters, when in fact they are insulating themselves from that voting bloc, with new lines that rely on continued low rates of Hispanic turnout.
The new congressional map
President Donald Trump this summer asked Texas to pass a congressional map creating five new GOP-leaning districts. However, Republicans aren’t guaranteed to win them all, and political consultants on both sides of the aisle believe Republicans will come up short of five flips in 2026.
Democrats have their eyes on three of the five seats. Trump would have carried each of the three by 10 percentage points in 2024, but that was in a particularly strong year for Republicans, and the party in the White House typically sees blowback in a midterm year like 2026.
Two of the three closest seats are similar to border districts currently represented by Democrats. Both Laredo U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar in the 28th Congressional District and McAllen U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez in the 34th Congressional District outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, winning reelection even as Trump carried their districts. Cuellar in particular has a track record of outperforming other Democrats, even when facing legal problems. Trump pardoned Cuellar of his bribery charges this month, complicating the 2026 picture.
The third 10-point Trump seat, the 35th Congressional District, is a new San Antonio-based seat with no incumbent on the ballot. The leading Republicans there are Carlos De La Cruz and state Rep. John Lujan, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the seat to its list of “districts in play” this month. Strategic adviser John Lira and Bexar County Sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia are two of the biggest Democrats in that race.
Beyond CD 35, the redrawn district lines created several primary contests across the state. In the Houston area, a new red-leaning seat, the 9th Congressional District, features Deer Park state Rep. Briscoe Cain, former Harris County judge GOP nominee Alex Mealer and others. Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed Cain in that race.
In North Texas’ red-leaning 32nd Congressional District, businessman and pastor Ryan Brinkley and former state Senate candidate Jace Yarbrough are among the biggest names in the crowded Republican primary.
CD 9’s current representative, Houston U.S. Rep. Al Green, is running in the Democratic primary for the 18th Congressional District, which overlaps with part of the district Green currently holds. He’ll fight two candidates who are currently in the special election runoff for the existing CD 18, former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards and Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee.
Will a blue wave sweep the legislative races?
With President Trump’s approval rating low, Democrats are hoping that backlash to his administration will prompt a blue wave next year and help the party eat into the GOP’s dominance in Texas.
Democrats are campaigning in every federal and state race on the ballot next year, hoping that running candidates everywhere will maximize the party’s chances of flipping seats while ginning up engagement to boost statewide candidates at the top of the ticket.
In the Texas House, the House Democratic Campaign Committee is leading the effort to flip GOP-controlled districts. The HDCC is initially planning to target four seats Democrats tried and failed to turn in 2024, and one of the two seats Democrats lost. They are:
- House District 34, which Rep. Denise Villalobos, R-Corpus Christi, flipped with an 11-percentage point margin
- House District 37, which Rep. Janie Lopez, R-San Benito, won by 10 points
- House District 112, which Rep. Angie Chen Button, R-Garland, won by 8 points
- House District 118, an open seat that Rep. John Lujan, R-San Antonio, won by 3 points
- House District 121, which Rep. Marc LaHood, R-San Antonio, won by 5 points
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the national party’s arm targeting state legislative races, also said it plans to put resources into Texas next year for the first time since 2020.
Republicans currently control 88 out of 150 Texas House seats, meaning Democrats would need to flip 14 seats to win control of the chamber — a Herculean task even under the most favorable conditions.
Democrats saw their strongest electoral performance in 2018, when they picked up 12 Texas House seats. Since then, they’ve only lost ground, failing to net any districts in 2020 despite a well-funded effort to take control of the lower chamber. After redrawing the district map in 2021, Republicans picked up three Democratic seats in 2022 and two more in 2024.
Still, Democrats are hoping 2026 will more closely resemble 2018, the last Trump midterm election year. And the party’s strong performance across the country in elections in November sparked hopes that a blue wave may indeed be building.
“This is the moment, and we’re going to build an operation that matches the moment, and we’re going to win,” said state Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston and chair of the HDCC.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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