The revolt in Trump country that could change America forever

Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here. • Trump gave these voters $500 before the midterms. They’re still voting Democrat• Punch-drunk Trump is trapped in the first three stages of grief On the day early voting started in Texas, the long-serving Republican governor Greg Abbott and both main party candidates fighting for the Senate all rallied their supporters in the sprawling city of Fort Worth. The reason was simple: Tarrant County – home to more than two million people with its cattle stockyards, aircraft factories and fast-growing suburbs – was pivotal to the midterm elections in a giant state seen for so long as a conservative stronghold. The local Republican chair called it “the largest red county in America” and boasted they intended to make it “inhospitable for Democrats” as his party tried tricks such as gerrymandering voting districts and restricting ballot stations in enemy terrain. Yet on Tuesday, Tarrant County turned blue with voters rejecting Republicans from top to bottom of the ballot paper as Texas kicked out Abbott, sent the Democrat James Talarico to the Senate and handed his party scores of key posts. “We’ve worked so hard for this moment and got way more than we predicted,” said Allison Campolo, the county’s Democratic Party chair. “It’s surreal but very exciting.”This county shows the scale of the political earthquake that just struck the United States since historically – even when it backed Joe Biden for president six years ago – it stuck mostly with Republicans further down the ballot. Early voting returns are screened at an election night event in Austin, Texas on Tuesday (Photo: AP Photo/Eric Gay) But not this time. The party was spurned after Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity – inflamed by inflation and his foolish war in Iran – combined with the intensity of his immigration crackdown and open racism displayed by some MAGA-aligned figures. Prominent Republicans such as Bo French – that former county chair notorious for bigoted social media posts – lost the statewide election for railroad commissioner, a post that his party had held for more than three decades. Tarrant’s top executive position also flipped Democrat for the first time in 40 years. A Trump acolyte who fanned unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud was ousted by the first black woman elected as county judge, which chairs the body setting the budget, imposing taxes and overseeing jails. If these newly elected Democrats can embed the party – delivering popular policies for citizens struggling with the cost of living while disgruntled over their schools, healthcare and data centres – it could have huge consequences in this state with the second-biggest number of votes in the presidential electoral college. “We had uniquely terrible leadership that was in lockstep with Trump, who has become profoundly unpopular, but also showing their own really bad leadership here in both Texas and Tarrant County,” said Campolo. “At the same time we had a full slate of really qualified Democratic candidates running and a Democratic machine that was more organised and well-run than anything we’ve seen in the past. It was a really beautiful, coordinated effort.” As this research scientist and martial arts practitioner emphasised when we met there last month, Texas is a diverse and fast-changing state despite the cowboy image. “It’s a myth that Texas is all straight, white cigar-chomping dudes,” she said. Tarrant typifies the transformation. At the turn of the century, it was almost two-thirds white but now they comprise four in 10 residents with rapidly growing Hispanic, Asian and black populations that turned out in large numbers to back Democrats. The Republican Party was spurned after Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity – inflamed by inflation and his foolish war in Iran (Photo: Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images) Hispanics became the biggest ethnic group in Texas four years ago, then backed Trump two years ago. But in Tarrant, I heard the anger over his brutal immigration crackdown at a breakfast meeting hosted by the community’s oldest civil rights group with claims that local families were being targeted by undercover agents. Nydia Cardenas, a 40-year-old Stanford engineering graduate running for the county commissioners court, told me afterwards how local Hispanic families were scared to speak out about detained family members in case they were deported. “It would mean a lot to me if enough people realise we are facing fascism right now – if people in Texas who have historically voted Republican recognise that we have gone too far and need to take government back from this extremism,” she said. Cardenas achieved her wish amid the blue tsunami: winning by almost four per cent a seat her party lost by 18 points four years ago, which leaves a solitary Republican alongside a quartet of Democrats on the influential body running the county. So can these Democrats soothe concerns of voters, smooth over factional divisions and restore some faith in politicians? The prize is flipping states such as Texas for the long term – but if they fail, Tuesday’s landslide could look like a weird blip. “The biggest hurdle was showing people what was possible since the Republicans championed this narrative that Tarrant was a red county, Texas was a red state and it will always be a cigar-chomping, redneck state,” said Campolo. “Now we’ve shown this is very much not the case, I think it can stay a blue state.”