Ex-Mayor with Las Vegas Cash Could Win
Special Vote and Still Lose SD 9 Primary
Capitol Inside
November 3, 2025
The move to legalize casino gambling in Texas could take a giant step forward or two long steps back on Tuesday in a special state Senate election in the Fort Worth area where Las Vegas interests have bankrolled the Republican candidate may have the best shot to advance to an overtime duel with a Democrat. .
Senate District 9 contender John Huffman could have the edge over Leigh Wambsganss in the scramble for spots in a runoff that Taylor Rehmet has a good chance to make as the lone Democrat in the competition for the seat that represents most of the north side in Tarrant County.
Huffman would be a prohibitive favorite over Rehmet in OT. But Wambsganss would expect to have the inside track in the 2026 primary election as the more important test in a district where the winner of the special contest could serve for less than a year and never cast a vote if he or she were eliminated in the first round next year. .
A poll that Wambsganss' campaign released late last week show her up on Huffman by 20 points among primary voters in SD 9. Wambsganss had support from 53 percent of the participants in the survey that Christopher S. Wilson's firm Stratus Intelligence conducted there while 30 percent favored Huffman with 13 percent undecided.
But the pollster's analysis could have been read as an attempt to brace the Wambsganss campaign for a potential setback at the polls in the special vote this week.
"No matter the outcome next Tuesday, the Republican Primary in March will determine the real future of SD 9," Wilson wrote in a memo on the survey. "And this poll confirms what voters already sense: Leigh Wambsganss is the conservative leader with the support, momentum, and coalition to win - and it's not even close."
In a Senate district where Donald Trump won by nearly 18 points in 2024 with 58 percent of the vote, Wambsganss could expect in the neighborhood of 30 percent of the special election tally if she scored support from 53 percent of the president's total in SD 9 last fall. Rehmet could be in line for about 40 percent of the special election or thereabouts based on the results at the top of the ticket a year ago with Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. That would be leave some 30 percent for Huffman.
But Huffman could siphon a fair if not significant amount from Rehmet if Democratic and independent voters who consider casinos to be a higher priority than partisan loyalty in a special election in a district where the minority party has little hope of winning in the next general election.
The battle between Wambsganss and Huffman has erupted into a referendum on an expansion of legal wagering in the Lone Star State. Huffman has raised 89 percent of a $1.3 million war chest from the political committee for the Las Vegas Sands - the international gaming conglomerate that's controlled by GOP mega-donor Miriam Adelson.
Adelson has been a major contributor to Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott as well. Abbott cancelled his long-running opposition to casinos after Adelson befriended him.
Wambsganss
has been funded by a triumvirate of major contributors that includes a group that's controlled by a pair of Christian nationalist conservatives in Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. The Texans United for a Conservative Majority had poured close to $550,000 into the Wambsganss campaign coffers. Wambsganss reaped $200,000 from the Texans for Lawsuit Reform in the past three months.
But Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has been Wambsganss' most valuable supporters without competition in that regard. Patrick's controls the Texas Senate Leadership Fund, which has donated in the vicinity of $470,000 to the SD 9 aspirant. Patrick rallied behind Wambsganss immediately after Republican Kelly Hancock stepped down from the Senate during the summer after an appointment from Governor Greg Abbott to the state comptroller's post.
Wambsganss has rounded up nearly $2 million from contributors on top of a $200,000 loan. Rehmet the Democrat has reported donations of almost $150,000 since he entered the Senate race.
Patrick hasn't lost any of the Senate races in which he's had a candidate in the running since his elevation to lieutenant governor in 2015. Seven of the GOP's current Senate crop ran with Patrick's blessings and endorsement including several who replaced Republicans who'd been allies before the chamber president turned on them.
Patrick has been the chief roadblock to casino and sports betting legislation even though he attributes its perennial failure to opposition from individual Republican senators. But the prevailing sentiment inside the Capitol beltway has long been that the Senate's GOP members would vote for gambling bills if they had green lights from Patrick.
Big gambling isn't the only source of support for Huffman in SD 9. Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and the city's police association are backing Huffman as well.
more to come ...
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