On Thursday, a Fox News segment fishing for red-state voters angry about Texas going blue in the midterms turned up a few surprisingly positive reactions. According to some residents of the deep-red state of Arkansas, “it’s about time” their neighbor went Democrat.
“It’s crazy to me that my home state of Texas went blue,” said a grinning young man wearing a sweatshirt for Harding University, a Christian college in Arkansas. “I think my parents are gonna have a fit about that.” Then after another interviewee expressed dismay about the midterm outcome – in which Democrats achieved historic victories across the state of Texas – insisting that “going blue” was a mistake and that he would leave Arkansas if it did the same, the Harding student didn’t share his opinion, saying, “I disagree. I think it’s bound to happen at some point[,] It’s just a matter of time.”
“I’m really glad,” said an older gentleman when asked about the Texas outcome. “My brother lives in Dallas and let me tell you – it’s about time. …This state’s been mostly a Trump state, and [Arkansas Governor] Sarah Huckabee. I knew she’d get voted in again, but we need to get away from the MAGA. And she’s part of it.”
The GOP’s brutal midterm loss last week saw the entire state of Texas hit by the blue tsunami, as Democrats won not only the most high-profile races, but all statewide races as well. The 12-point victory of James Talarico over Ken Paxton – the latter of whom was a scandal-riddled, diehard MAGA candidate running under the endorsement of President Donald Trump – means Texas is sending a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in four decades, while Gina Hinojosa’s win over longtime Governor Greg Abbott gives the state a blue governor for the first time since the early 1990s. What’s more, Democrats won the lieutenant governorship, the state attorney general, the majority in the Texas State House, and all of the four Texas Supreme Court seats – including that of chief justice, which went to the state’s first openly LGBTQ+ statewide elected official. In fact, this barrage of wins represented the first statewide Democratic victories since 1994.
What’s more, Texas wasn’t the only red state to go blue. Democrats won big in unlikely places like South Carolina, North Carolina, Iowa, and Kansas – the last of which hadn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 100 years. Then on Wednesday, it was announced that Democrats had also flipped a Senate seat in Mississippi for the first time since 1982, giving the state its first black senator since just after the Civil War. According to one Arkansas voter who spoke with Fox, his state – while still firmly red for now – is beginning to show its own signs of purple. “Parts of the state, yes, like where we’re at,” he said when asked whether Arkansans could go Democrat. “Northwest Arkansas is turning more blue.”