- Coming up on "Austin InSight," a seismic shift in Texas politics as Democrats get their first taste of victory in decades.

We're breaking down the results of the 2026 midterms and what lies ahead in a blue Texas.

"Austin InSight" starts now.

- [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from: Sally and James Gavin, and also from Daniel L. Skret.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hi there, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Laura Laughead.

The blue wave Texas Democrats tried for years to convince us was coming is here, but it came as more of a tsunami with Democrats winning big in all the top statewide races.

At the top of the ticket, State Rep.

James Talarico handily defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

He'll be the first Democrat representing Texas in the US Senate in more than 30 years.

In his victory speech, Talarico echoed many of the themes of his campaign that ultimately led him to victory.

- We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love.

(audience cheers and applauds) - Texas will also have its first Democrat governor in just as long.

Gina Hinojosa defeated three-term incumbent Governor Greg Abbott.

After the races were clearly decided, the two celebrated together.

How else, with a late-night stop at Whataburger?

Here to break down those results and more, we first have Blaise Gainey with KUT and the Texas Newsroom.

Blaise, thank you so much for being with us.

- Glad to be here.

- And joining us now via Zoom is Kayla Guo with "The Texas Tribune."

Kayla, so good to have you as well.

- Thanks for having me back.

- Well, I know y'all are probably a little tired, but hopefully you got a little bit more sleep last night since it was a landslide and things seem to come in a bit earlier this time.

Blaise, let's start with you.

I think we're all finding it's hard not to be shocked right now.

We've known some of these races would be competitive, but no one I think could predict this stunning rebuke of Republican control, the party in power.

What's your reaction?

At any point did something like this ever remotely cross your mind?

- No, not really.

I mean, even when the polls suggested, you know, Hinojosa winning governor-elect, it was still like, when I talked to people, they were saying, "Eh, you know, those are polls.

They're oftentimes wrong."

But they were wrong.

Instead, it was a landslide.

It was not close at all.

It was not a three or four-point difference.

It ended up being, you know, more like 10 or above seven for almost every statewide race, which I don't think polls really indicated, unless maybe you were looking at prediction markets.

- It's certainly stunning.

I think all the news outlets are still kind of processing and I think it will probably take a few more days to process.

And now we want to go to Kayla.

Of course, there's a lot of attention on the Senate, the governor, the lieutenant governor, but this blue wave, as Blaise mentioned, trickled all the way down the ballot.

You have Republicans losing things like agricultural commissioner, State Board of Education, even Republican incumbents on the Texas Supreme Court defeated.

What was most surprising to you here?

- I mean, and not just all the statewide seats.

This extends down to the legislature.

I think Dems are on track to flip the Texas House, which was a massive feat.

This is a seizing of partisan control by a party I think unlike anything we've seen in Texas since Reconstruction.

It is just absolutely stunning.

Across the board, it's a wipe out for Republicans.

I think it has a lot of downstream implications too for just the makings of state government and also the kind of lobbyists and people who can exert power and pull on the levers of power.

It is a complete and total shakeup, which just, as we've said, is completely stunning.

- And Kayla, when you look at the statewide map, what do you see when it comes to who showed up for the Democratic ticket in areas that have previously been staunchly red?

Tarrant County, Collin County come to mind in North Texas.

- I mean, Dems won back big numbers in Tarrant County, like you said, and these North Texas suburbs that have been bellwethers for Texas for so long.

Collin County, which has never elected a statewide Democrat this century, like, went for James Talarico.

It's a huge showing from all these different places.

Latino voters swung massively for Democrats across the ticket.

One thing I do hear, though, is that this was more of a rebuke of Republican policies of the Trump administration and the Republican regime and a mandate for change rather than necessarily a vote for Democrats.

So we do see these huge numbers swinging for Democrats, but I think Democrats are grappling with what it actually means and what these voters are actually asking for.

- Indeed, indeed.

And some early political theorists have started to call this maybe the beginning of the end of an era, namely the Trump era.

And now, Blaise, switching back to you, you cover the state legislature, and the dynamics are certainly going to be a lot different next session.

We'll have a Democrat with veto power in the governor's mansion, a Democrat lieutenant governor presiding over the Senate.

How will those dynamics, you think, impact what lawmakers can accomplish next session?

- I think they'll be able to accomplish a lot because I think they will have to work together, and they're going to know that going in.

You also are going to have a lieutenant governor and a governor that are essentially on the same page, which we've already sort of had.

And so I think you'll see a lot of interesting fights and battles, but there are probably going to be enough Republicans in the legislature that will side with Democrats on some votes because, right now, the thing is you want to be able to get something done in order to have something to run on next time around.

And while they may not want to give Democrats too many wins, they may not, you know, give a bunch of money to education or get rid of school choice, there are things that they can agree on.

And a lot of Hinojosa's campaign focused on things that Republicans also agreed on.

Data centers, even though they don't know exactly what that's going to look like.

Public education.

They like public education some and want to give that money.

They did last year.

And then also you have more funding in other areas across the state.

And I know THC was a big topic for Goodwin.

And I think it'll be interesting to see what comes of that given that Dan Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is out of the way now, and he was really the big proponent pushing the ban on THC.

- You know, you bring up Hinojosa and, you know, just as a viewer myself watching the news at 10 o'clock, you know, I didn't even know yet until Governor Abbott started his concession speech on live television.

But speaking of Hinojosa, did anything stand out to you in what you heard from her victory speech about the direction she's wanting to take the state?

- I think mostly it was sort of what I said, that she's not looking to just run and run this state as a Democrat.

She's looking to run this state for the people, because if you look at the numbers, it's no way that just Democrats showed up and elected her.

She knows some Republicans switched over and she wants to keep them satisfied.

And so moving forward, she'll have to do that by, you know, passing some things that is not just completely on this side or that side.

It's more down the middle and working with people.

But she's had to work with people her whole time in office.

So it's not, you know, something that's new to her.

It'll be new for maybe Republicans to have to work more with Democrats, but they're going to have to do that.

And I think given the fact that Hinojosa has been around there for a while, probably has some Republican, you know, friends that she's worked with in the past to get things done, I think we're going to see her be pretty successful.

Now, I'm not saying, like, we're already expecting another term from her, but I'm just saying I think she'll be more successful even if the House and Senate legislate both remain Republican.

- One step at a time, yeah.

- Of course.

- And that was certainly a unique hallmark of Hinojosa's and Talerico's campaign is this active courtship of former Republicans, even consistent, staunch Trump voters for that matter.

And what was really interesting, in Lubbock, Texas, of all places, you had Trump campaigning for Paxton, and on that very night, you also had Talarico there campaigning.

I feel like that is a very rare confluence of people in Lubbock, Texas, of all places, having reported there myself.

And now going back to Kayla, let's talk about Congress.

Republicans redrew the district lines last year to try to pick up five additional Republican seats in Congress to give them an edge.

How did they fare on that objective?

It kind of seems like it blew up in their face.

- Yeah, I mean, they didn't win... They net lost seats.

I think they won one of the seats that they redrew.

I think it was Texas 9.

But otherwise, you know, Democrats won.

Democrats won in South Texas.

Democrats won in the San Antonio-based seat that Tony Gonzalez was sitting in.

Democrats won all these seats.

And again, Republicans, despite kicking off this redistricting war across the country, like you said, trying to net up to five new seats, they didn't net any total.

- Never a dull day in politics, namely Texas politics.

And I know we'll be certainly talking about the blue wave here, and what happened here, you know, sets the tone for a lot of future races.

And now next on our mind is, of course, probably the path to the White House in 2028, not to get ahead of ourselves.

And guys, if this is any indication, it is certainly going to be a dog fight.

Well, Blaise Gainey with KUT and Kayla Guo with "The Texas Tribune," thank you so much both for being with us today.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- Here in Central Texas, we have some new faces in the delegation to Congress.

Chris Gober will fill the seat of retiring Congressman Michael McCaul in District 10.

In District 21, Mark Teixeira will fill what is currently Chip Roy's seat.

And Democrat Greg Casar is now the only Democrat in the Austin area delegation in the redrawn District 37.

Across the rest of the board, incumbents are back for another term.

Republicans August Pfluger, Pete Sessions, Michael Cloud, and John Carter kept their seats.

Austin had some big-ticket items on the ballot as well, and local government reporter Sam Stark is here to break down those results.

Another late night for Sam here.

But, Sam, the item that maybe got the most attention during the campaign was Prop I, the audit item.

And we saw voters reject that, right?

- Yeah, that's right.

Voters overwhelmingly rejected it.

And just to remind you, it was the citizen-initiated petition to initiate an audit of city hall spending every five years.

It also required that auditor to find enough spending or savings to cover the price of the audit.

But, essentially, voters were saying that they respect what city council was doing, they initiated their own audit assessment back in the spring, and felt that the citizen petition one was not necessary.

- Hm.

But two other props we want to touch on passed.

Those are bond propositions A and B. Can you remind us what those are for?

- Yeah, yeah, so those were both bond propositions.

So Proposition A was the $260 million parks bond that would go to, you know, acquiring more park land, you know, improving park facilities, making repairs, things like that.

There's also Proposition B, which was a $35 million bond to go towards libraries.

There was questions if this was going to pass.

Many felt that voters didn't have faith in city hall, you know, governing of property tax revenue.

And, you know, this shows that maybe some faith has been restored since Proposition Q failed last year.

That was a tax rate election.

It also just goes to show that Austinites really value parks and libraries.

- That they do.

We love our outdoor spaces here in Austin, and the library, of course, too for that matter.

- Yes, yes.

- And then we also have five city council races, and three of those appear to be headed to a runoff.

Can you recap what happened there?

- Yeah, so we had people vying for Districts 1, 3, 5, 8, and 9.

Three of those are going to a runoff and two of those were incumbent seats.

So Council Member Jose Velasquez, who's the council member of District 3, he failed to secure enough votes to secure the seat, though he was leading.

So he's going to be facing Neha Shah in December.

There is also Council Member Ryan Alter of District 5.

He'll be facing David Weinberg in a runoff in December.

District 1, that was the one that did not have an incumbent in the race.

Natasha Harper-Madison is currently the council member, but she'll step down in January.

Amber Goodwin and Misael Ramos will be vying for that spot in the December runoff.

However, one current incumbent was able to secure more than 50% of the vote.

That's District 9's Zo Qadri.

He got, I think, 51 to 52%, so he's good to go.

And then also we'll have a fresh face in District 8.

That's Selena Xie.

As you might remember, Council Member Paige Ellis, who's currently in the role, she tried to get enough votes to secure another term, a third term.

She wasn't able to, so Selena Xie ended up victorious in that seat.

- Wow, oh my gosh, Sam, I don't know how you keep track of all these disparate things.

Like, my mind is going all over just listening to it.

- Yes, been covering it for, you know, the last three months.

So it's an exciting time and, yeah, glad to be here to cover it with you.

- Absolutely.

Well, you know, it's an exciting time in Texas politics.

No matter, you know, which way you're looking at it, it is certainly going to keep you entertained to say the least.

- Yes, that's right, yeah.

- Well, Sam, great to have you here and we'll certainly be looking forward to those runoffs in December as well as your coverage.

If you want to dive into the results a little more on your own, you can check out our website, austinpbs.org/elections.

(upbeat music) Meanwhile, a new community initiative launched by Austin Mayor Kirk Watson wants to make Austin the best place in America to be a kid.

Generation ATX, or GenATX, as it's called, launched earlier this year.

And now it has its first executive director.

I spoke previously with Fran Baylor about GenATX and the work she's leading.

So where did this idea come from?

Why was it so important to launch this initiative?

- Well, I don't want to speak for Mayor Watson about where the idea came from, but I know that he wants to measure the success of our city by how our children are faring.

And he started with a very intentional model, by looking at data first and how do we define that?

And one of the pieces of data that came out was that over a recent five-year period, Austin saw a decline of around 17,000 children, which is about 9% of our population, over a five-year period.

And so thinking about the urgency of this movement, it's very important for Austin to pay attention to this being a great place to raise a family, for children to grow up, for the future success of our city.

- Hm, that data is surprising.

It's almost like families are moving away to raise kids.

- The data doesn't tell us exactly why- - I hate it when data does that.

- (chuckles) Why it's happening, but it's calling an urgency to the importance of paying attention to that.

- Absolutely, and you have for this initiative three big pillars for making sure kids are safe, happy, and healthy.

How are you measuring those three things?

- So we started with working with a research firm, CivicSol, over a year ago, looking across the US at child wellbeing frameworks to identify how other places that are trusted and publicly verifiable and data sets are measuring child wellbeing.

And they looked at the different indicators and healthy, safe, happy children came up.

But within those, they're simple, but they're also complex.

There's 47 indicators that they landed on to measure healthy, safe, and happy.

And so they looked at Austin across those 47 indicators to benchmark how our city is faring and they compared us with three different peer groups.

So, one, they looked at the 50 largest US cities, they also looked at six major cities in Texas, and then they looked at our knowledge economy or other tech cities to see how Austin is faring.

- So when compared in tandem with all these other cities, can you talk about how Austin, like, what was the result of Austin and how did that revelation inform this whole process?

- Yeah, so Austin overall is faring pretty well, but they're averages.

And so we wanted to dive into, and our research partners dove in to say, like, "What does those actually mean?"

And they spoke with like 60 organizations locally to say, "Help us make sense of what this data is saying."

When we looked across the Texas peers, Austin ranks like in the top one or two in 36 of 47 indicators, but when we looked across our knowledge economy peers, we're in the bottom three in about 17 of those 47 indicators.

And so some areas where Austin is doing really well is thinking about birth weight, thinking about infant mortality, teen- - That's good to hear.

- Yes, very good to hear.

And teenage engagement.

But there's other areas where Austin has a lot of gaps, and one of them is thinking about food insecurity.

About one in seven children in Austin are food insecure.

- That's stunning.

- And then another data point is that, and when we look across our peers, Austin is furthest behind when it comes to families who are eligible for food or healthcare, other benefits, but actually enrolled.

And so when we looked at the data, one of the things we said is, "Well, what good is it that we can do to respond?"

And so that led to the five goals in five years.

And so when we look at those five goals in five years, we looked at the data and listened to community partners and said, "Where can Austin make a meaningful difference?"

Would you like me to talk about those- - Yes, please, by all means.

- Five goals in five years?

- Absolutely.

That actually brings us to our next question.

How will you achieve these?

- So right now, so I was brought on, I'm new, the director, and I was brought on to help us turn from research and move towards coordinated action in partnership with CivicSol, the chairs of five working groups that have been started, as well as the members of these working groups, to right now they are identifying what those five goals are, and they are working on strategies within them that will be community-wide strategies, and then the metrics that we will use to track our progress over five years.

Those five goals, I'll tell you the five areas.

So the first one is strengthening the earliest years and ensuring that every child has a strong start.

The second one is ensuring that every family that qualifies for food or healthcare supports is enrolled.

The third one is around a brain health system and ensuring that families and children have access to mental and emotional wellbeing resources.

The fourth one is activating third spaces.

So thinking about the recreational spaces we have in Austin and how do we turn programming and turn those alive for children to be able to connect and grow.

And then the fifth one is clearing the pathway from classroom to career.

So thinking about providing children hope and plans for what they will do post-high school.

- Hm, it's funny you bring up this concept of a third space.

We got plenty of third spaces for adults, but maybe not as many for kids.

Though, you know, I did see a lot of kids out playing in Hyde Park.

So, you know, maybe the data suggests that, you know, they're leaving, but, you know, we still got a good group here.

Well, Fran Baylor, executive director of GenATX, thank you so much for being with us.

To learn more, the address is simple, GenATX.org.

(upbeat music) With everything going on in the world, why not sometimes escape into another world with a good book?

And if you need some inspiration for your next read, there's no better place to look than the Texas Book Festival.

It's coming up next weekend, bringing hundreds of authors and book lovers to town.

Joining us today to tell us more about what's in store is festival CEO, Marianne DeLeon.

Marianne, thank you so much for being with us today.

- Thank you so much for having me, Laura.

- I am personally so excited.

As a previous attendee, I love a good romance book and they had the greatest panel.

But Marianne, for someone who maybe has never been to the book fest yet, what can we expect?

What does the weekend typically have in store?

- Yes, the Texas Book Festival is the largest literary gathering in the state of Texas, and it's probably the fifth largest in the nation.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

Like you said, it's November 14th and 15th.

It'll be in and around the Texas State Capitol.

So we're in 22 venues from 7th Street to 11th Street all along Congress Avenue.

We take up about 13 city blocks.

We'll have 280 of the last year's best authors.

and about 45,000 people come.

- Wow.

- Yeah, we welcome everyone to come.

There's something for everyone at the Texas Book Festival, from genre fiction, romance, true crime, cookbooks, great cookbooks.

There's tons of programming for kids.

There's the poetry tent.

There's nonfiction.

And then, of course, there's high-profile fiction authors of all types.

And it's free and open to all, which is amazing.

- I love that the most.

And, you know, you have some examples here.

So tell us, what are you particularly most excited about sharing at the festival this year?

We can start with some examples.

- Yeah, this one is "I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy," by Mychal Threets.

- Ooh!

- Who is the host of "Reading Rainbow," and is a big book influencer.

We're really excited to have Mychal Threets.

- We love "Reading Rainbow."

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Pamela Colloff, who just won the Kirkus Prize.

Her true crime book is called "Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and the Injustice on the Gulf Coast."

- Ooh.

- And this is a really, really stunning story of a con man who had been married nine times.

We also have- - Nine times?

He's busy.

- (chuckles) We also have a wonderful panel on Saturday afternoon at four at the State Theatre, which will feature three very high-profile authors, Ayad Akhtar, Maggie Smith, and another Kirkus Prize winner named Elizabeth Acevedo.

I'm so excited about all of these.

Of course, A.G.

Ford and his "Construction Site" books, he's back again this year.

Mitch Baranowski and his new book on the Austin music scene, which will be hosted by HAAM, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians.

We're very excited about that.

The owners of Nixta, the great taqueria Nixta, have come out with a wonderful cookbook.

- Oh, this is a thick book.

Yeah, we can pull that out.

Ta-da!

- Yeah, yeah, we have numerous Austin restaurants who are bringing their cookbooks into the book festival, including Nixta, Suerte and Este, Leroy and Lewis, Veracruz Tacos, are all going to have cookbooks in the Texas Book Festival, and we're so excited about that.

- Oh, we certainly are excited too.

It really sounds like there is something for everyone, and I especially am excited to actually, you know, pour through this book right here.

And, you know, it's great that you center not only like local talent, but you also really center, you know, the importance of reading for children.

Why is it so important as adults that we nurture this understanding and this appreciation for reading for younger generations?

- Yes, we really need to create the next generation of readers.

We need to keep our communities completely informed.

We need to really uplift young readers to pursue higher education and to be able to kind of continue on this journey of reading for a lifetime.

Our founder was Mrs.

Laura Bush.

She was First Lady of Texas when she founded the Texas Book Festival.

And so we have nurtured this love of libraries into our mission.

And, you know, we want to get children into libraries.

We want to get children reading and- - Off their phones.

- Off their phones and reading.

And so we bring authors into Title I schools on the Friday before the Texas Book Festival.

We'll bring 30 authors into 10 Title I schools here all throughout the Austin area, including Mychal Threets will be going to one of our public schools here in Austin, to get them excited about reading.

And we give away about 20,000 books a year to young Texas readers.

So we're really excited about making sure that young readers have a- - Have access.

- Yeah, have access to great books.

- And it is so important because when they see us excited, then they get excited.

And one of my favorite things to do as an adult is to go back and pour through some of the books as a kid that, like, first invigorated my love of reading.

I was a big reader, and even librarian for the day at school.

I was very cool.

Well, we are certainly so excited for the festival.

Marianne DeLeon, the CEO of the Texas Book Festival, thank you so much.

30 years now and 30 years coming.

We are so excited.

The book festival is next weekend, November 14th and 15th around Downtown Austin.

You can learn more at texasbookfestival.org.

(upbeat music) And that's our show.

If you're looking for more "Austin InSight," you can find it on the Austin PBS YouTube channel or in the PBS app anytime for free.

Thanks again for watching.

We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from: Sally and James Gavin, and also from Daniel L. Skret.

(bright music)