Republicans endorse and are voting for Democrats in key 2026 races

Karl Rove spent decades helping turn Texas from a Democratic stronghold into one of the Republican Party’s most important power centers. This November, the strategist once celebrated by President George W. Bush as “the architect” of his political victories says he will cross party lines.

Rove said he will vote for Democrat Jon Rosenthal for the Texas Railroad Commission rather than Republican nominee Bo French, whose remarks about South Asian students at the University of Texas triggered condemnation from prominent members of his own party.

“The GOP’s stables need a cleaning,” Rove wrote in a Wall Street Journal column. “This is a good place to start.”

Rove described French’s remarks as “raw, uncut bigotry” and said his vote for Rosenthal would mark only the second time in his life that he has voted for a Democrat. His decision is particularly notable because few political figures were more closely associated with building the modern Texas Republican Party.

Republicans crossing party lines

Rove’s decision is not occurring in isolation.

Across several states in 2026, prominent Republicans — including former governors, senators, party officials, campaign strategists and officeholders — have endorsed Democrats or announced that they will withhold their votes from Republican nominees.

The defections span Texas, Kansas, Georgia, Montana and Florida. They involve Republicans from different eras and factions of the party, and their stated reasons vary. Some have cited a particular candidate’s conduct or character; others have pointed to constitutional principles, political extremism or concerns about the direction of the Republican Party.

There is not enough evidence to conclude that the endorsements amount to a broader realignment of Republican voters. But the collection of public breaks is unusual enough to have become a recurring feature of the 2026 campaign.

Texas provides some of the most striking examples.

Rove, who helped engineer the Republican takeover of Texas politics and later served as one of President George W. Bush’s closest political advisers, says he will vote for Democrat Jon Rosenthal rather than Republican Bo French for the Texas Railroad Commission. Rove has said the only other Democrat he remembers supporting was legendary Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock in 1994.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, another fixture of Texas Republican politics, has said French will not receive his vote, although he has stopped short of endorsing Rosenthal. Rep. Jake Ellzey has likewise rejected French and said he plans to write in incumbent Republican Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright.

The Republican departures extend to the state’s U.S. Senate contest.

More than 20 current and former Republican officials and party figures have backed Democratic state Rep. James Talarico against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to a compilation of 2026 cross-party endorsements. They include former Dallas City Council member Jim Richards, former Republican state Rep. Susan Lewis King and Lionel Sosa, a veteran Republican strategist who advised George W. Bush.

One of the most unusual endorsements came from Houston lawyer Dan Cogdell.

Cogdell spent nearly a decade representing Paxton, including during the attorney general’s 2023 impeachment trial and his long-running securities fraud case. This year, Cogdell endorsed Talarico instead.

“I defended Ken Paxton for years,” Cogdell said in announcing his decision, before saying he believed his former client had “lost sight of his core mission” of representing Texans.

The effort to attract Republican defectors has become organized as well. A bipartisan group of political operatives launched Moment of Truth PAC in June to support Talarico, explicitly describing part of its strategy as giving Republican voters “permission to defect.”

Similar breaks appearing beyond Texas

In Kansas, former Republican Gov. Bill Graves has endorsed Democrat Adam Hamilton over Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. Kansas has not elected a Democratic U.S. senator since the 1930s.

In Georgia, former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake has endorsed Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff for reelection, citing what Flake described as Ossoff’s independence and willingness to work across party lines.

In Montana, former Republican National Committee Chairman and former Gov. Marc Racicot has endorsed Democrat Sam Forstag for Congress. Racicot, who once led the national Republican Party, cited Forstag’s character, preparation and commitment to constitutional principles in explaining his support.

And in Florida, former Republican congressman David Jolly, now running for governor as a Democrat, has attracted a coalition operating as Republicans for Jolly. Its supporters include former Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Williams, Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse and Greg Wilson, who served in the Treasury Department during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

The endorsements do not all arise from the same political dispute, and they should not be read as evidence that Republican voters generally are abandoning their party. Most of the Republicans crossing party lines have framed their decisions narrowly, as judgments about particular candidates rather than repudiations of conservative principles or Republican affiliation.

That distinction makes Rove’s decision especially revealing.

He is not announcing that he has become a Democrat. He is not renouncing the conservative movement he spent much of his career building. He is arguing instead that loyalty to a political party has limits — and that, in the Texas Railroad Commission race, French has crossed his.

For a strategist who devoted much of his professional life to persuading Texans to vote Republican from the top of the ballot to the bottom, deliberately leaving the Republican column is an extraordinary reversal.

And in 2026, he is no longer the only prominent Republican making one.

Rove arrived in Texas in 1977, when Republicans held just one statewide office. By the time he followed Bush to Washington in 2001, Republicans occupied all 29 statewide elected offices, and many of those officeholders had employed Rove or his consulting firm.

Now, one of the architects of that transformation is repudiating his party’s nominee for an office at the center of the Texas energy industry.

The immediate dispute began after Texas defeated top-ranked Ohio State in a dramatic football game Saturday. French posted a photograph showing jubilant University of Texas fans, many of them apparently South Asian.

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” French wrote. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

Two students pictured in the photograph later told The Dallas Morning News they are U.S. citizens. French offered no evidence that the students he singled out were undocumented immigrants.

French, the Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, subsequently defended the post as commentary about immigration and the presence of foreign nationals in Texas institutions. The commission, despite its name, does not regulate railroads. It oversees the state’s oil and natural gas industry.

The controversy has become more than a dispute over one candidate’s social media account. It has illuminated a long transformation within Texas Republican politics, particularly on immigration, from the approach associated with Bush-era “compassionate conservatism” to the more restrictive policies that dominate the party today.

Rove wrote that French represents a broader problem, saying the Republican Party has a growing number of people expressing similar views.

Rove is not the only Republican refusing to support French. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said French has lost his vote, though Cornyn has not committed to voting for Rosenthal. Rep. Jake Ellzey said he intends to write in incumbent Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright, whom French defeated in the Republican runoff.

The episode comes amid other examples of prominent Republicans crossing party lines in 2026 races. Republicans have announced support for Democratic candidates in Texas, Kansas, Georgia, Montana and Florida, though the individual endorsements do not by themselves establish a broader shift among Republican voters.

A different Texas Republican tradition

The political contrast is especially pronounced in Texas because the state Republican Party once took positions on immigration that would be difficult to reconcile with much of its current rhetoric.

In 2001, Texas became the first state to allow certain undocumented students who had attended Texas high schools and met residency requirements to qualify for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities. The legislation passed with bipartisan support and was signed by Republican Gov. Rick Perry.

The policy reflected an argument then common among Texas political and business leaders: Young people educated in Texas schools should have an opportunity to continue their education and contribute to the state, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

A decade later, Perry defended the policy while seeking the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, drawing criticism from rivals who favored a harder line on immigration.

The Texas Republican Party itself briefly moved toward a more accommodationist approach in 2012. Its convention adopted what supporters called the “Texas Solution,” including a call for a national guest-worker program. Advocates argued that the policy could address the state’s labor needs while bringing immigrants into a regulated legal system.

That position did not last.

At its 2014 convention, Republican delegates removed the Texas Solution and rejected proposed language supporting a provisional visa program. The replacement platform called for ending in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants and opposing sanctuary-city policies.

The change accelerated during the political rise of Donald Trump, whose campaigns made border enforcement and restrictions on immigration central Republican issues.

The transformation eventually reached the 2001 tuition law itself.

In June 2025, the Trump administration’s Justice Department sued Texas over the law. State officials quickly joined the federal government in asking a court to invalidate it, and U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor blocked the policy. Attorney General Ken Paxton called ending the 24-year-old program a victory for Texas.

That marked a striking reversal from the political environment in which the measure had originally passed.

Republicans divide over French

French’s latest comments have forced Republican officials to decide how far that evolution should extend.

Cornyn publicly challenged Republicans to condemn racism and intolerance rather than allow them to become normalized within the party. Rove went further by committing to vote for French’s Democratic opponent.

French has rejected accusations that his comments were racist. He has said his concern is immigration and accused Republican critics of favoring foreigners over Americans.

His explanation has not quieted the dispute, in part because the photograph itself did not establish the immigration status of anyone shown in it.

The Wall Street Journal noted another complication in French’s argument: Texas law requires the overwhelming majority of entering students at the University of Texas at Austin to be Texas residents.

French has drawn similar criticism before.

While serving as chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party, he posted an online poll asking whether Muslims or Jews posed the greater threat to the United States. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other Republican officials called on him to resign. French later deleted that post and said its intent had been misunderstood.

This time, however, French is not merely a county party chairman. He is the Republican nominee for statewide office.

That has divided GOP officials over what to do next.

Sen. Ted Cruz called French’s latest post “idiotic” but said he would continue supporting him as the Republican nominee. Ellzey has taken the opposite course, saying candidates must earn voters’ support regardless of party and that French had not earned his.

The disagreement poses a question for a Republican Party that has dominated Texas statewide elections for decades: whether party loyalty extends to nominees whose rhetoric some leading Republicans say violates their own standards.

Rove confronts the party he helped build

Few people have a longer perspective on that question than Rove.

When he arrived in Texas in the late 1970s, Democrats had dominated state politics for generations. Republicans held one of the state’s 29 statewide elected offices, and only 21 of 181 seats in the Texas Legislature. Rove became involved in Republican campaigns from the governor’s office to lesser-known statewide posts, working to construct a durable party organization from the top of the ticket down.

He managed Bush’s successful 1994 campaign for governor and later became the central strategist behind Bush’s presidential campaigns. By 2000, every statewide elected office in Texas was held by a Republican.

The Republican Party Rove helped build was conservative, but its leading Texas figures frequently paired that conservatism with outreach to Hispanic voters and support for some forms of legal immigration. Bush promoted a “compassionate conservatism” that sought to expand the GOP coalition rather than define American identity primarily through ancestry.

French’s controversy presents a different argument about who belongs.

For Rove, the distinction was enough to outweigh decades of party loyalty.

“These people are diminishing the Republican Party, not building it,” he wrote. “I’ll have no part of it.”

His ballot will reflect that conclusion.

For the first time in more than three decades, one of the men most responsible for building Republican dominance in Texas says he will vote for a Democrat for statewide office.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly, former Republican Member of Congress, doesn’t expect President Donald Trump to campaign in Florida for MAGA Congressman and Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds between now and Election Day.

And on top of that, Florida GOP Representative María Elvira Salazar released a television ad directly attacking Trump’s brutal immigration enforcement actions, a clear of eroding support for Republicans among Hispanic voters.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” said Salazar, who added: “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”