I am acutely aware that a single election return isn’t enough to redefine a community, let alone a state, but the election returns from the Nov. 3 midterm election may have changed the mind of many Americans about Texas.

Case in point: Two people with whom I am very close both once advised me that they never would “set foot in Texas” as long as the state was governed by politicians whom they deemed to be wackos. I am related to one of them, the other is a close friend with whom I once worked at a newspaper in my home state of Oregon. They’re both left-leaning progressives.

One of them even has chided me a time or two over the years for moving my family from Oregon to Texas. Well, I did so to further my career in journalism. Texas presented me some opportunities that Oregon didn’t possess. So … there’s that.

My wife and I crafted a good life for us in Texas, first in Beaumont and then in Amarillo. I don’t regret the move for a single second.

Was I enamored of the right-ward slant the state took beginning in the mid-1980s? No. Then again, we had lives far from work and from the politics that affected my job as a print journalist.

Then came the explosion of the 2026 midterm election. All those GOP-held statewide constitutional offices turned Democratic by the end of the night. We elected our first Democratic U.S. senator since 1998 and our first Democratic governor since 1994. The Texas House of Reps flipped from R to D.

We are, to be sure, now a more competitive state than we had been for many election cycles.

I asked both of these folks if they had changed their mind about Texas. They’re both reasonable individuals and they said, “Yes.”

I don’t necessarily expect to see them any time soon now that Texas has shed its ruby-red Republican label. I do believe that they are speaking for millions of like-minded Americans who now are willing to visit this grand state and see what it has to offer.