← Election Series · All house races

Our verdict

LiberalMind endorses Brian Babin

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026, and voting is already underway in Texas. This is the whole race — the records, the claims against each candidate, and what the sources actually show. Read the research, and decide which flaw you can live with.

The setup

Texas's 36th District — Southeast Texas and the Houston Ship Channel east — is held by incumbent Brian Babin (R), first elected in 2014. The Democratic nominee is Rhonda Hart. No verified new-map partisan baseline was located for this district, so no lean figure is printed here; old-map figures are not used.

Brian Babin (Republican)

The record: Babin, first elected in 2014, is a dentist, a former Woodville mayor, and an Air Force captain, per his House biography as summarized in the research file. He chairs the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

Pros: More than a decade of continuous service in this seat, local elected experience before Congress, military service, and the chairmanship of a full House committee.

Cons: A record that long is a record voters can hold to account term by term, and a committee chairmanship is power that deserves scrutiny in every cycle, not deference by habit.

The flaw, plainly: On the file consulted, no flaw rises to the level that would displace an incumbent of Babin's tenure and committee position. The honest pricing is continuity itself: voters are choosing a known quantity, with a known record, over an alternative whose case rests on program.

Rhonda Hart (Democratic)

The record: Hart is a disabled Army veteran. Her daughter was killed in the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting. She worked to pass the safe-storage provision of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, per Houston Public Media as summarized in the research file.

Pros: A veteran's service, and advocacy that turned personal loss into a specific provision of a bipartisan law that actually passed. That is not a talking point — it is work carried into statute, and it is credited here in full.

Cons: There is no elected-office record in the file in which a broader governing program, or a break toward our values, could be documented. Her candidacy asks voters to extend one hard-won policy achievement into a full congressional term against a committee chairman.

The flaw, plainly: Hart's biography is a credential, and the disagreement is over program, not person. Nothing in this section diminishes her service or her loss. On the file, the case for displacing Babin on program grounds is not made — and her safe-storage work is the strongest part of her file, stated plainly rather than argued around.

OUR CALL

LiberalMind endorses Brian Babin.

Babin is the proven incumbent: elected since 2014, a former mayor, an Air Force captain, and chair of Science, Space, and Technology. Hart is steelmanned above at full strength — a disabled Army veteran whose advocacy helped pass the safe-storage provision of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act after her daughter was killed at Santa Fe — and the disagreement with her candidacy is over program, not person. On the records in the file, that is not enough to displace the chairman.

This race is one of hundreds in LiberalMind's Election 2026 coverage. For the complete breakdown — every race, claim by claim — go to liberalmindhq.com.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Winner: Brian Babin (Republican) — called by the Associated Press. This result was appended on November 4, 2026 (results wave 1); the original article above is unchanged, exactly as published before Election Day.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

← Back to the Election Series