News for North Texas
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Elections

As Trump Surged, Dallas County GOP Cheered

The excitement at the Dallas County GOP watch party cranked up a notch each time a state was called for Donald Trump. Republican leaders and GOP supporters celebrated a race that stunned them all.

A ballroom at the Westin Dallas Park Central erupted with cheers each time Donald Trump’s electoral vote total ticked up.

Jan Folmer never expected the race to go this way.

“Well I’m really excited because I thought we had no chance," she says. "So this is like a miracle, but I knew the Lord was in charge all the time.”

Folmer says to her, defeating Hillary Clinton is almost more important than electing Trump.

“Donald is a leader, he’s a proven businessman, and he’s a hope," she says. "And it’s a gamble, but we already know about Hillary.”

Credit Samantha Guzman / KERA News
/
KERA News
John Hancock and Logan Dorsey celebrate as Fox News predicts Donald Trump will win Louisiana.

Anti-Clinton sentiment was high at the GOP watch party. Ben Newton though, thinks Trump stands for something worth getting excited about.

“Better negotiating deals, better trade deals, more jobs here, and a very good governor in Pence helping Trump along," he says.

Jason Villalba, Republican State Representative for district 114 in the northern part of Dallas easily won his race. When he took the stage on election night for his victory speech, he praised Trump—a candidate he skewered last May in a column for the Texas Tribune.

As the votes continued to roll in, Villalba was already looking forward to a Trump presidency.

“I’m watching these results, President Trump is crushing it across the board. Look, some of us might not have gotten on board quick enough, I’m jumping on board tonight He is a man who is committed to conservative principles. And President Trump will be our leader for the next four years, and Republicans have prevailed," Villalba says.

Prevailed in a way most people at the Dallas County GOP watch party never expected. 

Courtney Collins has been working as a broadcast journalist since graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2004. Before coming to KERA in 2011, Courtney worked as a reporter for NPR member station WAMU in Washington D.C. While there she covered daily news and reported for the station’s weekly news magazine, Metro Connection.