For the past decade, a group of senior men in Pampa, Texas, has gathered every Thursday morning for coffee, fellowship and prayer. This week's meeting was their first since an election that swept Republican majorities in the House and Senate out of power and delivered Democrats every statewide office in Texas.

While much of the country celebrated the removal of Republican incumbents and the defeat of GOP challengers on Tuesday, the senior citizen center in Pampa was a place of mourning.

"If there's one thing that we can definitely say, that we are not happy with the election," patron Stephen Porter told New York Times reporters this week.

"In deep-red Texas, conservatives are trying to make sense of what just happened to their longtime Republican stronghold," the Times reported. "We visited a men's bible study as they gathered for the first time since the election."

Dressed in black

"Yesterday, some of my friends came in to the senior citizens' and they were all dressed in black, because they said it was, they were in mourning," Porter said. "Everyone here is a full-blooded American, I can assure you. We love our country."

The men are all Christians and all conservatives, according to the Times, and they are now grappling with Democrats sweeping every statewide race in Texas, from the governor's office to the U.S. Senate — something that hasn't happened since these men were seniors.

"The Democrats seem to have some kind of agenda. First of all, they're going to attack our president," Porter added.

"I'm concerned about our state," said fellow patron Jay Johnson. "I know you were talking more about on the federal level, but I'm concerned about our state."

A red outpost

Pampa sits deep in Republican territory in the Texas Panhandle, hundreds of miles from blue Austin and the Mexican border areas that went all in for Democrats on Tuesday, the Times reported. In Roberts County, Republican senatorial candidate Ken Paxton won 91 percent of the vote over Democrat James Talarico, even as Talarico swamped the controversial Paxton in most other areas of the state. The tally in the largely rural county, however, was just 414 votes to Talarico's 30 — a combined 444 votes, a total that underscores how thinly populated this corner of the Panhandle remains.

"I moved down here because Seattle and Washington and Oregon were just way over the top for me," said Tom Hickey. "I came down here because it was a red state."

Hickey and the rest of the men fear what the blue wave might mean for Texas, the Times reports.

"I saw what governors, blue governors did to the states that I grew up in. Just from my experience and from what I've lived. We're going to see taxes going up," said Hickey. "There's going to be a war on harvesting animals. There's going to be a war on farming and war on everything. And I only say 'war' because it's for lack of a better term, it's just not very freedom-conscious."

"L.B.J. came from Texas and he was as Democrat as you can get," argued Rick Amerson. "So that doesn't mean what's happened here is changing anything about Texas itself."

"When you look at a map of Texas as it is just so, still so red, but unfortunately, we've had a lot of transplants coming in from areas that don't believe like we do right here," complained James Schaub, speaking of the influx of new voters from blue states — including, as it happens, his friend Tom Hickey.

A changing state

The Times pointed out that Democrats campaigned on some of the "same things these men care about: lowering property taxes and saving family farms." But the Texas these seniors have lived with their whole lives is changing. Hispanic Texans, long part of the state's history, now outnumber white Texans, for starters.

Those campaign pledges on property taxes and family farms now move from the trail to Austin, where Democrats will hold every statewide office. How, and whether, they are carried out is the next part of the story.

"I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it shakes out," said Mark Taylor.

Praying for the winners

Above all, the group remains a prayer group, and the Times reports that the men are also dedicating prayer to the Democrats who now control the state.

"The Democrats may be opposed to what the Republicans have, but they are Americans," said Porter. "We're hoping and praying that their ideas will be to improve our country. Make it better."

"Amen is right," Porter finished, after the conclusion of a hymn.