State Rep. James Talarico (D) will be Democrats’ standard-bearer in November, as they try to take advantage of President Trump’s unpopularity and a potentially deeply flawed Republican opponent to do the impossible — finally, finally flip Texas blue.
Talarico beat Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D), a primary battle that quickly became overlaid with some of Democrats’ most pressing questions in the Trump age: Is it better to double down on your base, or appeal to the squishy middle? Who is actually electable? Is social media king?
The Associated Press made the call early Wednesday morning.
Little daylight separated Talarico from Crockett on the issues, though their drastically different styles — and race and gender — sometimes lumped Talarico in with moderates and tagged Crockett as a progressive.
Talarico, a seminarian, built his campaign on a progressive Christianity; his plan to succeed in a Senate race where so many other Democrats have failed is premised on expanding a welcoming big tent to those led astray by President Trump or apathy. Crockett, a telegenic fighter who specializes in starring in social media-friendly clips, believed in ratcheting up Democratic turnout, which she theorized would include voters who haven’t previously been rousted to vote.
For such a critical race — Texas is one of the longshots Democrats will need to win control of the Senate — it was extremely difficult to predict in advance. Polls were all over the place, though some seemed to suggest a late-breaking Talarico surge.
The frantic feeling that Democrats couldn’t afford to self-sabotage amid such a primo opportunity upped the tension of the last few months, though Talarico and Crockett both took pains to treat each other cordially and have vowed to support the primary winner. A particularly painful episode flared up last month, when former Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) went online to blast Talarico after an influencer claimed that he had referred to Allred as a “mediocre Black man.” Talarico said that he’d been referring to the unsuccessful campaign Allred ran against Sen. Ted Cruz (R) in 2024, not Allred himself.
Cobwebs of failed Democratic candidacies of yore hung over the race, with vociferous supporters of both convinced that their chosen candidate possessed the elusive key to a contest that has so bedeviled everyone else. And the unseemly side of the electability debate — the self-fulfilling prophecy that Crockett’s race and gender alone meant she’d lose — continues to roil a party much more heterogeneous than the Republican one, which has watched its two highest-profile female candidates lose to Trump.
Still, despite the bruising primary, Democrats have been gifted an advantage over their Republican counterparts: an outright winner and time to coalesce around him, while Republicans have to spend their energy and money duking it out over a three-month runoff.
Talarico will now have an early test for his open-arms theory: how successfully he can usher in heartbroken Crockett fans, as he charges towards the general election.
