For decades, statewide Democratic primaries in Texas were low-octane affairs.
Then came the 2026 election cycle. In a year that Democrats see as a prime opportunity to finally flip Texas — amid flagging approval for the second Trump administration, a vicious Senate primary on the Republican side and the potential to face scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton in November — Texas Democrats are waging a dogfight primary in the contest for U.S. Senate.
For the first time this century, two Democratic heavyweights with national profiles — U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas and state Rep. James Talarico of Austin — are battling for the party’s nomination, making for an intensely competitive race that has drawn massive attention, dollars and stakes, and cast the outcome of Tuesday’s election as a window into the potential future of the Democratic Party as it continues to grope its way out of the political doldrums of 2024.
“It’s very exciting,” said Beto O’Rourke, perhaps the party’s biggest star of the past decade. “I was not alive the last time we had this kind of talent in a statewide Democratic primary.”
As Texans flocked to the polls to vote early in the two weeks before Election Day, Crockett and Talarico were barnstorming the state, drawing hundreds of attendees to campaign events and at times hitting the same cities within hours of each other to shore up every drop of support they could muster.
In response to a University of Texas poll, fielded before early voting, that showed her leading Talarico by 12 percentage points, Crockett, who was juggling her day job in Washington during the week, said Wednesday, “I’m used to being outspent, but I will never be outworked.”
“As we head into the final stretch of this primary, my message to the voters is to tune out the noise that says what we can’t do and focus on what we must do, which is win this race,” she said. “The only polls that matter are the ones where Texas voters cast a ballot!”
The contest drove some 1.2 million Democratic primary voters to the polls over the first nine days of the 11-day early voting period, according to VoteHub — nearly doubling the final early turnout numbers from the last midterm.
Much of that engagement has been inspired by the two candidates at the top of the ticket who each bring viral social media presences, major fundraising operations and deep devotion from the Democratic base. They are largely aligned on policy, but almost diametric opposites in style and theory of the kind of politics the moment demands. Crockett — pugnacious, partisan and unyielding — sees a path to turning Texas blue by driving legions of disengaged Democrats to the polls. Talarico — populist, faith-based and seeking to persuade — has also embraced an expand-the-electorate strategy, while arguing the nominee must simultaneously win over crossover voters in a state Donald Trump recently won by 14 points.
Inherent in the electability debate is the reality of a Black woman and a white man squaring off in an increasingly diverse state, as part of a party that has grappled in recent years with the role of race and identity politics in its elections.
Further entrenched by political commentators online, those dynamics have all fostered the kind of ugly intraparty contest in the months leading up to Tuesday’s election that many Democrats had hoped would remain on the other side of the aisle.
“If I could just boil it down to just a couple of descriptors, it would be: very online, really divisive and pretty chaotic,” Monique Alcala, the former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said in summing up the race thus far.
The hostility — stoked by political influencers and millions in outside spending and, as Election Day neared, embraced by Crockett herself — has left some Democrats worried that the base will be divided and the nominee irreparably wounded going into November, which will already present a steep climb.
“Whoever wins the Dem primary, we all become 100% Team That Person,” state Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, pleaded on social media. “I believe both will do the right thing. It’s their supporters that will need to follow their lead.”
If Talarico wins on Tuesday, he’ll need to embark on a concerted effort to win over Crockett’s base, particularly the Black voters who form the core of her support and remain elusive for him. The task will be all the more challenging coming off a primary filled with attacks depicting him as anti-Black — largely based on an allegation that he labeled a former rival as a “mediocre Black man,” which he denies — and a Republican plant based on sometimes misleading digs at his record. Crockett has come under fire for comments she previously made about Latino voters — a critical part of the general electorate — and faced concerns about her ability to scale up a vigorous campaign in a general election context.
Crockett also drew scrutiny after her team booted a reporter from a recent campaign event who had previously written a profile of the Dallas congresswoman that she had sought to shut down. Crockett said Wednesday there was “no evidence” a reporter had been removed. On Friday, The Atlantic published the reporter’s recording of her being forced off the property for being a “top-notch hater.”
Republicans watched with glee as the Democratic primary nosedived into a pit of negativity.
“It is a full-on civil war among Texas Democrats,” said Republican National Committee spokesperson Zach Kraft. “The nonstop fighting and nastiness of this primary has left Democrats divided and dejected. No matter who emerges from this dumpster fire, half the base will despise them.”
Republicans have directly played in the race, too, working to boost Crockett ahead of Election Day under the assumption that she would be easier to beat in November.
Gov. Greg Abbott ran ads against Crockett to drive GOP turnout — a move that Crockett has used to cast herself to her supporters as the candidate Republicans fear. A Republican-aligned group called American Sovereignty blasted out text messages attacking her opposition to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, using messaging that could bolster her with Democrats as much as it would hurt her with Republicans. And when she first launched her campaign, the Senate Republican campaign arm bragged of its efforts to goad her into the race.
“Republicans should be very concerned about Jasmine Crockett’s surge,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair posted on social media Friday. “She poses a real threat in Texas.”
Some Democrats see the combative primary as an exercise in iron sharpening iron — reflecting the strength of their candidates, building calluses on their eventual nominee and generating enormous engagement among voters that has already translated to soaring levels of turnout. Both candidates have also maintained strong approval ratings among Democratic voters in public polling of the race, despite the negativity.
“As you get to where Texas is more and more in play for Democrats, you’re going to see more and more contentious primaries,” said Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder. “That’s just a reality of it.”
The venom in the Democratic primary has been amplified by online content creators and big-money super PACs for both candidates whose donors remain largely anonymous.
By the end of early voting, Talarico had outspent Crockett nearly five-to-one on advertising, including outside spending by groups supporting the candidates, according to media tracking firm AdImpact. Talarico, who began the race with much lower name recognition, spent $15.3 million through his campaign alone, compared to Crockett’s $4.3 million; a pro-Talarico super PAC dropped another $7.7 million, while a super PAC boosting Crockett had spent less than $500,000.
Talarico, a Presbyterian minister-in-training whose populist pitch for a “politics of love” is rooted in his Christian faith, has repeatedly emphasized his intention to run a positive campaign and urged his supporters to remain respectful of Crockett.
But while his campaign cannot legally coordinate with super PACs and Talarico has said he wants to ban such entities, it was a pro-Talarico group — Lone Star Rising PAC — that dropped the first negative ad of the primary in early February. The ad told viewers that Crockett was “being backed by Republicans,” alluding to GOP meddling in the primary and Republicans’ belief that she would be easier to beat.
“If she wins, we lose,” the ad’s narrator said.
Since then, Crockett has amped up her attacks on Talarico, at one point calling the ad “straight-up racist” and accusing the group of darkening her skin. The ad features a dark filter throughout, including over other people depicted.
In the weeks leading up to early voting, her campaign launched an attack ad on Talarico, depicting him alongside Trump and Abbott with the narrator saying, “They fight for the rich and powerful. Crockett fights for us.”
Forward Texas, a pro-Crockett super PAC, also ran an ad that blamed Talarico for “paving the way for MAGA Republicans’ voter suppression law, making it harder for Hispanic Texans to vote.” The charge was a reference to Talarico being one of the first to return to Austin from Texas House Democrats’ 2021 walkout over a Republican voting bill. Forward Texas also hit him for accepting donations from a pro-gambling group backed by GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, who has donated to numerous state lawmakers from both parties in her bid to bring casinos to Texas.
“Democrats were united to stop voter suppression, but James Talarico saw a chance to help himself,” the narrator says. “Then Talarico quietly accepted $59,000 from Donald Trump’s largest donor. Jasmine Crockett will never sell us out to Donald Trump.”
At a campaign rally kicking off early voting last week, Talarico said he was “trying to show moral leadership and model what I want all Texas Democrats to act like, particularly my supporters, which is running a positive race based on our values, our vision for the future, our ideas, our track record.”
“I really wanted this race to be about what we’re both offering, but I know that these things can get off track,” he said. “My only hope now is that we can lower the temperature, we can remember that we’re all on the same team, and that once this primary is over in two weeks, we can come together and focus on the real fight ahead in November.”
O’Rourke, who had tried to convene a slate of prominent Democrats to run for each statewide office that fell apart when most wanted the Senate slot, said he was certain the losing candidate would unite behind whoever won the nomination.
“Whoever does not win will get behind the victor and do everything they can to ensure that that person and every other Democrat gets over the line,” he said. “One of the wonderful things about Jasmine and James is they each have such distinct strengths, and working as a team, they will really be able to complement each other.”
The makings of a slugfest
Talarico entered the race with a splash. In the 12 hours after launching his campaign in September, he raised over $1 million — previewing the enormous fundraising operation, largely powered by small-dollar donations, that would only ramp up over the next six months.
He vastly outraised his then-rival, former congressman and 2024 Democratic Senate nominee Colin Allred, and momentum seemed to be on his side — until Crockett began signaling in the fall that she was considering a run. She called Talarico asking if he would run for governor instead, The New Yorker reported, but he declined the request, noting that state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, whom he’d endorsed, was already campaigning to take on Abbott.
After weeks of publicly vacillating, Crockett finally made her run official on the last day for candidates to file. Hours before she announced her bid, Allred dropped out and filed to run for his former congressional seat. Incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn called her decision a “gift,” and Republicans cheered her candidacy, convinced that she would make an easier opponent to beat in November.
Among Democrats, Crockett was the immediate frontrunner. She entered the race with near-universal name recognition among Democratic voters, a history of strong fundraising and deep relationships particularly with the Black base of the party. Her supporters enthusiastically welcomed the entry of a candidate they see as one of the party’s best communicators and fundraisers.
At the primary’s only debate, hosted by the Texas AFL-CIO in January, the candidates revealed little daylight on policy, and the tenor was restrained.
Talarico — and a super PAC in his corner — began spending big on the airwaves in a bid to increase his name ID, dropping several ads, including in Spanish, about his populist top-versus-bottom pitch, his legislative effort to cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $25 a month, and his experience as a public school teacher.
Crockett, meanwhile, didn’t start spending on advertising until weeks before the election, and she held a handful of campaign events in the state as she worked full-time in Congress.
Then, a political grenade landed in Talarico’s camp at the start of February. A TikTok influencer — who’d supported Talarico’s bid before Crockett joined the race — accused him of referring to Allred as a “mediocre Black man.”
Allred tore into Talarico for the alleged remark and endorsed Crockett in his own selfie-style video, turning the claim into a national headline. Talarico disputed the account, saying he described Allred’s campaigning as mediocre but “would never attack him on the basis of race.”
The clash was the culmination of a long-simmering proxy war online between political content creators from around the country on their preferred candidates’ behalf. When Crockett entered the race, many online Talarico supporters were quick to decry her firebrand profile as a liability in a red state. Crockett boosters, meanwhile, saw much of the scrutiny of her electability as driven by misogyny and racism.
The social media battle cracked open the racial tensions of the primary and framed the contest as a referendum on identity politics in the Democratic Party.
“The racial divisions here in Texas are just on full display for everybody to see,” Alcala, the former state party director, said. “There’s no objective truth whenever it comes to content creators, there’s just information that’s out there. People either trust or they don’t trust the content creator or the person that’s putting out that information. And so I think whenever there’s a lack of objectivity, you see that type of chaos go crazy.”
Then, on the first day of early voting, Talarico got the kind of media boost most campaigns would kill for: Talk-show host Stephen Colbert accused CBS of pulling his interview with Talarico for fear of running afoul of a new Trump administration rule. The incident, which Talarico spun into a direct attempt by Trump to censor him, generated the latest round of explosive national news in the primary, instantly introducing the Austin Democrat to millions of people and garnering him $2.5 million in fundraising in the 24 hours after.
As the candidates canvassed the state over the last two weeks of the election, the “pollercoaster” — as Alcala called it — was well underway. A set of public polls gave Crockett commanding double-digit leads. Talarico responded with an internal survey showing him ahead by 4 points. A third candidate, Ahmed Hassan, has registered negligible support, but his presence on the ballot makes a May runoff election a remote possibility if he siphons off just enough votes to prevent Crockett or Talarico from reaching 50% on Tuesday.
“Don’t listen to the haters on the outside, because it’s gonna be a lot of that, and don’t listen to the distractions,” Crockett said on the campaign trail Friday. “It is time for us to focus on us and the future that we deserve. We deserve better. The only reason I decided to run for the U.S. Senate is because I really want change.”
