Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race has stopped being a simple contest to fill John Cornyn's seat. It has turned into a stress test of whether a Republican carrying a decade of legal and ethical baggage — and Donald Trump's blessing — can still win statewide in a Texas where Latino and Black voters increasingly decide close elections.
Democrat James Talarico, a former public-school teacher and Austin-area state representative, is wagering that he can tie Ken Paxton's record of scandals to the household budgets of struggling Texans, and that the combination is enough to finally flip a seat his party has chased and lost for more than thirty years.
