James Talarico’s charmed political journey has broken his way at almost every juncture of his career, from “The Joe Rogan Experience” invite as he was weighing a Senate bid last summer to his star turn in Texas’ quorum break to a fundraising windfall over a spiked Stephen Colbert interview in the primary’s homestretch.
But as he gave his not-quite-victory speech late Tuesday night, Talarico faced a more uncertain future than he had hoped. The Associated Press eventually called the election for him hours later, though voting problems in Crockett’s home base of Dallas County delayed the result.
And suddenly, it looks like he could face a much tougher opponent than he’d banked on in the general election.
Talarico and Democrats had hoped for months that the preacher would get to face scandal-tarred Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a less objectionable general-election foil, had outperformed expectations and fought him to a draw, forcing a runoff.
For the disciplined and studious Democrat who can commit scripture and prepared remarks to memory in a matter of minutes, and who is known by aides to linger over edits to social media posts and ads, the unknown outcome of the runoff is an unwelcome twist, the seemingly rare thing he cannot control.
Even with a 12-week head start on whomever voters select as his opponent in a brass-knuckled, dregs-scraping, cash-consuming GOP runoff, Talarico could still face a four-term incumbent with a long track record of big general-election wins.
Amid a legal dispute over voting precinct hours in Dallas County, Talarico did not quite declare victory in a short speech just after midnight local time, when he was leading the race but before the Associated Press called it.
“We are still waiting for an official call, but we are confident in this movement we’ve built together,” he said after lamenting what he called “voter suppression.”
“We are not just trying to win an election,” Talarico said at his rally in Austin. “We are trying to fundamentally change our politics, and it’s working.”
Earlier Tuesday, a district judge permitted the Dallas County Democratic Party to extend polling hours until 9 p.m. central, but the Texas Supreme Court granted Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request to set aside the votes of those people who were not in line by 7 p.m.
The polling problems are just the latest in a long history of voter suppression and voting rights battles in the state — ones that have particularly impacted Black and Hispanic voters. Crockett first gained national attention as a state representative battling against the Texas GOP’s move to pass a law that added new restrictions on voting, an issue once again in the spotlight as her Senate campaign came to a close.
In a statement earlier in the evening, Talarico’s campaign acknowledged that they were “deeply concerned about the reports of voters being turned away from the polls in Dallas and Williamson counties following the GOP’s implementation of precinct-specific voting locations for Election Day.”
Talarico ran well in heavily white and Hispanic areas on Tuesday, but has conceded he has work to do with Black voters if he’s going to win in November — an effort that could be complicated by the sour final note of voter confusion.
The final stretch of the contest pitted Talarico’s and Crockett’s supporters against each other in bitter feuds, often along racial lines, that played out on social media platforms like TikTok and X. Those debates focused on whether Democrats believed Crockett, a Black representative from Dallas, could be elected in a deep-red state — as well as over a claim made by a social media influencer that Talarico had described a former opponent as a “mediocre Black man,” comments he says were misconstrued.
Still, his strong performance against Crockett has jolted Democratic hopes of winning Texas for the first time in more than a generation, forging a wider than expected path to flipping the Senate — and out of the wilderness.
“I’d be very worried if I were the national Republican Party after tonight,” said Emily Cherniack, the founder and CEO of New Politics, and a longtime Talarico ally. “Strong turnout, especially among Latino voters, signals real dissatisfaction with Republicans in power. That’s a huge warning sign for November for them.”
Up until Tuesday, Senate Democrats had staked their chances of flipping the Republican-controlled Senate on just four states: North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska.
But now, some Democrats believe Talarico can cobble together a winning coalition in the most improbable of states — no Democrat has a Senate seat in Texas since 1988 — based on his class-focused message seeking to unite voters across parties.
“A perfect storm is lining up for Texas Democrats,” said Mark McKinnon, the former Texas media operative who started out advising Democrat Ann Richards on her gubernatorial campaigns before switching to Republican George W. Bush in 1997. “They have a nominee who can appeal to moderates and soft Republicans. Talarico could be Moses who leads the Lone Star Democrats out of the desert they’ve been in for 35 years.”
Public and private polls have mostly shown close races in either matchup; Talarico would start off with the edge over Paxton but trail Cornyn.
“It is still a massive mountain to climb, but this doesn’t hurt the effort,” one former staffer on Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign said of Talarico’s win.
Talarico has argued that he can beat either foe.
“I think both of them are extraordinarily weak,” Talarico said in an interview with POLITICO just days before Election Day. “Paxton and Cornyn, they’re different. Paxton was guilty of illegal corruption. That’s why my colleagues and I impeached him in the Texas House. But Cornyn is guilty of legalized corruption. He was the deciding vote on the Big, Ugly, Bill which kicked millions of Texas off their health care, took food out of the mouths of hungry Texas kids all to give tax breaks to his donors. Both of them are guilty of using their public offices to enrich their donors — Ken Paxton in an illegal way, but John Cornyn in a legal way. I look forward to prosecuting the case against either of them — whoever makes it out.”
