Dreams of a Blue Texas Emerge Yet Again

Yes, and No, and Be Careful, say typically nervous Dems.

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DEMOCRATIC OFFICIALS WOKE UP Wednesday morning with a giant sense of relief. Their party’s messy, drama-filled Texas Senate primary was finally over. And while the major Democratic campaign committees and top super PACs stayed neutral in the race, it was a poorly kept secret that they viewed state Rep. James Talarico as the stronger general-election candidate over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett. When he beat her by a comfortable 6-point margin, they collectively exhaled.

But underneath the quiet elation was an equally quiet fear. Texas is still Texas: No Democrat has won there statewide since 1994 and the last time Texas elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate was in 1988.¹ Yet it’s still the perpetual object of Democratic longing. Precisely because Talarico won, and because he has clear gifts as a campaigner, Democrats could end up, once more, overinvesting in a contest that remains out of their reach, harming other Senate candidates in states that would be easier to win—and more likely to give them a Senate majority.

“As exciting as Talarico is, we also have to make sure we’re in a strong position in Iowa, Ohio, Alaska—and even look at states like Kansas and Mississippi and Florida,” said Adam Jentleson, the former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman and the founder of Searchlight Institute, a Democratic think tank. “We shouldn’t just be thinking about taking back the majority in 2026, we should be thinking about building toward a substantial majority in 2028. And in order to get there in 2028, you have to run up the score in 2026.”

For well over a decade, Democrats have been investing talent and resources into trying to turn Texas blue, just to end up disappointed. Tuesday’s results make it all the more likely that they will once again invest heavily in the state. The party’s voters turned out in impressive numbers. There were also promising signs that Talarico can appeal to Latino voters, a key demographic group that has shifted to the GOP in recent cycles. Talarico also seemed to unite various ideological factions within the party. Everyone from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to centrist Democratic think tank Third Way cheered his win. He will have to work to win over the state’s black voters, who largely supported Crockett. But he has a ten-week head start to do so while the two Republicans in the primary runoff—Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—drag each other through the mud and exhaust GOP donors.²

All of those factors have made even the most skeptical Democratic operatives hopeful about Talarico’s prospects.

Part of the Democrats’ quandary about how much to invest in Texas is about short-term and long-term goals. With Texas on track to gain more representatives in Congress and more Electoral College votes following the 2030 census, Democrats will need to be more competitive in the state long-term. But some operatives are cautioning the party not to get too sucked into the allure of flipping the reliably Republican stronghold this year. After all, they’ve been down that road before (See O’Rourke, Beto).

“It’s a tricky dynamic, and it’s a bit incumbent on rank-and-file Democrats to be strategic in their thinking here and say, ‘I want to use what resources I have to not just give to the candidate who I like the most on [MS NOW], but to make sure Democrats have as many pieces on the board to beat Republicans as possible,” said Jentleson.

Grassroots donors became enamored with Talarico—encouraged by fawning media coverage—leaving other Democratic candidates feeling spurned (not to mention wanting for cash). Jentleson noted that often what makes candidates best suited to win in states like Ohio or Iowa is a stay-above-the-fray approach, which also makes them less likely to go viral online or inspire massive excitement with small-dollar donors. Operatives in those states recognize the challenge too.

“I spent some time with the national donor class and you have to have something to sell. It’s a transactional thing,” said Sue Dvorsky, former chair of the Iowa Democratic Party. “We have not been a good investment property. And it isn’t the donors’ responsibility to throw money at us. It’s our responsibility to get out there and prove that we can bring this back. This is a local job.”

Some of the top Democrats in the country are skeptical about Texas flipping blue in 2026, though they don’t always say it out loud. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said that the clearest path to the Senate runs through Alaska, Ohio, North Carolina, and Maine—the Lone Star state left notably off the list.

The notion of winning in Texas is part of a larger Democratic plan to expand the list of states where they can compete. Alexander Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was a key witness in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment (and the twin brother of freshman Rep. Eugene Vindman [D-Va.]) launched a bid for the Florida Senate seat in January. Democrats have also entertained the idea of backing independent candidates, such as Dan Osborn in Nebraska. On Wednesday morning, University of Montana president Seth Bodnar announced he was running for Senate as an independent, after former Democratic Sen. Jon Tester reportedly encouraged him to do so.

But if there’s one candidate who repeatedly comes up in my conversations with operatives as an under-the-radar possibility to flip a Senate seat, it’s Scott Colom, the district attorney for the 16th Judicial District of Mississippi. Both because of his state’s large black population and because of the poor approval ratings for the Republican on the ticket, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Colom might be able to win in a state even redder than Texas. But here, too, is an example of how national attention can alter the paths for Democrats to reclaim the Senate. Hyde-Smith is sitting on a healthy pile of campaign cash. Colom is not; he raised about $430,000 in the last reporting cycle and has $698,749.84 cash on hand. Compare that to the $20 million that Talarico has raised since he announced his campaign in September.

“Talarico will have the money to compete,” said Matt Bennett, cofounder of Third Way. “The question is, will that starve winnable House races or even less sexy Senate candidates?”

A word that kept coming up in my conversations with party operatives was “discipline.” Yes, the party should get excited about Texas. No one thinks Talarico is the next Amy McGrath, who raised more than $90 million in her 2020 campaign against Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell only to lose to him by nearly 20 points. But they are encouraging donors and grassroots supporters to be strategic, show some restraint, and think of the big picture.

“You can be bullish on Texas while ensuring the rest of the map is competitive. Those two things go hand-in-hand,” said Lauren French, a spokesperson for Senate Majority PAC. “Texas changing the conversation about what’s possible in 2026 is a gift. The way you honor that gift is by building a map worthy of it. We’ve got the candidates. We’ve got the environment. Now we need to make sure we have the discipline to see the whole board.”

The hope among others in the party is that Democrats ultimately won’t have to worry much about the cash—that the money will be there for virtually all candidates because the desire to put a check on Donald Trump would be enough to fuel even the less high-profile races.

Rufus Gifford, who served as the campaign finance chair for the Biden-Harris presidential campaign, brought up Sara Gideon, who ended her failed 2020 Senate campaign in Maine with $14.8 million left unspent. For him, that’s not a cautionary tale about resources poorly allocated; it’s proof that when Trump is at the top of the ticket, Democratic donors will fund any candidate they believe will help hold him in check.

“Those candidates are going to have way, way more than money, all of them, in order to win those races,” he argued. “Most of these states that are competitive now are actually very cheap. Maine, Alaska, Iowa—these are not all that expensive of states to compete in,” he said.

🫏 Donkey Business:

— Jasmine Crockett told the New York Times on Wednesday that she was worried her supporters would be hesitant to turn out for James Talarico in the general election after some Dallas County voters were confused about where they could cast their ballots on Tuesday and were turned away. (Republicans in Dallas decided in January to end countywide voting sites on Election Day, and instead have people vote at assigned neighborhood polling places.)

“The Democratic Party should absolutely prepare for the worst and get some things litigated right now,” Crockett said. “People will not turn out because of what’s happened, in my opinion, especially if no one fights for their votes to be counted.”

Crockett did not commit to campaigning with Talarico, telling the Times that she would not “make plans for other people’s campaigns.”

— Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner continues to face accusations of antisemitism, this time for sitting down for an interview with Nate Cornacchia, a podcaster who has used his platform to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories. During the interview, Platner said he was “a longtime fan” of Cornacchia’s YouTube channel. Last week Platner also faced criticism after he shared a tweet from Stew Peters, a neo-Nazi influencer. His campaign told Jewish Insider that the post was a mistake and Platner quickly removed it. Despite all of that, Platner still seems to have the momentum in the primary race. Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego endorsed him on Monday, writing in a post that Platner was the “kind of fighter Maine hasn’t seen in a long time.”

— Rep. Angie Craig, who represents Minnesota’s most competitive House district, wrote in an op-ed this week that she regrets voting for the Laken Riley Act. Donald Trump signed it into law at the start of his second term. The law requires the detention and deportation of people in the country illegally who are charged with crimes such as theft and shoplifting.

When the bill passed, Democrats were still reeling from the 2024 election loss, and many felt like the party dramatically missed how frustrated voters were with Joe Biden’s handling of immigration. But Craig is now running in a competitive Senate primary against Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who has made Craig’s more conservative approach to immigration a major attack line in her race.

My open tabs:

— Pete Buttigieg in the Wilderness

— The Impossible Predicament of the Uninsured

— ​​A Talk Show for Our Times

1. That senator elected in 1988 was Lloyd Bentsen. One subsequent Texas Democrat served in the Senate but was not elected: In 1993, then-Gov. Ann Richards appointed Democrat Bob Krueger to the Senate seat vacated when Bensten became treasury secretary. Krueger served for about five months but lost the special election to finish the remainder of Bentsen’s term.

2. This presumes that neither Republican candidate drops out before the runoff. Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will endorse a candidate in that race and expects the other to drop their bid once he does.