State Rep. James Talarico won the Texas Democratic Senate nomination over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett Tuesday night— a victory that came amid widespread voter confusion engineered by Republican officials in two of the state’s largest counties.
With roughly 85% of polling locations reporting, Talarico held a commanding lead of 53% to Crockett’s 46%.
The Associated Press called the race early Wednesday morning.
Hours later, Crockett conceded and urged the party to unite behind her former rival.
“Tonight our campaign is shocking the nation,” Talarico told supporters in Austin. “We’re about to take back Texas.”
Full remarks at the Democratic primary election night watch party
A Race Shaped by Media Censorship and Faith-Based Populism
Talarico, a former middle school teacher and current Presbyterian seminary student, ran a campaign that deliberately broke from the Democratic playbook.
Where Crockett leaned into her national profile as a sharp-tongued progressive firebrand willing to confront Republicans on camera, Talarico pitched himself as the candidate who could win over moderates and disaffected Republicans with a populist economic message rooted in his Christian faith.
That strategy got a massive boost two weeks before the primary when CBS blocked his interview with Stephen Colbert from airing on television.
Colbert told his audience that network lawyers barred the segment over fears the Trump-controlled FCC would retaliate — a claim CBS disputed with corporate doublespeak about “legal guidance” regarding equal-time rules.
The interview went up on YouTube instead, where it was viewed more than 4 million times.
Talarico’s campaign reported raising $2.5 million in the 24 hours that followed.
The Streisand Effect in action: Trump’s FCC tried to silence a Senate candidate and instead turned him into a household name.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the commission, called the incident “another troubling example of corporate capitulation in the face of this Administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech.”
Republican Voter Suppression Hit Dallas County Hardest
But the story of this primary isn’t just who won. It’s who was prevented from voting.
In Dallas County — Crockett’s home base and the second-most-populous county in Texas — hundreds of voters were turned away from the polls after showing up to their usual voting locations.
The reason: the Dallas County Republican Party refused to hold a joint primary with Democrats, forcing a sudden switch from countywide vote centers to precinct-specific polling sites.
53-second explanation of why this happened.
Voters who had spent years casting ballots at whatever location was most convenient — near their job, near their kids’ school, near wherever they happened to be — arrived on Election Day to find they’d been sent to the wrong place.
Election navigators stationed at roughly 75 locations reported turning away every second or third voter who walked through the door.
The same chaos played out in Williamson County, north of Austin, where Talarico is based.
Both counties spent roughly $1 million in taxpayer money trying to publicize the changes — money that wouldn’t have been necessary if Republicans had agreed to the joint elections that had worked smoothly for over a decade.
The origins of the Dallas County GOP’s decision are telling.
The party initially pushed for precinct-based voting because it wanted to hand-count ballots — a move driven by baseless conspiracy theories about voting machines.
They ultimately abandoned the hand-count plan because of costs, but the precinct-based voting remained in place, creating maximum disruption for Democratic voters.
When it became clear that voters were being disenfranchised in real time, the Dallas County Democratic Party chair obtained an emergency court order extending voting hours to 9 p.m.
Attorney General Ken Paxton — who is simultaneously running for the Republican Senate nomination — rushed to the Texas Supreme Court to block the extension. The all-Republican court obliged, ordering that any ballots cast by voters who arrived after 7 p.m. be separated and potentially thrown out.
Both Crockett and Talarico called the situation what it was. “People have been disenfranchised,” Crockett told her supporters. Talarico was equally blunt:
“The voter suppression in my home county and Congresswoman Crockett’s home county underscores the gravity of this moment.”
The Road to November
Talarico now waits to learn who he’ll face in November.
The Republican primary is headed to a May 26 runoff between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, who took 42% of the vote, and Attorney General Ken Paxton at 41%.
The three-way split with Rep. Wesley Hunt prevented either from crossing the 50% threshold.
Trump, who didn’t endorse in the primary, posted on Truth Social Wednesday morning suggesting he’d soon pick a side — and demanding the loser immediately drop out.
Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Texas since 1994.
But the party’s math looks different in 2026.
Trump’s approval ratings have cratered. The Republican primary has already burned through nearly $100 million in advertising, and the bruising Cornyn-Paxton runoff promises months more of intraparty bloodletting.
Talarico outraised not just Crockett but even the incumbent Cornyn, demonstrating a fundraising operation that could keep pace through November.
Republicans are already previewing their attacks, calling Talarico “too radical for Texas” and highlighting past comments where he said “God is nonbinary.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee compared him to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a comparison that will land very differently in Texas than it might on Fox News.
Talarico enters the general election with something Democrats have struggled to produce in Texas for decades: a candidate who can talk about faith and economic populism without sounding like he’s reading from a focus group memo.
Whether that’s enough to flip a state that went for Trump by 13 points in 2024 remains an open question.
But as Talarico told his supporters Tuesday night, borrowing a line that may come to define his campaign: “A little bit of hope is a dangerous thing.”
Caricature of James Talarico by the very talented DonkeyHotey on Flickr, CC BY 2.0 license.
