Texas is where Democratic dreams die. Did Trump change that with his Senate pick?
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- The primary victory of the scandal-ridden Ken Paxton has buoyed Democratic hopes of a November upset.
- But the party has a decades-long record of failure in statewide races and Democrat James Talarico faces a tough fight.
The catalog of unrequited hopes and hearts is a long one.
Captain Ahab went mad in his vengeful search for Moby Dick. Jay Gatsby’s ostentatious fortune failed to win the love of Daisy Buchanan. Charlie Brown never kicked the football.
Then there’s Texas, the land of broken Democratic dreams.
It’s been half a century since the party carried Texas in a presidential election. The last time Democrats won a statewide office, back in 1994, “The Lion King” was smashing box office records, Boyz II Men ruled the radio and the World Wide Web was about to change everything.
As Texas grew increasingly Republican, and politically beyond reach, Democrats insisted every election year was the one when they’d end their futility and take back power in either Washington or Austin, the state capital.
It never happened.
But is this, finally, the year?
With Ken Paxton stomping incumbent John Cornyn on Tuesday in a fierce and astronomically expensive U.S. Senate primary, many Democrats believe so — and even neutral observers agree they’ve been handed their best shot at resurrection in a good while.
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“Paxton is going to be a much tougher guy [for Republicans] to haul over the finish line five months from now as opposed to Cornyn, who never lost an election until this one,” said Richard Murray, an emeritus political science professor at the University of Houston, who spent decades surveying Texas voters. “We’re looking at a very expensive, hard-fought race.”
Paxton, Texas’ three-term attorney general, is a singularly flawed candidate. Indicted, impeached, accused by his ex-wife of adultery, the GOP nominee is, to put it mildly, “an ethically challenged individual,” as the famously understated (and concerned) Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins put it.
But Paxton was the choice of President Trump — he, too, of impeachment, indictment and adulterous infamy — and that settled that.
Trump described Cornyn, a four-term senator and former justice of the Texas Supreme Court, as a “good man” but insufficiently supportive when “times were tough.” Among those occasions of abandonment, Cornyn voted to certify the incontrovertible result of the 2020 presidential election, thwarting Trump’s bid to illegally stay in office.
The Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate is James Talarico, 37, a state representative from Austin and a Presbyterian seminarian and former public schoolteacher who’s built a nationwide following with his articulate and scriptural takedown of Republican foes. Imagine Beto O’Rourke with a clerical collar and capacity to mint money.
In 2018, O’Rourke came from seemingly nowhere and nearly upset Republican Ted Cruz in the closest Texas Senate race in decades. Before that it was the filibustering Wendy Davis who fired up Democratic imaginations nationwide. She commandeered the floor of the state Senate to briefly block antiabortion legislation — This is the year! — before falling well short in a 2014 bid for governor.
The key difference this time, with all due credit to Talarico and his prodigious fundraising, is his damaged-goods opponent. Normally, all it takes to win in Texas is a Republican ‘R’ beside a candidate’s name. But polling suggests a not-insignificant number of GOP voters could have a hard time supporting Paxton, which doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll back Talarico. They may simply not vote in the Senate race, which could be nearly as costly.
(The counterargument is that Paxton, a martyred hero to the MAGA movement, could boost turnout among the party base at a time Trump is leaking support within the establishment GOP.)
Either way, the president’s me-first political self-indulgence is not making things any easier for his fellow Republicans as they fight to hang on to control of the House and Senate in November.
In the 2022 midterm election, Trump boosted a batch of unappealing misfits — their sole attribute being their fealty to him — with poor results. Republicans lost eminently winnable Senate contests in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and, with it, their chance at control of the chamber.
Even if Paxton prevails in November, Trump’s endorsement could prove quite costly to the GOP, and not just in the figurative sense.
Democrats need a gain of four seats to flip the Senate. To do so, they must successfully defend seats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire and then pick up at least four others from a menu that includes Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and, now, Texas.
It’s a considerable reach. But Democratic chances look a lot better than they did just a few months ago, before Trump mired the country in an Iranian quagmire and the price of gas and just about everything else began to sail through the ceiling.
Holding on to Cornyn’s seat will end up costing Republicans a kingly sum — money that “can’t be spent in two places at the same time,” as Matt Mackowiak, a longtime Texas GOP strategist and advisor to Cornyn’s campaign, noted. “It can go either to Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia, Iowa, Alaska. Or it can go here to Texas, which is extremely expensive.”
Tina Peters deserved to go to jail but not for nine years, a panel of judges decreed, ordering her resentencing. Jared Polis then stepped in and substituted his own judgment. It was the height of arrogance.
Odds are against Talarico and Democrats winning the Senate race in November, because Texas remains, fundamentally, a Republican and conservative-leaning state. Paxton may win for that reason and that reason alone.
“This is as good an environment as Democrats are going to get realistically,” said Jim Henson, head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas in Austin, who’s witnessed many highly touted Democrats fail in a blaze of unwarranted hype. “But when you start doing the math, it’s a little bit hard to see it all adding up.”
Which is not to say it can’t happen.
Truth, as the saying goes, can be stranger than “Moby Dick” or any other fiction.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The article argues that after decades of Democratic failures in Texas - with no presidential victory in half a century and no statewide office won since 1994 - Ken Paxton’s victory in the Republican Senate primary, secured with Trump’s endorsement, may finally offer Democrats their best opportunity to break through in a state where winning typically requires only a Republican “R” beside a candidate’s name[3].
- The piece suggests Paxton’s history of being indicted, impeached, and accused of adultery by his ex-wife creates significant vulnerabilities that previous Republican nominees like John Cornyn did not possess, with even Republican Sen. Susan Collins describing him as “an ethically challenged individual”[1].
- The article contends that James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, combines fundraising prowess with a unique background as a state representative, Presbyterian seminarian and former public schoolteacher, creating a potentially compelling alternative to the Republican nominee[3].
- While acknowledging Texas remains fundamentally Republican-leaning, the column argues that polling indicates some GOP voters may struggle to support Paxton, potentially either abstaining from the Senate race or creating an opening for Talarico, which could be Democrats’ best shot at Senate victory in decades[1].
Different views on the topic
- Contrary to optimistic Democratic assessments, the inherent structural advantages for Republicans in Texas remain formidable, with the state’s political landscape favoring conservative candidates through reliable rural turnout and historical voting patterns that have sustained Republican dominance for generations[1].
- Despite Paxton’s ethical challenges, prediction markets still assign Republicans a 54% chance of winning the Senate seat compared to Democrats’ 48%, reflecting persistent skepticism about Democratic prospects in the state even with a weakened nominee[1].
- Some analysts argue that rather than harming Republicans, Paxton’s status as a “martyred hero to the MAGA movement” could actually energize the Republican base and boost turnout for the general election, potentially offsetting any losses among more moderate GOP voters[3].
- While the DLCC identifies Texas as a potential opportunity, experts caution that “when you start doing the math, it’s a little bit hard to see it all adding up,” noting that Democrats would need to overcome Texas’s longstanding conservative leanings while simultaneously flipping three other Senate seats nationwide to gain control of the chamber[2][3].
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