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Texas’s Senate Primary Has Already Made History—and It’s Not Over Yet

Democratic nominee James Talarico is getting national media attention, but the real story is sky-high voter turnout, even amid GOP bids to suppress balloting

Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico at a March 2 rally in Houston

Texas has now been home to the most expensive general election Senate campaigns in history. Spending in 2018’s contest between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz was just over $100 million; Cruz’s battle with Colin Allred in 2024 topped $160 million. And now, it’s seen the most expensive Senate primary election in history, as the combined spending on advertising along among the major candidates this year soared to $125 million—and it’s not even over.

The primaries on Tuesday decided the Democratic candidate in that cash-swamped contest, state Senator James Talarico. At the moment, the Republicans are headed to a runoff between Attorney General Ken Paxton and incumbent John Cornyn. Talarico’s boyish charm and ability to practice Bible-verse judo with conservative Christians already helped him wrangle the tens of millions he needed to surge ahead of Representative Jasmine Crockett for his place on the November ballot. With a marquee race in the offing, no matter who wins the Republican berth, another record-setting race is guaranteed.

But after getting their hearts broken by Allred and twice by O’Rourke, whose losing race for governor in 2022 was just as pricey as his Senate run, liberals are justified in asking if they should not just spend elsewhere but also lower their expectations. Is the dream of a statewide Democratic win (elusive since 1994) as insubstantial as barbeque smoke, as full of bullshit as the King Ranch?

What if I told you Texas is as full of potential for Democrats as an Austin yard in early March? Whether it’s milk thistle weeds or Saint Augustine, there’s something growing there; it just needs to be tended. This week, after all, saw an even more important record than mere spending broken: turnout. More than 2 million Democrats voted in the primary, the most in a midterm primary since 1970 and only a little short of the votes cast in the primary for the 2008 presidential race. Based on those numbers, one Republican pollster has already predicted that Democrats will add 480,000 voters to their turnout in the fall, saying, “This is a code red alert for Texas Republicans.”

Now that Crockett has conceded to Talarico, the party is set to surge into the fall with the most favorable conditions possible: an electrified base, a battle-tested general election candidate with his former foe converted to an asset, and a Republican flame-throwing freakshow run-off sure to turn off all but the most steroid-pumped red-hat bros.

The national media magnified the flashes of bitterness that both parties’ races threw off. Paxton is a genuinely vile person who can be separated from trumpeting his achievements in oppression only by opportunities to commit more subtle offenses. He is very popular with the GOP base, however, and has eagerly exploited the thin slices of daylight between Cornyn and the far right. One Paxton ad featured an AI-generated video of the senator two-stepping with Crockett, a reference to the two acknowledging their work together on some bipartisan issues.

For his part, Cornyn (a traffic cone with cowboy boots) pointed to Paxton’s historically significant trail of known crimes and adultery. In 2023, Paxton became only the third sitting Texas official to be impeached by the state House, though he was acquitted by the Texas Senate on 16 charges, including ones related to a donor hiring Paxton’s mistress in order to curry favor with him. Paxton’s soon-to-be-ex wife, a state senator herself, was in the chamber for testimony. Thank God the flavorless Cornyn offloaded the juiciest attacks to a campaign aide—Ted Cruz’s former chief rat-fucker, Jeff Roe, who can really make this stuff sing in ads: “It’s voting time, so let’s cut through the bulls**t. Crooked Ken Paxton cheated on his wife. She’s........

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