Politics
Is questioning electability racism? Texas’ tense Dem primary comes to a head.
DALLAS — James Talarico is fond of saying that the “closest thing we have to the Kingdom of Heaven is a multiracial, multicultural democracy.” But Texas’ battle royale of a Democratic Senate primary feels far from heaven.
Talarico, a white state representative, is facing off with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who is Black, in a contest that’s turned increasingly bitter. It has ignited a fierce intraparty debate — with racial overtones — about what type of candidate Democrats need to nominate to win in tough places as they look to rebuild the racially diverse coalition that President Donald Trump shattered with his 2024 victory.
“Neither candidate can afford to crack Democrats’ multiracial coalition, and each candidate is going to have to work really, really hard to build, maintain and hold that coalition if they want to have any opportunity in a general election,” said Jeff Rotkoff, a veteran Texas Democratic strategist who is neutral in the race. “It is clear that from the math, in order to win Texas, you need to try to get everything right.”
In a state like Texas, Democrats will need every vote. They are desperate to win statewide after three decades of losses and fear that they could blow it this year when the environment feels riper than ever. Trump’s low approval ratings, especially with the young, Hispanic and Black voters he made strong gains with two years ago, gives them hope that flipping the Senate seat is within reach. So does the likelihood that scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton will win the GOP nomination.
The race has been fought much more over candidate style than any ideological or policy differences. Crockett, a political firebrand who spars regularly with Republicans, is focused more on turning out progressive, Black and Hispanic voters in record numbers. Talarico, a seminarian fond of quoting Jesus and the lyrics of John Prine, is pursuing a more big-tent approach that welcomes moderate Republicans and independents exhausted by abrasive GOP tactics. Those stylistic differences have led to questions from some Talarico allies about whether a candidate like Crockett can win a general election — and charges from Crockett’s supporters that those questions themselves may be racist.
Crockett famously responded to then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) saying her fake eyelashes interfered with her reading ability, a comment she and others viewed as racist, in a committee hearing by slamming her “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body.” She’s also mocked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, as “governor hot wheels.”
Prominent Democrats have cautioned that her pugilistic rhetoric could be a problem in the red-leaning state. Democratic strategist James Carville warned last month on his podcast, for instance, that “anybody that has any sense of humanity” would find her Abbott remark offensive (though the governor himself has embraced it, putting on a campaign bumper sticker).
The debate over whether those are real concerns or coded racism has been a hot topic among the hyper-online, drawing in prominent figures within the party and pitting Talarico and Crockett’s supporters against each other in emotional fights on social media.
Crockett’s supporters see the electability conversation as a racist and sexist dog whistle that white male candidates like Talarico never have to engage with.
“Electability is rooted in racism,” said E.J. Carrion, a Fort Worth political activist and Crockett supporter. “James [Talarico] is less threatening to people, and I think if just those people who say that actually voted for the most qualified candidate, you wouldn’t have a problem.”
The first major dustup happened in January, when the hosts of the popular podcast “Las Culturistas” urged people not to send money to Crockett because she had a history of “making it too obviously about” herself rather than the voters, a comment that hosts Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang later apologized for after a furious online response from Crockett supporters who accused them of being racist and sexist.
Tensions ratcheted up further when an influenceraccused Talarico of referring to Rep. Colin Allred as “mediocre Black man” in a private conversation. Allred, who dropped out of the Senate primary the day Crockett announced, took to Instagram to lambast Talarico for the alleged remarks, further heightening the situation.
Talarico defended himself by saying his comment was referring not to Allred’s race but to the quality of his campaign efforts against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2024.
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who is Black, said the Allred video “certainly didn’t help and it’s hard to measure how much it hurt, but I’m sure it hurts” Talarico’s standing with Black voters.
“I suspect he took it as a wake up call, and probably had to start spending more money and spending more time, and will probably be a lot more cautious,” said Ellis, a Houston power broker who endorsed Crockett.
Their primary has shown a sharp divide in support from different demographics, a sign both candidates have serious work to do if they win the nomination.
According to most polls of the race, Talarico pulls in the most white and Hispanic voters, while Crockett draws the vast majority of Black support. Polls show a mixed picture of who leads the primary. There has been little nonpartisan public polling for the general election. Talarico has polled a bit better than Crockett against their likely GOP foes in some surveys — but she appears competitive as well, especially against Paxton.
Talarico has been working hard to make inroads with Black and Hispanic voters. At a recent Dallas rally, he was introduced by Carlos Eduardo Espina, a Hispanic content creator with 14 million TikTok followers. The crowd was largely white and Hispanic.
Talarico acknowledged the current limitations of his coalition.
“We’re trying to build that, and we will build that for the general election,” Talarico said in an interview with Blue Light News, as a stream of young voters waited in a snaking line to snap a photo with the candidate. “I completely understand if I’m not Black Texans’ first choice in this race, but I would love to be their close second choice. And what we’ve seen in our polling is that my approval rating among Black Texans has continued to rise: It’s at the highest point it’s ever been. They may not vote for me in this race, and that’s quite alright. I’m competing for their votes.”
He added, “But if I don’t get it in this race, I’ll hope to have it in the general election.”
For her part, polls indicate Crockett has struggled to win over many Hispanic voters, and she has faced criticism for stating in a 2024 interview that Latinos who support Trump’s immigration policies exhibit a self-hating “slave mentality.” She also said on CNN in December it’s not her goal to win over all of Trump’s supporters.
At a rally in a downtown Houston beer garden last Saturday, speaking to a crowd of mostly Black supporters and elected officials, Crockett took a jab at Talarico over his thin resume, a common attack line from her campaign in its final stretch.
“Some people say, ‘Listen, there’s no way that Texas will support a Black woman,” she said. “We are a majority-minority state, we can start there. The reality is that I didn’t run because I was a woman. I ran because I’m qualified. At the end of the day. I just happened to be Black and woman, but I am the most qualified person in this. Period.”
Crockett declined an interview for this piece. In a statement, a campaign spokesperson said that Crockett “has a broad coalition of support across demographics and is leading with key constituencies that are critical to rebuilding the winning Democratic coalition.”
“Congresswoman Crockett has built strong relations and rapport with voters across Texas long before entering this race, which is why she has such strong support and is able to energize turnout,” Crockett spokesperson Karrol Rimmel said.
Asked whether he thought the concept of electability had functioned as a dog whistle in the race, Talarico said: “I guess it can be. I believe Black women are electable.”
When asked why he thought he was more electable than Crockett, Talarico said he was “concerned” when Crockett said she didn’t have to win over any Trump voters.
“I’m the only candidate in the race who has competed in a tough general election. I got elected to the statehouse by flipping a Trump district, and I held onto it after millions of dollars were spent against me, and it’s because I was able to build a big tent, a big coalition,” he said.
But he said that he thought Crockett could also win the general election — and promised he would campaign for her should she win the primary. A spokesperson for Crockett said the congresswoman has expressed she would “absolutely” support Talarico.
His team argues that the contest isn’t about the candidates’ own race and gender but about how well they can build out the diverse coalition necessary to win.
“It starts from a racial profile of one being a white candidate and one being a Black candidate, but then there’s also a difference in the philosophy, and who can actually connect with this new swing vote in Texas,” said Chuck Rocha, a 36-year veteran of Texas and Hispanic Democratic politics and a senior adviser to Talarico. “It’s not about James maximizing the white vote or Jasmine maximizing the Black vote to win a general. It’s about running a campaign that reaches across racial lines.”
Crockett is betting that she can turn out those Black and Hispanic voters who rarely show up in primaries in historic numbers. It will test whether she can translate the cultural status she earned by attacking Republicans into a surge at the ballot box. She’s running ads on BET, bar-hopping in Houston and holding rallies with prominent Black leaders. She campaigned in the Hispanic-heavy Rio Grande Valley on Thursday. Crockett’s campaign materials focus heavily on depicting her as the toughest fighter against Trump.
Her turnout operation also leans on the political power of Black churches. At a breakfast with Black faith leaders in Houston last week, Crockett walked a room full of pastors through how they could guide their congregations in the voting process. “We need you to make sure that you emphasize the importance of this election,” she told them.
Beyond the pews and in the streets, grassroots groups like Texas Organization Project are deploying members on Crockett’s behalf across major cities with a canvassing plan focused on connecting with Black and Latino voters. TOP helped Crockett get elected to the state House in 2020 in a primary she won by 90 votes, and for this primary they set a goal of knocking on 82,000 doors.
“Our theory of change in the state of Texas is that if we expand the electorate enough, driven by Black and Latino voters, we can win statewide office and we do that starting in cities and counties,” said Brianna Brown, co-executive director of TOP. “A lot of the Black folks we’re talking to at the doors, especially older Black women, are just excited about the idea that who they are is reflected back to them on a ballot and the years that they’ve waited.”
The primary is a significant test of old assumptions about the increasingly swingy Latino vote, said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump GOP consultant and founder of the Latino Working Class Project who is neutral in the race.
“If Latino voters do break towards Crockett, then there is some evidence there’s a solidarity between voters of color, and that has been the orthodoxy of the Democratic Party for the past three decades,” Madrid said. “If Talarico wins, and if he wins by a good measurable margin, then I think that we will probably be able to finally put that to bed.”
Democratic socialists just caused a political earthquake. Now they’re coming for 2028.
Fresh off sweeping victories across New York City that showcased the growing power of the anti-establishment progressive left inside the Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists of America leaders, eager to capitalize on their momentum, are already plotting their next act: making sure one of their own is on the presidential primary debate stage, whether the party wants them or not.
“What DSA represents is a real contrast to Democrats who have run the last couple of elections on fear,” DSA national co-chair Megan Romer said. “You can’t run on that. You have to offer an alternative. And it’s really important that we be involved in that conversation in 2028. It’s important that we have somebody saying sensible things.”
Their search process is already underway. This summer, DSA is dispatching surveys to all 250 of its chapters, asking members to weigh who they want to back and why, and return their findings to national leadership by Sept. 15, details the group first shared with Blue Light News. DSA expects to receive a stack of 20-page to 40-page dossiers from chapters coast to coast weighing in on who should carry the democratic socialist banner into 2028.
The organization plans to hold national discussions, including with leaders like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is 84 and not expected to run in 2028, with a formal vote expected at the group’s 2027 convention next year — though leaders say they could move faster if the primary timeline demands it.
“We’re going to be talking about millions of hours knocking doors for 2028 — so when we decide to really run somebody, people have to feel like they had a say,” Romer said.
Mamdani-backed candidates swept three closely watched New York congressional primaries Tuesday, with Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier all defeating more establishment-aligned rivals — including two incumbents. It was a major show of force for Mamdani’s political operation, and fresh evidence of the left’s growing muscle heading into 2028. “They ask, ‘Who do you want to run in 2028?’ Then they ask, ‘When does the race for 2028 begin?’ It starts now. It starts on Tuesday,” Mamdani said at a Brooklyn rally last week.
The elephant in the room for the group, of course, is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The New York representative has yet to say whether she will run for president in 2028 — and has been rumored to be interested in running for the seat currently held by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Her name hangs over any serious conversations DSA leaders have about the race. But Romer made clear that one of the country’s best-known democratic socialists would need to go through the same process as any other candidates, and would not automatically be handed a rose.
“She will have to sell her campaign and why DSA should throw down behind it,” she said, noting that means going to the group’s roughly 110,000 members in 250 chapters. “We don’t do kingmakers.”
The relationship between DSA and Ocasio-Cortez has at times been complicated. After backing her insurgent 2018 bid, DSA national in 2024 briefly conditioned its reelection endorsement on several demands around her positions on Israel. That exposed a rift with NYC-DSA, which had already endorsed her and asked national leaders to withdraw their conditional backing.
When asked directly whether DSA wants Ocasio-Cortez to run, Romer was careful not to get ahead of rank-and-file members for or against.
“If it reveals that every chapter is like, ‘We want AOC, we want AOC’ — that’s something that could come out of this process,” she said. “And if that seems to be the overwhelming case, then that may be what we decide to do. We want to get in on the ground floor. It would be really great to be a day-one part of a campaign.”
And then there is Mamdani.
The New York City mayor went from a complete unknown to one of the most popular and influential progressives in the country, boosting democratic socialism’s political profile in a way not seen since Ocasio-Cortez’s rise and perhaps since Sanders’ first presidential run. But Mamdani wasn’t born in the United States, making him constitutionally ineligible for the presidency.
“Some people are like, let’s just run him — let’s just cause a constitutional crisis,” Romer said, describing it as a running joke, though she was “not sure everybody’s fully joking.”
Tuesday’s wins in New York were the latest in a string of DSA victories accumulating across the country, including Chris Rabb’s primary win in Pennsylvania’s 3rd District in Philadelphia, and mayoral races in Washington, D.C., last week and Seattle last fall.
The group is backing Melat Kiros — a first-time candidate taking on a 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado next week — as well as Oliver Larkin in Florida and former Rep. Cori Bush in her bid to reclaim the Missouri congressional seat she lost last cycle. It’s a packed primary calendar that reflects just how aggressively DSA is looking to expand its footprint heading into 2028.
“The sheer scale of what just happened in New York is historic,” said Bhaskar Sunkara, former DSA vice-chair and president of The Nation. “Nationally, this is a massive boon for the democratic socialist movement. The old institutional left is hollowed out — DSA has proven to be the only real mobilizational force left on the ground. “
But Sunkara noted the movement still had a lot to figure out ahead of 2028, especially if it is to translate its momentum beyond DSA’s urban, heavily lefty strongholds. Moderate Democrats have long argued that democratic socialist candidates are a liability in competitive battleground seats, too far left to win over the voters the party needs in purple districts and red-leaning states.
“A national map includes deep-red and rural districts where the left still has to figure out how to speak to working-class voters and compete,” Sunkara said. “Having national platforms through multiple members of Congress is a start there too.”
DSA’s leaders say the moment the group is having has been years in the making — and comes after some recent turbulent times that followed 2018’s emergence of the Squad as a high-water mark and then saw years of grinding setbacks: a pandemic that gutted in-person organizing, a Biden era that Romer described as a “wet blanket,” and a 2024 Kamala Harris campaign that didn’t listen when DSA tried to push the candidate left.
“The squad dropped off a bit,” Romer said. “2022 was a really, really tough year for left politics.”
The 2024 cycle also brought losses for both Bush and Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted in what was at the time the most expensive House primary in history, powered largely by AIPAC spending.
Now the tide appears to be turning again.
Looking ahead to 2028, the socialist wing of the Democratic Party wants to force a reckoning within the party it believes has spent years running from its own base while asking voters to settle for less.
“The best possible thing that could happen is having a string of victories in the midterms and forcibly reshaping the way the national Democratic Party approaches some of these issues, and having a much larger presence in the Democratic primary, and hopefully the presidential candidacy,” said Hasan Piker, a prominent progressive Twitch streamer and one of the most influential voices in the democratic socialist movement, who campaigned heavily in New York for the full DSA slate.
Tuesday’s wins, he said, are a way to bring the party further to their side, turning far-left politics more mainstream.
As for who he wants to see carry the socialist banner in 2028, Piker is still hoping for Ocasio-Cortez. “That could change, 2028 is far out,” he said. “But that’s what I got so far.”
Rep. April McClain Delaney won her bitter and expensive Democratic primary for Maryland’s 6th District on Tuesday, denying her predecessor, former Rep. David Trone, from making a comeback.
The race drew $23 million in TV spending, with much of that coming from the candidates directly, and became a microcosm of the Democratic Party’s clashes over President Donald Trump, money in politics and immigration.
McClain Delaney, who is serving her first term in Congress, had the backing of the rest of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, along with Gov. Wes Moore.
Trone announced he would challenge McClain Delaney in December, citing in part her vote for the Laken Riley Act, a Republican-led immigration bill. McClain Delaney later said she regretted the vote, saying she hadn’t imagined “the horror” of Trump’s immigration enforcement would come to pass.
Trone almost entirely self-funded his attempt to return to Congress. He previously represented the 6th District for three terms but gave up his seat to run for Senate in 2024, losing in the primary to now-Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.). McClain Delaney, who is married to former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), won an open primary and was elected to the seat that year.
The seat is considered safe for Democrats for the midterms. McClain Delaney won by a bit more than 6 points in 2024.
Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo won the Democratic primary Tuesday to replace retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer in the 5th District, aided by $11 million from pro-crypto and pro-Israel groups.
Boafo was Hoyer’s preferred successor and his former campaign manager. The primary was marked by intraparty divisions over heavy outside spending and what may be the last intraparty fight between Hoyer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who endorsed a rival in the race.
United Democracy Project, a super PAC associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, pumped $5.7 million into the race to promote Boafo, becoming the single biggest spender on the airwaves. Protect Progress, a super PAC aligned with the crypto industry, poured $5.5 million into the race, largely to benefit Boafo, a former federal lobbyist for the tech firm Oracle.
This spending in the crowded 24-candidate field drew the ire of many of Boafo’s rivals. Three of them — Harry Dunn, Rushern Baker and Quincy Bareebe — took the unusual step of jointly denouncing the interest groups’ efforts to influence the primary outcome. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a potential 2028 presidential contender who did not endorse in the race, also accused the groups of trying to buy the seat.
Boafo’s victory now stands as a major win for the powerful arm of the pro-Israel lobby that’s drawn heavy scrutiny from some Democrats over its aggressive tactics in this year’s primary contests, as well as for Hoyer in getting his handpicked successor for his seat.
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