James Talarico’s charmed political journey has broken his way at almost every juncture of his career, from “The Joe Rogan Experience” invite as he was weighing a Senate bid last summer to his star turn in Texas’ quorum break to a fundraising windfall over a spiked Stephen Colbert interview in the primary’s homestretch.

But as he gave his not-quite-victory speech late Tuesday night, Talarico faced a more uncertain future than he had hoped. The Associated Press eventually called the election for him hours later, though voting problems in Crockett’s home base of Dallas County delayed the result.

And suddenly, it looks like he could face a much tougher opponent than he’d banked on in the general election.

Talarico and Democrats had hoped for months that the preacher would get to face scandal-tarred Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a less objectionable general-election foil, had outperformed expectations and fought him to a draw, forcing a runoff.

For the disciplined and studious Democrat who can commit scripture and prepared remarks to memory in a matter of minutes, and who is known by aides to linger over edits to social media posts and ads, the unknown outcome of the runoff is an unwelcome twist, the seemingly rare thing he cannot control.

Even with a 12-week head start on whomever voters select as his opponent in a brass-knuckled, dregs-scraping, cash-consuming GOP runoff, Talarico could still face a four-term incumbent with a long track record of big general-election wins.

Amid a legal dispute over voting precinct hours in Dallas County, Talarico did not quite declare victory in a short speech just after midnight local time, when he was leading the race but before the Associated Press called it.

“We are still waiting for an official call, but we are confident in this movement we’ve built together,” he said after lamenting what he called “voter suppression.”

“We are not just trying to win an election,” Talarico said at his rally in Austin. “We are trying to fundamentally change our politics, and it’s working.”

Earlier Tuesday, a district judge permitted the Dallas County Democratic Party to extend polling hours until 9 p.m. central, but the Texas Supreme Court granted Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request to set aside the votes of those people who were not in line by 7 p.m.

The polling problems are just the latest in a long history of voter suppression and voting rights battles in the state — ones that have particularly impacted Black and Hispanic voters. Crockett first gained national attention as a state representative battling against the Texas GOP’s move to pass a law that added new restrictions on voting, an issue once again in the spotlight as her Senate campaign came to a close.

In a statement earlier in the evening, Talarico’s campaign acknowledged that they were “deeply concerned about the reports of voters being turned away from the polls in Dallas and Williamson counties following the GOP’s implementation of precinct-specific voting locations for Election Day.”

Talarico ran well in heavily white and Hispanic areas on Tuesday, but has conceded he has work to do with Black voters if he’s going to win in November — an effort that could be complicated by the sour final note of voter confusion.

The final stretch of the contest pitted Talarico’s and Crockett’s supporters against each other in bitter feuds, often along racial lines, that played out on social media platforms like TikTok and X. Those debates focused on whether Democrats believed Crockett, a Black representative from Dallas, could be elected in a deep-red state — as well as over a claim made by a social media influencer that Talarico had described a former opponent as a “mediocre Black man,” comments he says were misconstrued.

Still, his strong performance against Crockett has jolted Democratic hopes of winning Texas for the first time in more than a generation, forging a wider than expected path to flipping the Senate — and out of the wilderness.

“I’d be very worried if I were the national Republican Party after tonight,” said Emily Cherniack, the founder and CEO of New Politics, and a longtime Talarico ally. “Strong turnout, especially among Latino voters, signals real dissatisfaction with Republicans in power. That’s a huge warning sign for November for them.”

Up until Tuesday, Senate Democrats had staked their chances of flipping the Republican-controlled Senate on just four states: North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska.

But now, some Democrats believe Talarico can cobble together a winning coalition in the most improbable of states — no Democrat has a Senate seat in Texas since 1988 — based on his class-focused message seeking to unite voters across parties.

“A perfect storm is lining up for Texas Democrats,” said Mark McKinnon, the former Texas media operative who started out advising Democrat Ann Richards on her gubernatorial campaigns before switching to Republican George W. Bush in 1997. “They have a nominee who can appeal to moderates and soft Republicans. Talarico could be Moses who leads the Lone Star Democrats out of the desert they’ve been in for 35 years.”

Public and private polls have mostly shown close races in either matchup; Talarico would start off with the edge over Paxton but trail Cornyn.

“It is still a massive mountain to climb, but this doesn’t hurt the effort,” one former staffer on Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign said of Talarico’s win.

Talarico has argued that he can beat either foe.

“I think both of them are extraordinarily weak,” Talarico said in an interview with Blue Light News just days before Election Day. “Paxton and Cornyn, they’re different. Paxton was guilty of illegal corruption. That’s why my colleagues and I impeached him in the Texas House. But Cornyn is guilty of legalized corruption. He was the deciding vote on the Big, Ugly, Bill which kicked millions of Texas off their health care, took food out of the mouths of hungry Texas kids all to give tax breaks to his donors. Both of them are guilty of using their public offices to enrich their donors — Ken Paxton in an illegal way, but John Cornyn in a legal way. I look forward to prosecuting the case against either of them — whoever makes it out.”

Sen. John Cornyn defied expectations in the Texas GOP primary on Tuesday. National Republicans believe his unexpectedly strong showing may be enough for President Donald Trump to endorse the embattled incumbent.

Trump has privately intimated that he will soon get involved in the Texas Senate race after rebuffing endorsement pleas from both candidates for months, according to a GOP strategist close to the White House who was granted anonymity to speak freely. For months, party leaders worried that Trump would back state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a longtime ally of the president, especially if he dominated in Tuesday’s primary.

Then came the results that had Cornyn neck-and-neck with Paxton. With that outcome, the strategist said, it would be “very surprising” if Trump backed Paxton.

The stakes are high for Republicans, who fear control of the Senate is hanging in the balance. The GOP hoped to avoid state Rep. James Talarico clinching the Democratic nomination because they see him as able to draw away moderate Republican voters.

Republicans “should take him seriously,” said another close Trump administration ally, granted anonymity to be candid. Talarico is a “big reason for Trump to get in for Cornyn and end this thing,” the ally said, especially to free up massive amounts of money that could be spent instead on competitive Senate races in Michigan and Georgia.

National Republicans estimated they would have to spend $200 million to protect Cornyn in the runoff. But the GOP strategist shrugged off the price tag. “Look, it will probably cost some money,” the person said. “It’s just money, we have a lot of it.”

Tuesday’s results were the best-case scenario for establishment Republicans, who worried Cornyn would finish far enough behind Paxton that it would be a slog for him — and a tough sell for a president who hates to back losers.

The Texas GOP Senate primary has become a referendum on the future of the Republican Party, testing the strength of the conservative grassroots against the establishment wing. While the MAGA base kept the four-term incumbent — who nearly became Senate majority leader — from getting a majority of the primary vote, the results show the old Republican establishment isn’t quite dead yet.

Cornyn’s narrow lead over Paxton was powered by even performances across the state.

Even in the most heavily Republican counties where Paxton might have expected to benefit from a MAGA base, the incumbent senator largely held his own: Across more than 110 mostly rural counties that Trump won by at least 50 points in 2024 and were reporting complete results as of early Wednesday morning, Paxton built up only the narrowest of leads, 44 percent to just shy of 40 percent for Cornyn.

Meanwhile, Cornyn strengthened his advantage in the more traditional white-collar suburbs, leading by double digits in Travis and Dallas counties as results continued to come in early Wednesday morning.

The senator, speaking to reporters on Election Night in Austin, said Republican voters’ choice is “crystal clear.”

“I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered, and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” he said. “There is simply too much at stake.”

Republicans are well aware that overall control of the Senate may be at risk. Cornyn’s allies warn that scandal-plagued Paxton turns off general election voters, especially if Talarico is their opponent.

During Paxton’s decade as attorney general, he faced an impeachment by the GOP-led Texas state House, ethics complaints, a federal securities fraud investigation and a recent divorce complete with allegations of infidelity.

Now Paxton is facing another 12 weeks going up against the wrath — and war chest — of the Washington establishment.

“John Cornyn spent around $100 million trying to buy this seat,” Paxton told his supporters at a watch party after the race was called. “We spent around $5 million… We prove something they’ll never understand in Washington: Texas is not for sale.”

One question is which candidate the voters who backed Rep. Wesley Hunt, who finished a distant third place, will support now — or whether they turn out at all for the May runoff.

Lone Star Liberty, a pro-Paxton super PAC, in a memo circulated ahead of Tuesday’s election, shrugged off threats that Cornyn would succeed in the runoff by continuing to hammer the attorney general on his litany of scandals, arguing they had nothing new to offer.

“Cornyn’s talk of ‘unleashing’ new attacks’ in the runoff is bluster,” the memo states. “The truth is that from day one, his forces fired every bullet they had. There are no new attacks left — only more of the same, at ever-greater cost and with ever-diminishing returns.”

Senate Republican operatives – who had entered the night expecting the race to head to a runoff, but unsure of how Cornyn would track against Paxton – were exultant as the incumbent maintained a narrow lead well into the night.

A Republican working on Senate campaigns, granted anonymity to speak freely, said Cornyn “proved to be formidable” on Tuesday — bolstering the establishment GOP argument that he is “the most electable” as the party braces for a battle against Talarico.

Talarico’s lead “reaffirms the need to have Cornyn as the nominee. Can’t risk this to Paxton,” the GOP operative close to the White House said.

Yet some Republicans conceded Cornyn has a tricky path to navigate. He’ll have to square off again with the conservative primary voters who make up Paxton’s base.

“Runoffs are extremely unpredictable, and head-to-head it could be anyone’s ballgame,” said Republican strategist Jeff Burton.

Dasha Burns, Lisa Kashinsky, Alec Hernandez, Jessica Piper and Erin Doherty contributed reporting

State Rep. James Talarico won the Texas Senate Democratic primary, defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett and giving party leaders the candidate they had quietly seen as the stronger option to flip the ruby-red state.

The race was defined by questions of electability and simmering racial tensions, as Talarico and Crockett worked to reassemble the party’s fractured multiracial coalition. That carried over through Tuesday, with both candidates raising concerns that voters had been disenfranchised in Crockett’s home base of Dallas County, which includes a large number of Black voters.

The legal dispute over voting precincts in Dallas could cast a shadow over his victory. Crockett told her supporters not to expect a final call on election night.

Talarico, a progressive Seminarian, took a big-tent approach to his campaign by appealing to voters from both parties and independents. He will face off against either Sen. John Cornyn or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is mounting a right wing challenge to the four-term incumbent.

Texas Democrats have failed to win statewide in three decades, but they believe they have a rare opening to flip the Senate seat in November, due to backlash to the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts and handling of the economy — especially if Paxton emerges from the GOP runoff.

There has been scant nonpartisan public polling in the general election, but a recent memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee shows Cornyn ahead of Talarico by three points, while Talarico would lead Paxton by three points.