Politics

Talarico needs Crockett’s Black voters. They aren’t all convinced.

Published

5 months ago

April 26, 2026

DALLAS — Friendship-West Baptist Church is a stronghold for Black politics, where candidates pass through cycle after cycle to win over its 13,000 congregants. It’s the church Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) calls home; her pastor, the Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, is now running to succeed her in Congress. Even Beto O’Rourke visited last week to encourage people to register to vote.

But several congregants can’t help but notice a continued absence this year: James Talarico.

The Democratic Senate nominee has a long road ahead if he wants to flip the Texas seat blue — one that requires winning over the state’s nearly 3 million Black voters, who largely broke for Crockett in the March primary and many of whom remain skeptical of his candidacy.

“Come and make the ask. Come and try to earn the vote,” said Alan Williams, a Crockett voter and Friendship-West congregant. “I think he thinks our vote is just a default and he doesn’t have to earn it.”

In the month-and-a-half since he won the nomination, Talarico has begun criss-crossing Texas, including visiting some Black churches, holding meetings with faith leaders and elected officials, and block-walking in majority-Black cities. But frustration from worshippers at Friendship-West — who have yet to hear from him directly — and interviews with Black power brokers across the state reveal the pressure Talarico faces to move faster to heal open wounds from a contentious primary and convince voters to turn out.

David Malcolm McGruder, the church’s executive pastor, said Talarico has to do more to sell his vision to voters — and convince them he’ll follow through: “We have people who show up in our churches during the election season, but who don’t show up for us at the level of policy beyond November.”

Talarico, in an interview, acknowledged that he would “love” to visit Friendship-West soon. “My top priority is bringing our coalition back together, and that is specifically reaching out to Black Texans,” he said. “There’s no way to win Texas without winning the trust and the support of Black voters. Period. Full stop.”

It’s clear that Talarico has his work cut out for him. He wasn’t Black voters’ preferred candidate. Some are exhausted by a messy primary that thrust questions over race and electability into the center of the contest. And while Black voters are overwhelmingly committed Democrats, he needs to keep enthusiasm high to ensure they turn out, especially as concerns over voter suppression grow. (A last-minute rule change in Dallas County, Crockett’s home base, caused thousands of people to be turned away from the polls or have their ballots invalidated on primary Election Day.)

Democrats have long faced accusations that they take Black voters for granted. Several Texas strategists are worried that’ll happen again in the lead up to November — and that the party will blame Black voters if Talarico loses.

“Black voters have been let down over time,” said Antjuan Seawright, a longtime Democratic strategist who has advised the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “What some may not understand is that our vote, more so than any other constituency in the history of this country, has always been a demonstration of our trust, but our trust has either been taken for granted or has always been on the chopping block by a number of people.”

Talarico is already getting on-the-ground support from Democratic groups like O’Rourke’s Powered By People and a host of Black state lawmakers.

“We don’t have time to remain in our feelings,” added Crystal Chism, president of the Dallas County chapter of Texas Coalition of Black Democrats. “We need to make the main thing the main thing, and that’s getting Talarico elected.”

But there’s a notable ally missing: Even though Crockett quickly conceded the race and endorsed Talarico in March, she has yet to hit the campaign trail or put much effort publicly into rallying the base behind him. Crockett, through a spokesperson, declined an interview request for this story.

Talarico said he and Crockett have “exchanged a few messages” since the primary and he “would love nothing more” than to have her on the campaign trail.

“He’s got his work cut out for him,” noted Russell Maryland, the former No. 1 NFL draft pick who won three Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys and voted for Crockett in the primary. “He’s gonna have to work to win over Jasmine’s supporters. … Talarico will really need to put his fingers in the ground, so to speak in football terms, and kick up some dust.”

The seminarian is still trying to overcome some of the criticism leveled against him in the lead up to the primary.

In February, a PAC that supported Talarico ran a TV ad with the tagline, “If she wins, we lose.” Crockett claimed the ad darkened her skin and said it was bigoted. “It’s not even undertones right now,” she said. “It’s straight-up racist.” (Talarico, in an interview, emphasized that the PAC was not affiliated with his campaign and that he disagreed with its message. He added that he believes Crockett is electable statewide in Texas, as he has said before.)

Then a social media influencer claimed Talarico told her in a private conversation that former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), who dropped out of the Senate race right before Crockett joined, was a “mediocre Black man.” Talarico has said that was a mischaracterization of his comments, and that he was describing Allred’s method of campaigning as mediocre.

Allred, who is now in a competitive run-off to represent Texas’ 33rd district, said in an interview that he backs Talarico. “Of course I support him,” he said. “I support Democrats. I’ve been supporting Democrats here for my whole life.”

But Talarico’s challenge, Allred added, isn’t convincing Black voters to support him over the Republican nominee — it’s convincing them to turn out.

“He needs to show comfort in Black spaces and Black communities,” Allred said. “I’m sure he can do that, but there’s just no substitute for it. Particularly given how some of the ads that ran, there may be some element of having to show contrition, even if he wasn’t responsible for all those.”

Talarico has visited Black churches almost every weekend since the primary, and he dropped by Prairie View A&M University, an HBCU, on Wednesday, where he acknowledged he has “got to earn the trust and the respect and the support of every single one of the congresswoman’s supporters.” He blocked-walk in majority-Black DeSoto, Texas and held a roundtable with Black community leaders in Austin recently. And last month, he convened African American clerics at Saint Luke Community United Methodist Church in Dallas for a discussion about policy.

“The Democratic Party has taken Black voters for granted and assumed that they’re just part of the base, assumed they’ll just show up and vote for you,” Talarico said in an interview. “And I think we’ve seen the disastrous results of that kind of disrespect toward Black voters.”

To his benefit, Talarico has an army of Texas Democrats anxious to flip the state for the first time in decades. Last Sunday, O’Rourke — whose three-point loss in 2018 to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz was Texas Democrats’ high-water mark this century — mingled with congregants at Friendship-West, while his organization’s yellow-vested volunteers encouraged them to check their voter registration.

“I love James Talarico,” O’Rourke said. “I’m excited for him. I’ve talked to him and said, ‘You can send me anywhere that the campaign can’t get to. I will raise money for you. I’ll go try to get your volunteers fired up. I’ll speak as a surrogate. You let me know.’”

State Sen. Royce West of Dallas, who voted for Crockett and has since endorsed Talarico, is also optimistic, if more measured: “He’s warming up. He has support within the African American community. Is it where it needs to be? No. Is he making strides? Yes.”

On the Republican side, longtime Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton are locked in a lengthy and expensive run-off that could play to Democrats’ advantage. Talarico’s internal polling shows him competitiveagainst either candidate, but some observers think he has a stronger path against Paxton given his myriad controversies. Talarico boasts a cash advantage with almost $10 million cash on hand after the first quarter of the year, compared with Cornyn’s more than $8 million and Paxton’s $2.6 million.

“There’s work to be done,” said Cliff Walker, a Texas Democratic strategist and principal at Seeker Strategies. “But I don’t stay up at night worried that we’re not going to be able to reassemble this coalition in time for November.”

Politics

Dan McKee becomes first governor in 8 years to lose primary

Published

55 minutes ago

September 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rhode Island Democratic Gov. Dan McKee became the first governor in eight years in the U.S. to lose a primary, falling on Wednesday to former CVS executive Helena Foulkes and becoming the latest victim of a rough year for incumbents.

McKee’s campaign was bogged down by the botched handling of a years-long project to rebuild the Washington Bridge, which transports more than 70,000 drivers through Providence each day. The project has suffered from delays, cost overruns and disputes between state officials and former contractors that have raised questions about transparency and accountability for the project.

Foulkes spent much of the primary hammering McKee over his handling of the bridge project — a strategy that ultimately proved successful.

McKee had partially closed the bridge in 2023, and estimated at the time that it would fully reopen this summer. But last year, he said the bridge likely won’t be completed until 2028. Construction began in June.

Throughout his campaign, McKee continued to insist that the bridge project was handled well. He told The New York Times in August that “people are going to realize we did the right thing.”

The last incumbent governor to lose a primary was Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer in 2018. McKee’s loss Wednesday adds to the substantial list of Democratic incumbents ousted in primary challenges, though this race didn’t feature the same generational and ideological contrasts as other primaries that have felled Democrats this cycle. Foulkes and McKee, both baby boomers, both ran center-left campaigns.

Foulkes’ victory adds a chapter to her family’s long political lineage. Her grandfather, Thomas J. Dodd, and her uncle, Chris Dodd, were both senators from Connecticut. She worked as an executive at CVS for over 25 years before launching a 2022 run for governor.

McKee won that round, but she got the final word on Wednesday.

Politics

Republicans are partying in Dallas. Just don’t ask them about affordability.

Published

2 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

DALLAS — Republicans are panicking that President Donald Trump’s policies are drowning out their cost-of-living message — and that it may be too close to the election to fix it.

GOP lawmakers and candidates woke up in Texas on Wednesday to an alarming reality: Trump deepening his trade war with Canada as oil hit $100 per barrel, following new military strikes against Iran.

Publicly, Republicans plan to downplay their latest woes — or blame the Democrats. But several of them at the midterm convention this week are privately strategizing with GOP leaders and Trump administration officials to shore up vulnerable candidates in battlegrounds and in states the president won by double digits in 2024.

Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to address a breakfast Thursday with the delegations from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Republicans are eager to hear how he will navigate the party’s economic woes, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, granted anonymity to share private plans. Others are pushing to use the convention to reclaim the cost of living issue that’s haunting Republicans after it buoyed them two years ago, planning to argue in their speeches that their party can still be trusted to bring down prices.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, a group of top senators and candidates in tough races — including Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley and Georgia Republican Senate nominee Rep. Mike Collins — huddled with leaders from the Senate GOP-aligned super PAC met to discuss a battleground map increasingly under pressure as the party tries to fend off voters’ ire around the economy.

“You can’t hide the fact of what the price of gasoline is, we know that,” Collins told Blue Light News in an interview after the closed-door meeting, as he reiterated his support for Trump’s efforts to neutralize Iran as a nuclear threat, arguing that the U.S. has long been at war with Iran but “we’re putting an end to it with this president.”

Many Republicans didn’t want to talk about economic concerns amid the party at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, where MAGA hats cost $47 (a discount from the $55 online) and water went for $8 a bottle.

“We are going the wrong direction,” said one GOP lawmaker attending the convention granted anonymity, like others in this story, to speak candidly of the spiraling economic indicators and the challenges they were creating. “We don’t have a lot of time left.”

Senior Republicans are quietly dismayed about the pileup of Trump economic moves that have rattled voters and key industries in their states — including the worsening trade war with Canada that threatens the auto and farm sectors in the Midwest, his step to import more foreign beef ahead of the midterms that’s infuriated ranchers and farmers from Texas to Iowa, along with spiking oil prices amid the war in Iran that are cutting across the map.

“We’re putting Iowa in play,” one frustrated senior House Republican said on the sidelines of the convention of the Senate map. “We’re putting Texas in play. They shouldn’t be.”

The one advantage they have: money. Battleground Republicans and GOP leaders have been itching for Trump to unleash his massive war chest to help them fend off Democratic attacks over voters’ concerns about gas and everyday costs among the ongoing war. Trump’s orbit started to make good on its promises Wednesday morning, doling out millions in spending for key Senate races through an affiliated Super PAC known as No Going Back PAC Inc., two people with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed.

But Republicans know that campaign funds can’t solve everything.

“We got to talk about the issues that people are dealing with. Families can’t afford their house, they can’t afford the food, they can’t afford health care, they can’t afford child care,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview in the convention hall.

He placed most of the onus on Congress to tackle those issues and cut spending, but admitted Trump’s war with Iran had economic consequences.

“We have higher gas prices now as a result of the president trying to keep us safe as a result of what Iran wants to do,” Scott said. “So that’s hopefully a short-term problem that he’s going to deal with by destroying the regime.”

In a statement, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales argued that Democrats “created the affordability crisis.”

“President Trump has spent every day in office working to undo their mess and lower costs for working families by signing the largest middle class tax cuts in history, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, permanently expanding the child tax credit, fueling wage growth, and reshoring American manufacturing to create more high paying jobs,” Wales said.

Natalie Baldassarre, a spokesperson for the RNC, similarly blamed Democrats for surging prices, adding that “Republicans are cutting taxes, lowering drug prices, and putting money back in families’ pockets.”

Several Republicans plan to use their convention addresses to blame their Democratic opponents for voters’ price pains and argue it’s Republicans who are putting more money in Americans’ pockets — like Mike LiPetri, who’s running to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York. Others plan to paint a rosier picture of the economy than many voters say is the case right now.

That’s been a hard message for Republicans to sell. An August Blue Light News Poll shows that a 34% plurality of Americans hold Trump fully responsible for the state of the current U.S. economy, compared with just 17% who say the same for former President Joe Biden.

And the very real time crunch — with less than two months until the November election — was a tangible pressure throughout the day in Dallas, as Republican lawmakers, battleground candidates and party officials gathered for what was planned to be a grand event to celebrate GOP accomplishments and drive turnout.

“Look, I think obviously we want to continue to drive down costs, whether it’s energy, whether it is housing, whether it is groceries,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the most at-risk House Republicans in November, said in an interview. “We’re seeing, you know, obviously continued volatility in the oil markets, and we want to bring that down.”

Lawler, who is speaking at the convention Thursday night, touted Trump’s deal over Venezuela oil and largely blamed policy moves by New York Democrats for his state’s higher energy costs.

Trump told reporters Wednesday that oil prices are set to drop amid the ongoing U.S. conflict with Iran — but not until after the midterms, which is much later than those anxious Republicans would hope.

Some GOP hopefuls point to the overall goal to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities as a necessary national security posture. The uptick in oil prices, therefore, is a short-term consequence for a greater long-term foreign policy success.

“We [have] to be patient with the fluctuations, especially with oil and what’s happening in the Gulf now,” said Marty O’Donnell, the Republican looking to unseat Democratic Rep. Susie Lee from her Las Vegas seat.

And the Republicans assembled in Dallas were the ones most likely to support the president — plenty of other lawmakers, including members running in tough races, stayed away, as did some rank-and-file Republicans.

“We have to hope that in six weeks the price per barrel goes down because it’s a big deal,” said one Georgia-based Republican strategist who is not attending the Dallas convention. “The Dems have been beating the daylights out of us on that for a while now.”

A GOP county chair in a region with House races that have been made more competitive by Trump’s unpopularity echoed those concerns.

“There’s no other commodity that when you drive down the street, you see the price,” said the county chair who also wasn’t in Dallas. “I know what gas costs because it’s on a fucking billboard on every intersection, and I’m forced to see it. It’s the most visible indicator of the economy, where we stand.”

And while Republicans are hoping that Trump can get his party’s economic messaging on track in his convention keynote address Thursday, some aren’t holding their breath for a major breakthrough.

“Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the president delivers a coherent speech that is clear, that is direct, that is policy oriented, that is forward-looking, and they can cut that up in social media and post that up all over the place,” said the GOP county chair. “Will he do that? Absolutely not.”

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.