{"id":19581,"date":"2026-03-04T09:01:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/talarico-won-his-primary-what-happens-next-is-outside-his-control\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T09:01:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:01:47","slug":"talarico-won-his-primary-what-happens-next-is-outside-his-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/talarico-won-his-primary-what-happens-next-is-outside-his-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Talarico won his primary. What happens next is outside his control."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

James Talarico’s charmed political journey<\/u><\/a> has broken his way at almost every juncture of his career, from \u201cThe Joe Rogan Experience<\/u><\/a>\u201d invite as he was weighing a Senate bid last summer to his star turn in Texas\u2019 quorum break to a fundraising windfall over a spiked Stephen Colbert interview in the primary’s homestretch.<\/p>\n

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<\/u><\/a> in Crockett’s home base of Dallas County delayed the result.<\/p>\n

And suddenly, it looks like he could face a much tougher opponent than he\u2019d banked on in the general election.<\/p>\n

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<\/u><\/a> expectations and fought him to a draw, forcing a runoff.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> outcome of the runoff is an unwelcome twist, the seemingly rare thing he cannot control.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still waiting for an official call, but we are confident in this movement we’ve built together,\u201d he said after lamenting what he called \u201cvoter suppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not just trying to win an election,\u201d Talarico said at his rally in Austin. \u201cWe are trying to fundamentally change our politics, and it’s working.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The polling problems are just the latest in a long history of voter suppression and voting rights battles in the state \u2014 ones that have particularly impacted Black and Hispanic voters. Crockett first gained national attention as a state representative battling against the Texas GOP\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In a statement earlier in the evening, Talarico’s campaign acknowledged that they were \u201cdeeply 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talarico ran well in heavily white and Hispanic areas on Tuesday, but has conceded he has work to do with Black voters if he\u2019s going to win in November \u2014 an effort that could be complicated by the sour final note of voter confusion.<\/p>\n

The final stretch of the contest pitted Talarico\u2019s and Crockett\u2019s 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 \u2014 as well as over a claim made by a social media influencer that Talarico had described a former opponent as a \u201cmediocre Black man,\u201d<\/u><\/a> comments he says were misconstrued.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 and out of the wilderness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be very worried if I were the national Republican Party after tonight,\u201d said Emily Cherniack, the founder and CEO of New Politics, and a longtime Talarico ally. \u201cStrong turnout, especially among Latino voters, signals real dissatisfaction with Republicans in power. That\u2019s a huge warning sign for November for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Up until Tuesday, Senate Democrats had staked their chances<\/u><\/a> of flipping the Republican-controlled Senate on just four states: North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Alaska.<\/p>\n

But now, some Democrats believe Talarico can cobble together a winning coalition in the most improbable of states \u2014 no Democrat has a Senate seat in Texas since 1988 \u2014 based on his class-focused message seeking to unite voters across parties.<\/p>\n

\u201cA perfect storm is lining up for Texas Democrats,\u201d 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. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\u201cIt is still a massive mountain to climb, but this doesn\u2019t hurt the effort,\u201d one former staffer on Kamala Harris\u2019 presidential campaign said of Talarico\u2019s win.<\/p>\n

Talarico has argued that he can beat either foe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think both of them are extraordinarily weak,\u201d Talarico said in an interview with Blue Light News just days before Election Day. \u201cPaxton 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 \u2014 Ken Paxton in an illegal way, but John Cornyn in a legal way. I look forward to prosecuting the case against either of them \u2014 whoever makes it out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Talarico’s charmed political journey has broken his way at almost every juncture of his career, from \u201cThe Joe Rogan Experience\u201d invite as he was weighing a Senate bid last summer to his star turn in Texas\u2019 quorum break to a fundraising windfall over a spiked Stephen Colbert interview in the primary’s homestretch. But as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}