We're Gonna Kick That Goldang Texas Senate Football This Time, See If We Don't!
Texas Senate primary, coming right up!
“The midterms are here! the midterms are here!” shouted virtually nobody, because who would shout something ridiculous like that? But yes, the 2026 primary elections start in earnest this coming Tuesday, March 3, with three states holding their primaries for state and national office. The biggest, most expensive election is in Texas, where incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R) is trying to hold off a challenge from rightwing wackaloon state Attorney General Ken Paxton, with Rep. Wesley Hunt also running far behind both; if nobody gets over 50 percent of Tuesday’s vote, the GOP primary would go to a runoff in late May.
Democrats In Array
On the Democratic side, state Rep. James Talarico is running against US Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and we like both. Because they’re both pretty progressive, the campaign has been partly about who’s a little more progressive than whom, and even more about which candidate has the best shot of beating whichever rightwinger the Republicans nominate.
Crockett is already famous for her sharp wit in House hearings and debates, and for the fact that she really pisses off Donald Trump, to the point that her first campaign ad was, hilariously, just a photo of her with audio of Trump trying to disparage her. Talarico is also making Trump a focus of his campaign, but with a different spin, aiming to appeal to voters who are sick of Trumpian nastiness and would like something resembling sanity.
Yeah, we think we remember sanity. Big guy, red suit, gives kids presents? Isn’t sanity a myth?
Talarico’s campaign got huge national attention — and brought in some $2.5 million — earlier this month when CBS lawyers wouldn’t allow Stephen Colbert to air his interview with Talarico. Colbert put the interview on the You Tubes, where it was viewed far more widely than it would have if it had simply aired.
And with the campaign in its closing days, Crockett got a high-profile endorsement from Kamala Harris, who recorded a robocall urging Texans to “send a fighter like Jasmine Crockett to the United States Senate,” adding that Crockett has “the experience and record to hold Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies accountable.” Crockett co-chaired Harris’s 2024 campaign and has said that Harris is a “mentor and a friend and an auntie of sorts.”
As for polling, two recent polls each showed one candidate leading the other by double digits, but with nearly opposite results. A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll had Crockett leading Talarico 56 percent to 44 percent. But a poll released last week by Blueprint Polling had Talarico leading Crockett, also by a 12-point margin of 52 percent to 40 percent; that one included an “undecided” option (six percent), while the UT/TPP poll did not. The poll showing Talarico leading was taken after the Colbert interview, though who knows whether that, and not other differences in methodology or sampling, accounts for the difference.
Republicans In Meltdown
The biggest factor for the fall election, however, may not be whether Talarico or Crockett wins the Democratic primary, but whether Cornyn, an “establishment” rightwing Republican who votes consistently with Trump, can hold off the challenge from Paxton, a lunatic MAGA rightwing Republican who would also vote consistently with Trump. They’re both awful, but the national party has been throwing money at Cornyn because it fears that Paxton — so corrupt the Republican Texas Lege tried to impeach him — would repel just enough voters that the seat could flip, putting GOP control of the Senate at risk.
That would be fine with either Democrat, because stodgy awful (and incredibly well-funded) Cornyn is likely to be harder to beat in the general, while Paxton has all that baggage, like the years-long federal securities fraud case (he finally reached a settlement in 2024 before it went to trial; we’d honestly forgotten), his narrow survival of impeachment in 2023, and most recently, his wife’s filing for divorce on “biblical grounds,” which are the grounds of Paxton committing adultery while insisting he’s a Bible-thumping Christian.
There’s every likelihood the race will go to a late-May runoff, and that it will get even uglier and more expensive, taking GOP campaign money to shore up Paxton when the party faces angry voters all over the country. Gosh, that’s a shame.
Donald Trump visited Texas Friday so all three GOP candidates could go to his rally and hope he would endorse one, but Trump didn’t provide any satisfaction. Dear Leader instead said he’d “pretty much” decided who to support, but wouldn’t say yet, which means he wants all the attention on himself, and is waiting to see the results of the vote Tuesday so he won’t pick a loser. He hates losers, now even more than usual since he is one.
Republicans Try To Pick A Democratic Candidate
Also during the runup to the primary, Republicans have been buying ads aimed at Jasmine Crockett, both because they hope reminding their fellow MAGA jerks how much they hate her will boost turnout, and because they believe she’d be easier to beat than Talarico, so why not do the old Claire McCaskill maneuver and run ads saying she’s a great progressive threat, in hopes that will move Dems to choose her.
Gov. Gregg Abbott, who is also up for reelection, is using $3.4 million in his own campaign funds to buy ads connecting Crockett with scary national boogeypersons like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani, in what his political strategist Dave Carney says is a reminder to Texas snowflakes that “You vote for us Republicans, or you get this: A.O.C. and Mamdani and Crockett.”
Another of the ads features a clip of Crockett saying, “It is not a criminal violation to enter the country illegally,” to scare GOP voters about immigration and possibly to appeal to Democratic primary voters sick of Trump and Abbott.
Meanwhile, a rightwing group called American Sovereignty is running text-message ads to likely Democratic voters, promoting Crockett by framing her as a threat to things MAGA holds dear, like one that reads “What does Jasmine Crockett think of ICE?” followed by scandalous quotes like
“Rogue organization,” “Violating people’s rights every single day” and “Killing people in the middle of the street.”
“Crockett is ICE’s worst nightmare, and she VOWED to ‘clean house.’ It’s no wonder she’s under attack,” concludes the text.
Of course, Republicans assuming that it would be easier to beat Crockett than Talarico may be underestimating her, and there’s no telling whether the effort to boost her will make any difference.
Emmy Ruiz, a former White House director of political strategy under Joe Biden, suggested the strategy was more about Republicans being “really scared about their candidates.”
“They think they are playing chess, but I don’t think that they are,” said Ruiz, who is not affiliated with either campaign in the Democratic Senate primary. “Look at the amount of money that has been spent for and against all of them in the primary. […] I think they are scared out of their minds, and instead of focusing on their races, they are focusing on meddling in ours.”
Cornyn, for his part, seemed to be playing his own weird head game with his own weird head. In January, Cornyn said it was Talarico he’s worried about, telling Semafor, “I think Talarico is dangerous. He’ll probably beat Jasmine Crockett, and he’s capable of raising a lot of money. And if you look at the head-to-head with Paxton, it’s tied.” If that was a tricksy pitch to try and steer Republican voters to boost Crockett instead, that may have worked, although once you start going down that kind of reverse-psychology road you eventually end up dizzy.
We say we like Talarico and Crockett and we’re going to enthusiastically support either one after the primary. Turn Texas blue? Why the hell not? That football’s always fun to kick at!
If you’d like to send some Ameros to James Talarico, here’s his campaign site; if you’d like to help out Jasmine Crockett, her site is here. Or support both! If you’d like to try your hand at ratfucking and donate to Paxton, you’ll have to find his site on your own; damned if we’re gonna contribute to your delinquency.
[Bolts / USA Today / Ft Worth Star-Telegram / Austin Free Press / Politico / CNN / NYT (archive link) / WaPo (gift link) / Semafor / Crockett campaign site / Talarico campaign site]
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The movie post is up.
Happy 200th movie Wonkers!
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