James Talarico’s – As Ken Paxton and John Cornyn went quiet ahead of the GOP Senate runoff in Texas after more than a year of bitter infighting and $109 million in advertising, Democrats see a rare opening for state Rep. James Talarico—whose campaign is benefiting from backlash
For more than a year. Ken Paxton and Senator John Cornyn have been caught in a public Republican battle for a U.S. Senate nomination in Texas—one that has consumed an estimated $109 million in advertising. Over the weekend, both sides retreated into silence as they waited for the election that would decide the GOP nominee.
They scheduled no public events and offered no fresh messaging as Tuesday’s runoff approaches—an eerie pause after the noise. James Talarico, the Democratic state representative who will face whoever wins the Republican contest, was waiting too. His campaign has not been powered by the same kind of fight. Instead. he’s watched the destruction of the GOP primary play out. and strategists on both sides say that may be exactly what Democrats need.
Talarico’s bid is far from routine. A Texas Democrat has not been in the U.S. Senate since June 1993. when Robert Krueger—appointed by Governor Ann Richards five months earlier after Senator Lloyd Bentsen became President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary—lost a special election to Kay Bailey Hutchison for the remainder of Bentsen’s term.
Now. the argument from Democrats and several political observers is that Paxton’s road to the nomination. boosted by President Donald Trump’s endorsement on May 19. has made the path more realistic. What was supposed to end the GOP’s bitter infighting. they say. has become an opening to flip a seat that Republicans have treated as locked for decades.
Republican strategist Mike Madrid believes the political environment has shifted toward Democrats. He points to a convergence of three factors: a favorable political environment for Democrats. a Democratic candidate with crossover appeal. and a damaged Republican nominee. “I think the chances of the Democrats winning in Texas are better now than they’ve been in 25 years. ” Madrid told Newsweek. “You have to have a favorable political environment for the Democrats. You have to have a remarkable Democratic candidate with crossover appeal, and they have that. And the third is you have to have a remarkably damaged Republican candidate, and they have that.”.
That set-up begins with Trump’s choice. The president’s endorsement of Paxton over the establishment-preferred Cornyn. Madrid said. effectively produced a “damaged Republican nominee with ethical baggage” facing a historically unpopular president—and a window for Democrats to compete in a state that has long resisted statewide party turnover.
The endorsement has also sharpened a familiar Republican dilemma: in primaries, Trump’s strength often depends on loyalty, while the candidates most eager to prove that loyalty can be the most vulnerable in the general election.
Paxton has branded himself as one of Trump’s fiercest loyalists, embracing the president’s rhetoric and grievances with enthusiasm. That approach energized Trump’s core supporters in the primary. But it has also. critics say. made Paxton toxic to moderate and independent voters who have watched his impeachment trial. legal settlements. and ethical controversies unfold.
Cornyn represents a different weakness. A four-term senator and the establishment favorite. he has been reliably conservative and largely supportive of Trump’s agenda in the Senate. including backing his judicial appointments and economic priorities. Yet his relationship with Trump has been complicated by moments of distance and perceived disloyalty.
Cornyn opposed Trump’s original border wall proposal, was slow to endorse him in 2016, and declined to immediately embrace Trump’s false election fraud claims after 2020—moves that Madrid and others say damaged him with the MAGA base.
Trump’s endorsement made his preference explicit in the terms of loyalty. “John Cornyn is a good man. and I worked well with him. but he was not supportive of me when times were tough. ” Trump wrote. “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination.”.
For Paxton, the baggage is both legal and personal. He was acquitted in a 2023 impeachment trial over corruption allegations and settled a long-running securities fraud case in 2024. His campaign has also been shadowed by allegations of an affair. Cornyn’s campaign has relentlessly highlighted those controversies. and they are likely to remain a major issue if Paxton becomes the nominee.
Polling has added to the feeling that Texas could be a different kind of battlefield this time.
In April, the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas found Talarico ahead of Paxton by 8 points—42 percent to 34 percent—in a general election matchup. A separate Texas Public Opinion Research poll from the same period showed Talarico leading Paxton 46 percent to 41 percent.
Those margins still leave room for movement, but the direction is striking for a state where no party member has won statewide office since 1994.
If Paxton wins the runoff Tuesday—something polling and prediction markets now heavily favor—Republicans could face an unexpected result entering this cycle: a genuinely competitive Senate race in Texas.
If Cornyn wins, strategists say the task becomes much harder for Democrats. “If Cornyn wins the nomination. Talarico has very little chance. ” Jim Kessler. vice president for policy at Third Way. a centrist think tank. told Newsweek. “If Paxton wins the nomination, Talarico has a fairly good chance, not as good as 50-50. He’s still the underdog. To win a Senate race in Texas, a Democrat needs to win at least 70 percent of moderate voters there. That’s not impossible, but it’s hard. But with Cornyn, it would have been close to impossible. So it puts the task within range.”.
Talarico’s appeal is part of what drives that difference. In a state where Democrats are outnumbered, strategists describe him as a candidate with crossover reach. He is a practicing Christian who talks openly about his faith in ways that are unusual for Democratic nominees. He is young, charismatic, and portrayed as independent of the national party apparatus that Texas voters view unfavorably.
Keith Edwards. a political influencer and digital strategist who oversaw social media for Senator Jon Ossoff’s 2020 Senate campaign in Georgia. said Republicans are nervous about what Talarico brings into a general election. “Talarico represents a couple of things: a post-Trump politician who wants to bring voters together. rather than pinning them against each other. ” Edwards said. “Republicans are terrified about actually having to not only run on their record but run against someone who knows and understand how badly they’ve misused God and Jesus Christ’s name.”.
But the most consequential factor may not be personal appeal alone. Even sympathetic observers say Texas still has structural realities that have long favored Republicans.
Republican strategist Alex Patton offered historical context meant to temper Democratic optimism. He noted that Republicans averaged 53.8 percent of the presidential vote in Texas across 2012, 2016 and 2020, while Democrats averaged 43.7 percent. He said the GOP margin has narrowed—from roughly 16 points in 2012 to about 5.5 points in 2020—yet a structural advantage remains.
Patton cautioned that a swing of 5 to 10 points toward Democrats is possible but unlikely. “There is no evidence Texas voters are warming to the national Democratic message. The data shows that Texas voters are responding to Talarico as a candidate and support for the opposition is softening. Those are different things, and conflating them would be a mistake.”.
Still, he said enthusiasm among Republicans could be a wildcard. “This softening could matter at the margins,” Patton said. “Talarico is exactly the type of candidate in Texas who can capitalize on an unfavorable environment for his opponents. So yes. the Democrats have a right to be cautiously hopeful about Texas. but the context in September and October will matter.”.
If the state really flips this cycle, strategists say it will require more than a better Democratic candidate. It will require real movement among Latino voters and independents—the two groups that powered Trump’s 2024 victory.
Trump won 55 percent of Texas’ Latino voters in 2024. But in recent polling, his approval among all Hispanic adults has dropped to just 22 percent. Among the Latino voters who backed him in 2024. approval fell from 93 percent at the start of his second term to 66 percent as of May 2026. A University of Houston poll found that only 41 percent of Trump’s 2024 Latino supporters would back him again.
Madrid says the shift is driven by the economy and immigration. “It’s got to be the economy,” Madrid said. “There’s no question about it. But it is also the overreach of government with the ICE raids and the crackdown for mass deportations.”
Democratic polling in Texas Public Opinion Research shows how that dissatisfaction could transfer to the Senate race. In that survey. Talarico led Cornyn and Paxton by roughly 30 points among Latino voters—receiving 57 percent of the Latino vote compared to 25 to 27 percent for them. The movement is described as a realignment rather than a minor shift.
Strategists who track these trends say that if Paxton wins Tuesday’s runoff—something they expect—Texas could quickly move from predictable to genuinely competitive, with Republicans forced onto the defensive nationally in a cycle they had assumed they would control.
Talarico is stuck in the waiting phase right now. The runoff ends soon, and then the question becomes whether the political conditions that made this moment possible can last through the fall.
There are warnings, even from people who believe the opening is real. “It’s still Texas,” Madrid cautioned. “Still a very tough state for the Democrats. But the conditions could not be more favorable for them at the same time.”
For now. the sharpest image is simple: Paxton and Cornyn. a pair of rivals who spent over a year fighting. have gone quiet. Talarico is watching. And for Democrats who haven’t held a Senate seat since June 1993. the silence coming out of the GOP primary doesn’t feel like an ending—it feels like the opening of a door they’ve rarely seen unlocked.
James Talarico Ken Paxton John Cornyn Texas Senate runoff 2026 election Texas Politics Project Latino voters ICE raids immigration Donald Trump endorsement