Rep. James Talarico
In the end, James Talarico and Democrats got the matchup they had been salivating over for months.
Within two hours of Ken Paxton’s GOP primary win on Tuesday, Talarico had hauled in $600,000 — the strongest two hours of his entire campaign. Recent internal polling from a pro-Talarico PAC shows the Democrat has a 7-point lead against Paxton. Both figures were shared first with POLITICO.
In an interview, Talarico said he’s confident about his chances.
But Talarico faces a Texas-sized challenge to finally deliver on Democrats’ long-held fantasy of flipping the state, just two years after Trump won it by 14 points.
It’s an open question whether the state representative, who participated in Paxton’s impeachment trial, can successfully capitalize on the general-election candidacy of the scandal-plagued GOP nominee.
Talarico said Tuesday night that to win in November, he must convert supporters of Sen. John Cornyn — a conservative by almost any metric, except Trump’s. After Cornyn conceded, Talarico thanked the four-term incumbent for his service and told his supporters “you have a place in our campaign.”
It’s all part of his general election pitch, which Talarico outlined in the interview following Paxton’s primary win.
“I have a legislative record that I think has a lot to offer supporters of Senator Cornyn. Ken Paxton has a criminal record. I have a legislative record,” Talarico told POLITICO (Paxton struck a deal in 2024 where he paid restitution and securities fraud felony charges were dropped). He emphasized his history reaching across the aisle “to cut property taxes and raise teacher pay and lower the cost of housing and child care and prescription drugs,” and touted his willingness to break with Democrats on issues including energy and the border that are important in Texas.
“I’ve called out the extremes in both parties, on the right and left, and as you know, called out President Biden for failing to secure our southern border,” he said. “I’ve pushed back against national Democrats who want to hurt the Texas oil and gas industry and so I think that Texans are looking for a senator who is going to be independent, who’s not going to serve a political party, not going to serve any special interests or megadonors, but who’s going to serve people of Texas.”
Here’s the memo they provided to sum up their case. I’m more interested in the poll that accompanied the story, which contains the following numbers:
Senate race: Talarico 45, Paxton 38, Ted Brown 3, not sure 14
Governor’s race: Gina Hinojosa 44, Greg Abbott 48, not sure 8
Trump approval: 40-52
Abbott favorable: 41-52
Paxton favorable: 30-56
2024 recalled vote: Trump 56, Harris 42
The poll was conducted on Friday and Saturday, so just before the runoff concluded. That suggests that the same questions I’ve had about how voters who are still in the thick of that race might feel – and I wonder if Team Talarico also had a poll result against Cornyn lined up, along with a different memo and message statement, just in case. Be that as it may, there are a couple of caveats to mull.
Caveat #1: While the recalled 2024 vote numbers are dead on, the approval/favorability numbers are the worst I’ve seen anywhere for those three, at least from the Texas Politics Project. G. Elliott Morris has estimated Trump’s approval rating in Texas at around 40, but seeing Abbott and Paxton at those shockingly low numbers is a first. I’m not saying they’re wrong – Team Cornyn just spent several months and almost $100 million beating up Paxton on the airwaves, that has to take some kind of toll. I’m just saying that I’d like to see some further evidence of their low standing before I buy into it.
Caveat #2: Talarico does one point better than Gina Hinojosa, but Abbott does ten points better than Paxton. This doesn’t suggest crossover voters to me, as there’s basically no separation between Talarico and Hinojosa. The Abbott number suggests a lot of those “Ted Brown” and “Not sure” respondents to the Senate question are Abbott voters, and that brings us back once again to the question of how many of them are just slow to come around to voting for Paxton, and how many of them really won’t vote for him. If you know the answer to that, go buy yourself a lottery ticket.
I don’t want to dump the whole bucket of cold water on this, just enough to get your attention. The hesitation by some Republicans over Paxton is real, and it will have an effect. He won’t lag behind Abbott by ten points in November, but he could lag him by three or four. In a “Beto in 2018” environment – or better, which I think we will inhabit – that’s enough to win. A lot of words have been written about how Talarico has needed to court and win over Jasmine Crockett’s supporters. Well, Paxton will have to do the same to Cornyn’s supporters, and he was a hell of a lot uglier to Cornyn in their race.
Anyway. The one thing I am totally confident about is that we will see a lot more poll data going forward – TPOR has one coming out today, which I will write about for tomorrow – so as always, remember this is one data point. Remember also that there were almost no polls showing Beto ahead of Ted Cruz by any margin in 2018, so Talarico has that going for him, too. Now go do your part to help him and the rest of the ticket out.
The current GOP name calling is just pathetic. Talarico is vegan? He’s trans? Those make Donny’s grade-school taunts look like comedy gold. Stephen Miller’s whining on being insulted back is just embarrassing.