The Talarico Two-Step

There are good reasons to believe Texas will, as it almost always does, send a Republican to the United States Senate this November. 

Never mind the electoral ramifications of an explosive, expensive, and completely unnecessary war with Iran. Never mind the price of gas at the pump, rising as a blockade strangles the Strait of Hormuz and U.S. bombers torch Iran’s oil fields. Never mind the heated, problematic Republican Senate primary that is headed to a costly and performative runoff unless President Donald Trump can convince one of two bullheaded men to drop out and save everyone a whole lot of time and resources. At the end of the day, it’s still Texas. Longhorns run it. Oil men run it. Cattle men run it. Most importantly, Democrats rarely run it. 

It’s been nearly 40 years since a Democrat won a Senate seat in the Lone Star State, when Lloyd Bentsen bested Beau Boulter in the 1988 U.S. Senate election. Bentsen wasn’t a Democrat in the modern sense. He was pro-business, argued for tax cuts, and spoke in support of a strong national defense. He belonged to an older coalition of conservative Democrats that still ruled large swaths of the South before political realignment shifted many of his voters toward the Republican Party while the Democrats opted for a more progressive direction socially and politically.

The closest any Democrat has come to winning a Senate seat in Texas since Bentsen was the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Beto O’Rourke, who lost to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) by less than 3 percentage points in 2018. By 2024, Cruz had consolidated support, defeating the Democratic nominee Colin Allred by a whopping 8 points. With Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) easily securing victory in each of his four Senate campaigns since 2002, Texas appeared to be firmly in the hands of the Republicans. 

But Democrat James Talarico, an articulate 36-year-old from Round Rock, Texas, may be the most credible threat Texas Republicans have faced in a generation. Though Talarico’s outward appearance is boyish, he has already served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives, where he earned the distinction of being an introspective, measured, and policy-driven progressive among a sea of vocal culture warriors.