Crockett, Talarico race came down to electability and a flawed campaign | Opinion
An Election Night mess in Dallas County meant that James Talarico’s victory celebration in Texas Democrats’ U.S. Senate primary was delayed.
But it wasn’t enough for him to be denied. Even Jasmine Crockett’s home county couldn’t overcome the losses she took in most of the rest of the state.
Confusion over where Dallas County voters should cast ballots led to dueling court orders and uncertainty over which votes would count. But hungry Democrats decisively decided this primary based on electability. And right or wrong, they think the Austin-area state representative, not the Dallas congresswoman, is likelier to win a statewide race for the party for the first time since “Friends” was a hot new comedy on NBC.
What Barack Obama showed about electability
Here’s the thing about electability: It’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the 2008 Democratic presidential contest, Barack Obama was widely thought to be struggling. Some Democrats openly feared that the country simply wouldn’t vote for a Black candidate for president.
Then, he won the first nominating contest in an almost entirely white state, Iowa. Suddenly, he was plenty electable.
Talarico, to be clear, is not Barack Obama. He’s not even 2018-vintage Beto O’Rourke. But he is young and delivers a crisp message — if, perhaps, a little too neatly packaged. Democrats clearly bought the argument that he could appeal to Republicans disgruntled with Donald Trump, disgusted by possible Republican nominee Ken Paxton or those dismayed by Texas GOP’s servitude to a thinner and thinner sliver of the far right.
That means their political calculation was opposite from what Crockett proposed. She argued she was best positioned to bring new voters into the party, presenting that as the way to win after years of failed efforts to reach moderates or even wavering conservatives.
This argument goes on and on among Texas Democrats. And the truth is probably somewhere in between the two. But when you’ve been out of power for 30 years, you face a structural deficit in organization, fundraising and simply the number of voters on your side. For Democrats, that’s generally at least a deficit of 800,000 in a statewide race.
The last few elections, thanks to Trump’s omnipresence, have seen bigger turnout than Texas has had in decades. And Democrats haven’t come close to statewide victories, other than O’Rourke’s near-breakthrough against Ted Cruz in 2018.
Democrats such as Crockett are fond of saying that most Texans are with them but that ours is a nonvoting state. A nonvoting state where turnout keeps rising? Weird, right?
Texas Democrats may have seen James Talarico as safer choice
How much of all that the average Texas Democrat carried into the voting booth is unknown. Perhaps they factored in Crockett’s penchant for viral hot takes loved by the party’s base voters but not many others and went with the perceived safer choice.
But large numbers clearly believe Talarico can get them over the hump. It’s not because he’s moderate — he’s not, and Republicans will try to take his hide off on issues ranging from abortion to taxes. They’ll use Karl Rove’s favorite tactic, turning the opponent’s seeming strength into a weakness, by pointing out to Christian conservatives and moderates what Talarico, a Presbyterian seminary student, has said about God’s tolerance for progressive social stances.
Campaigns are never about just one thing. Crockett got into the race late, didn’t raise enough money and had a poor campaign organization that got distracted by trifling matters, such as ejecting a supposedly unfriendly Atlantic reporter from a rally. Voters don’t care about or even notice such incidents, but they say something about a campaign’s ability to keep its eyes on the prize.
Crockett has considerable political talent and, if she learns the right lesson, will be back as a force to be reckoned with. In the meantime, she’s left to ponder an irony.
She was right that expanding an electorate could make the difference between victory and defeat. But it turned out to be the Democratic primary, which drew more voters than any party contest in memory, and the candidate who benefited turned out to be James Talarico.
This story was originally published March 4, 2026 at 12:10 AM.
