Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett was expected to announce on Monday that she would join the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in the Lone Star State — the same day one of her would-be opponents decided to exit the race.
Collin Allred, Crockett’s colleague in the House, withdrew his bid for the seat early Monday morning, hours after news of Crockett’s plans were made public in Texas media outlets. Also running for the position is James Talarico, a Texas state senator.
Crockett’s national profile and popularity with the party’s younger members give her a clear edge in the race, but Talarico has worked to build his own brand among Democrats in Washington and elsewhere outside of Texas as the state became the first battleground in a newly-ignited war over mid-decade redistricting efforts by both parties to secure stronger House majorities next year.
Talarico joined other Texas Democrats in resisting those efforts by fleeing the state, forcing the legislature to delay proceedings.
The congresswoman previously said she’d spoken to both Talarico and Allred as she spent the past several weeks exploring her options for 2026. Allred announced in his own statement that he would seek a congressional seat near Dallas as Texas’ district lines shift ahead of next year’s races. Five seats were specifically redrawn to give GOP candidates a greater advantage in the coming elections as part of the partisan mid-decade redistricting effort.
At 44, Crockett is one of the Democratic Party’s youngest stars on Capitol Hill and was one of the members who sought to challenge the party’s old guard for a powerful committee position earlier this year, when she briefly launched a bid to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. In January, she joined the House Judiciary Committee. She’s clashed with Republicans on countless occasions, including Donald Trump who called her “low IQ” in recent derisive comments to reporters on Air Force One.
She also achieved some viral stardom with a committee hearing takedown of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who herself has fought with Trump and is resigning in January in response. In 2024, she and fellow Oversight committee member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traded insults with Greene during a hearing, inspiring Crockett to zing at Greene, via a question to chairman: “I’m just curious…if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blond bad built butch body, that would not be engaging in [insulting members’] personalities, correct?”
Texas Republicans have their own contentious Senate primary on their hands.
Sen. John Cornyn is running for his fifth term in what would normally be a layup election to defend his seat from Democrats.
But many conservatives and allies of the president see him as insufficiently supportive of Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda after he criticized the president following the attack on the Capitol perpetrated by Trump’s suppoters, as well as due to Cornyn’s work on gun control legislation in 2022.
Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, announced earlier this year that he would run aganst Cornyn. The two have long clashed in state politics, with Paxton generally seen as a fire-breathing hardliner with a controversial streak that his opponents argue is due to the attorney general’s corrupt use of his office. Rep. Wesley Hunt, another Republican, is also challenging Cornyn.
Democrats see a Paxton victory as their best chance to flip the seat and a fairly likely outcome for the GOP primary, and have taken greater interest in the race as a result. In 2023, the Republican-run state house impeached Paxton, but the Senate impeached him. Earlier this year, Paxton’s wife divorced him amid reports he had multiple affairs.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee firmly backs Cornyn and has commissioned polls showing Crockett leading the Democratic side of the primary, even before her official announcement. Many Republicans see Crockett’s punch-happy style as a possible detriment to her efforts to win statewide.
