James Talarico wins Texas Senate seat, ending Democrats’ 32-year statewide drought
The state lawmaker beat Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the most costly Senate race of the year. No Democrat had won a Senate seat in Texas since 1988.
AUSTIN, Nov 4 – James Talarico has won the Senate race in Texas, and with it he has done something no Democrat has done in the state in 32 years. He beat Republican Ken Paxton, the man President Donald Trump backed for the seat, on Tuesday night.
The Associated Press called the race for him a little after 9 p.m. It wasn’t close at that point. With about two out of every three expected votes counted, Talarico had close to 60 percent, and Paxton had just under 39 percent, according to the Associated Press.
For Democrats in Texas, it has been a long wait. The last time a Democrat won a statewide race in Texas was in 1994. The last time the party won a U.S. Senate seat there was in 1988.
And this is a state that Trump won by 14 points just two years ago. So the win counts for a lot beyond Texas, too. Republicans went into the vote with 53 seats in the Senate to 47 for the Democrats. That means the Democrats need to pick up four seats to take over, and Texas is now one of them.
Talarico is 37. He used to teach middle school, and he has served four terms in the Texas House, where he represents part of the Austin area. He also raised more money than almost any other Senate candidate in the country.
He didn’t start as the favorite. At first he was up against Colin Allred, who ran for the Senate as a Democrat in 2024. Allred later pulled out to run for the House again.
Then Talarico had to get past Jasmine Crockett, a member of Congress who had served with him in the state House. He beat her in the primary.
Paxton came into the race with a lot of baggage. He is the attorney general of Texas, and the state House impeached him in 2023. He has also faced a securities fraud case. In his job, he sued the Biden administration more than 100 times.
He got to the general election by beating Senator John Cornyn in a runoff, after Trump came out for him. That worried the Republican leaders, who thought Cornyn would have had a better shot in November.
Cornyn will remain in the seat until January, when Talarico is scheduled to be sworn in.
No Senate race this year cost more. Republicans spent more than $316 million to keep the seat, according to Reuters. Local media reported that more than $200 million of that total came from Elon Musk.
When the primary and general election are combined, spending on advertisements reached approximately $590 million, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks political ad spending. The firm said no race outside a presidential election has ever cost more.
Most polls conducted in the fall had Talarico ahead, though many showed the two candidates separated by only a point or two. His lead on election night was significantly larger than those margins suggested.
Some Republicans had anticipated the outcome. In the final days of the campaign, Senator Ted Cruz said on his podcast that his party could lose every statewide race in Texas.
The rest of the ballot remains undecided. The race for governor between Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Democrat Gina Hinojosa had not been called by early Wednesday.
Talarico’s campaign focused on the cost of living, health care, and what he described as corruption in Washington. Paxton ran as a close ally of Trump and urged his supporters to hold the line.
It was also a strong night for Democrats in other states. In North Carolina, Democrat Roy Cooper won a seat previously held by a Republican, according to the Associated Press. In South Carolina, NBC News and CBS News projected that Democrat Annie Andrews had defeated Republican Senator Darline Graham.
Votes were still being counted in Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio.
Paxton is the first Republican in 38 years to lose a Senate race in Texas.
