Crockett Creates Chance for Rescue Ride
as Trump-Paxton Keep Texas Dems United
Capitol Inside
June 21, 2026
Texas Democrats converge on Corpus Christi this week for a state convention that Republicans already have declared to be a bust because Jasmine Crockett doesn't plan to attend and is threatening to withhold the support that she'd promised U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico after he beat her in the primary election.
But Crockett appears to be setting the stage for an opportunity to save the day if the Senate race in Texas proves to be as close as the polls show it shaping up to be for the midterm election in 2026. She's simply playing the Republicans who see her posturing as a sign that the Democrats' hopes for a united front for the fall in the Lone Star State are dead or on life support.
Crockett is a highly-intelligent woman who can see that President Donald Trump is doing more to unite the Democrats in Texas than any American politician since Franklin Roosevelt. Crockett knows the Democrats have their best at a U.S. Senate seat in Texas since Lloyd Bentsen's last election here in 1988. The Dallas lawyer doesn't want to be responsible for helping Republican Ken Paxton win the Senate race after portraying him repeatedly as corrupt and immoral for months as a candidate who'd had double-digit leads in some polls before Talarico defeated her by 6 pecentage points in round one.
Crockett would be killing the Democrat in a competitive down-ballot races that are highly dependent on a strong showing by Talarico at the top of the ticket this fall. That would be suicidal. But Crockett posturing with remarks in a newspaper interview last week will compel Talarico and the Democrats to work even harder to keep the influential Black lawmaker's voters in the fold for the fall.
Texas Republicans are painting an entirely different picture of Crockett's impact on the united front that the Democrats have to have to snap a losing streak in a state where they haven't won statewide in 32 years. None have raised the specter that Crockett's maneuvering could be designed to put her in position to be a hero at the finish line as a major key to a Talarico victory.
Paxton has contributed substantially to the unification of Texas Democrats for the midterm election in 2026. The state attorney general faces the imposing challenge of defending a record that includes formal accusations of felony securities fraud and public corruption charges that 60 Texas House Republicans ratified when they voted to impeach him in 2023. But Paxton's most significant albatross may come from a close association with the president, who the Texan befriended when he tried to overturn the 2020 democratic election on Trump's behalf amid baseless claims of voter fraud.
The GOP primary fight for the Senate nomination appeared to be reasonably close until Paxton locked the nomination down for all practical purposes with an endorsement from the president a week before the primary runoff vote that he won with 64 percent. While Trump had led veteran U.S. Senator John Cornyn to think he had a realistic chance for a formal plug before the overtime election, it appeared from here that the endorsement was timed to have maximum impact on the outcome.
But Paxton has wrapped himself in Trump even more since the primary runoff - portraying their close association as his campaign's number one asset for the general election in a speech to the Texas GOP Convention in Houston last week. Paxton has appeared to be undaunted by Trump's record low approval ratings and the fact that he's under water now in Texas in almost every category in recent polling.
While Talarico can't afford to lose any Black voters who supported Crockett enthusiastically, he would mitigate the potential loss of some with the potential for record support from across the aisle among Cornyn backers who've sworn they would never vote for Paxton. The Republicans have done nothing to keep Cornyn voters in the fold for the fall - and they appeared to antagonize the lameduck solon and the Republicans who'd been loyal to him more during the gathering in Houston than they already had.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick berated Cornyn as a sore loser while insisting that his voters need to put the primary results behind and get in line behind Paxton like truly loyal Republicans would do. The same basic strategy failed badly for the Republicans when Patrick and his handpicked candidate in a special election for an open state Senate seat expected the Republican who was eliminated in the initial election to deliver nearly 20,000 votes that he received to Leigh Wambsganss in a runoff that she ended up losing by 14 points in a district where Trump won by 17 in 2024.
Patrick and Wambsganss blamed a poor turnout among John Huffman supporters for Democrat Taylor Rehmet's monumental win in OT after Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott had assured Republicans she would capture the Senate District 9 seat. Huffman said Patrick never reached out to him - and Wambsganss failed to do so before the eve of early voting when she met with him and said he needed to work harder to get his supporters to the runoff polls. The Republicans appear to be taking the same basic approach to Cornyn voters.
Two recent polls have founded that 7 percent to 8 percent of 910,382 Texans who voted for Cornyn in the primary in March say they plan to vote for Talarico in November. That could be the difference between winning and losing in the Senate race. While Talarico can expect to have the lion's share of Black voters in his column for the general election, he can't afford to lose any potential votes like the Republicans appear set to do amid the stubborn resistance of some Cornyn voters who the GOP has no plan to win back.
The longer Crockett holds out, the higher her stock would be if she proved to be Talarico's most important weapon in a winning race. While such an approach would be risky, it could be a gift for the nominee in the final analysis if they play it right. Crockett can maximize her influence and sway by making Talarico work harder for her active involvement.
"I’ve not heard a bunch of kumbaya," Crockett said. "People don’t seem to be convinced at this point ... but there's a lot of time between now and November."
more to come ...
| 
