Texas Rep. James Talarico will win the U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Texas, CBS News projects, defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett and securing enough votes to avoid a runoff in what could be one of the most closely watched races in this year’s midterms.
He will face either incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn or conservative Attorney General Ken Paxton, who will face off in a May 26 Republican primary runoff.
The state’s Senate primary is already the most expensive primary in history. For both Republicans and Democrats, the races are highlighting deep divisions within the party.
For Democrats, Crockett, a former public defender, has made national headlines for taking on President Trump and other Republicans, branding herself a fighter and appealing to the party’s base. Talarico, a former middle school teacher and a Presbyterian minister-in-training, has focused his message on “politics of love” and inclusivity.
Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, but the party has been eyeing flipping the Senate seat since Beto O’Rourke came within three points of defeating GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. Democrats feel Republicans this year are even more vulnerable in Texas given the expensive and nasty GOP primary between longtime Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
But Democrats have struggled to unify behind a single candidate. Several high-profile Democrats were rumored to be considering a bid, including O’Rourke, Rep. Joaquin Castro and former Rep. Colin Allred. Allred, who challenged Cruz in 2024, jumped in the race in July, followed by Talarico in September.
The race in Texas is coming just months after Republicans in the state legislature redraw the state’s 38 House districts under President Trump’s encouragement, leading Democrats to flee the state to deny them a quorum to vote on the new map. The Democrats’ efforts garnered national attention and they raised millions, putting an extra spotlight on the Senate race.
The Dallas-area district Crockett represented in the House, the 30th, was one of the ones that was redrawn. On the December filing deadline, Allred dropped out of the Senate race, opting to run in the newly-redrawn House District 33, and Crockett entered the Senate race, setting up a showdown with Talarico. Republicans cheered Crockett’s entry in the race, believing her to be the more beatable candidate in November.
With Talarico and Crockett agreeing on many of the issues, the race had come down to a personality clash. They have both been barnstorming the state, although with very different styles, and both have run combative ads against the other.
Talarico made national headlines in February when he was scheduled to appear on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” but the interview didn’t air on the CBS broadcast network due to new FCC guidance. Colbert slammed the decision and instead ran the interview in full on the show’s YouTube channel, which does not have to follow the same FCC guidance. Following the Colbert controversy, Talarico raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours afterward.
According to VoteHub, 1.5 million votes had been cast in the Democratic primary during the 11-day early voting period, more than double the number that were tallied four years ago.
The race faced some last-minute disruptions on Tuesday. A judge in Dallas County ordered the polls to stay open for an extra two hours due to mass confusion over new precinct voting rules, but the state Supreme Court stayed that decision and said ballots that were cast after the usual 7 p.m. CT closing time should be separated out. It’s not clear how many ballots were cast after the deadline or what will happen to them.
Crockett — a Dallas-area resident who is leading in Dallas County by a sizable margin — said late Tuesday she didn’t believe the election results could be known that evening due to the issues in Dallas.
“Unfortunately, this is what Republicans like to do. And so they specifically targeted Dallas County. And I think we all know why,” she told her supporters.
Talarico did not declare victory in remarks to supporters in Austin, but said “we are confident in this movement we’ve built together.” He also referred to the situation in Dallas as “voter suppression.”
