AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Democrats may be divided over whether state Rep. James Talarico or Rep. Jasmine Crockett should be their party’s Senate nominee. But they agree on one thing: They’re itching for a fight.
And whoever wins next week’s Senate primary will provide some clues about exactly how Democrats want to go about it — and whom they want to focus on.
Both Talarico and Crockett have been casting themselves as fighters, tapping into the angst among Democratic voters and frustration with party leaders that drove record-low ratings for the Democratic Party following President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024.
As Talarico addressed hundreds of supporters packed into an event center last week in North Austin, one of his loudest applause lines of the night came as he took aim at his fellow Democrats.
“If you hate politics and you’ve never voted before, you have a place in this campaign. If you have voted for Democrats but you’re tired of D.C. Democrats always folding, you have a place in this campaign,” he said.
“And if you voted for Donald Trump but you are fed up with the extremism and the corruption in our government, you have a place in this campaign,” Talarico added.
A few days later, Crockett addressed around 200 supporters gathered at City Cathedral Church in Conroe, where she chided her party for trying too hard to appeal to Republicans in 2024.
“I’m not saying that Republicans are not welcome, because the fights that I’m waging, they are for everyone,” Crockett said. “But I also think that it is truly only fair to the Democratic base to double down and say, ‘I am a Democrat, and I am going to fight for those principled things like raising the wage,’ which, again, helps everyone, right,” she said.
Talarico and Crockett have put forth competing visions for the Democratic Party as it searches for a path forward following a deflating loss to Trump — and as Democrats try to win their first statewide race in Texas in more than 30 years.
One looks to energize voters across the political spectrum in a fight against a “corrupt” political and economic system. The other looks to energize Democrats’ core supporters in a fight against Trump. And conversations with nearly 30 Democratic voters in Texas in recent days reveal that they are still divided over which path to follow, and which will lead to a victory in November.
Fighting a ‘corrupt’ system
Talarico’s message is rooted in his belief he can appeal to Democrats, independents and Republicans, arguing that cross-partisan appeal is the winning strategy in Texas, which Trump won by nearly 14 points in 2024.
He has certainly taken aim at Trump, recently clashing with the administration over an interview with Stephen Colbert, which the comedian said CBS blocked from the airwaves due to federal regulatory concerns. Talarico seized on the controversy and suggested the Trump administration viewed him as a threat.
CBS said Colbert's show "was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview. The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled."
Still, Talarico claimed “Trump’s FCC colluded with corporate media executives at CBS to keep that interview off the air, and I think it’s safe to say that their plan backfired,” he said Tuesday to the packed rally, hours after the news about his interview broke. His campaign raised $2.5 million over the next 24 hours.
But while Talarico referenced Trump around a half a dozen times during his rally speech, he stressed that the more fundamental fight is against “a broken, corrupt political system” that benefits the wealthy.
“The reason our politics sucks right now, it’s not any one politician. It is the system itself,” he said at the Austin rally.
“The real fight in this country is not left versus right, it’s top versus bottom,” Talarico also said, repeating one of his familiar lines on the campaign trail, the airwaves and the debate stage.
Talarico’s campaign has spent $11.2 million so far on ads touting a message like that — around four times more than Crockett’s ad spending, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. While each of the Talarico campaign’s four TV ads uses the word “fight” or “fought,” none directly reference Trump.
