WASHINGTON — The third poll in a row shows Democratic state Rep. James Talarico ahead of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas’ U.S. Senate race.
While it’s early, Texas lawmakers say it’s not an anomaly and Democrats have a real chance of winning a Texas Senate seat for the first time in more than three decades.
“What do you make of all these polls coming out showing Paxton down?” I asked outgoing Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) of the latest Texas Southern University poll that has Talarico up by two points.
“Umm, well, I suspected that would be the case,” Cornyn — who lost the GOP primary to Paxton — replied. “But we made our case and didn’t prevail.”
“Do Democrats have a chance?” I pressed.
“Yes,” Cornyn replied.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Cornyn said.
“Are you going to be helping Paxton at all?” I asked as Cornyn boarded an elevator in the Capitol’s basement.
“Ummm,” Cornyn said as the elevator doors shut. “I wasn’t thinking of it.”
“They are finding gold”
It’s not just Cornyn who thinks Texas is in play this fall.
“The race is close and competitive,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told me. “I believe Paxton is going to win, because James Talarico is a radical and extreme candidate whose views are much, much different from the views of most Texans. At this point, the Texas voters don’t know that yet.”
Still, Cruz says the polls that have been coming out showing Paxton behind are a tad premature, but he says Republicans have yet to unleash the full force of the party’s messaging machine against Talarico, who’s running his first statewide campaign.
“That’s what a campaign is for,” Cruz said.
“Do you think Dems actually have a chance, though?” I pressed.
“Absolutely,” Cruz replied.
Other Texas Republicans discount Democrats’ chances, in part, because incumbent Sen. Cornyn and Paxton duked it out in a runoff at the end of May.
“It’s too early. We’ve got some people that are still disgruntled over the [primary] election. I get it,” Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) told me before the US House gaveled out for lawmakers’ monthlong August recess. “You do that when your candidate loses, but, no, the more people know about Talarico, the more the polls will move. I’ll leave it at that.”
“So it’s not what people know about Paxton?” I asked of the attorney general who faced 20 articles of impeachment from the GOP-controlled Texas House of Representatives. “They just got to get to know this other guy?”
“They don’t know Talarico,” Self said.
Self’s chief of staff, Hillary Parkinson, is married to the Republican National Committee’s new communications director, Zach Parkinson, which the congressman says gives him an inside track on the GOP’s plan to define Talarico.
“Look, my chief is married to the comms director at the RNC, so they are finding gold,” Self said through a laugh.
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“There’s a real shot”
While Democrats are far from bullish, they say the 37-year-old Talarico is energizing young voters.
“There’s a real shot. I think that if the election were held today that James Talarico would become the next senator from Texas,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) told me earlier this summer. “So the only hope for Republicans is that they can spread a lot of disinformation and smears and try to bring him down. I think that’s why you’re seeing everything they’re doing to try to accomplish that.”
The Texas GOP primary for the U.S. Senate earned the dubious record of the most expensive primary in history, with an estimated $190 million being dropped on the Republican on Republican contest.
With control of the Senate on the line, analysts expect the general election to be one of the most expensive in the nation this cycle.
As to whether Democrats will be able to overcome the hundreds of millions of dollars the GOP and Republican-aligned PACs are expected to spend going into November, Castro says as long as the polls stay tight, Democratic donors nationwide will flood Texas with donations.
“I think so. I think Donald Trump and the Republican majority just keep getting worse. Their priorities are not the things that Americans care about in their daily lives,” Castro said. “The president’s out of touch, and the Republican majority is out of touch.”
