Fierce Trump critic Jasmine Crockett shakes up high-stakes Senate race

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, the progressive firebrand and vocal critic of President Donald Trump and Republicans, has launched a last-minute campaign for the U.S. Senate, in a race that may determine if the GOP holds its majority in the chamber next year.

A spokesperson for the Texas Democratic Party confirmed to Fox News Digital on Monday that Crockett had filed paperwork to run for the Senate. 

Hours later, Crockett officially announced her Senate campaign in a speech to supporters in Dallas. She framed her candidacy as an effort to stand up against Trump, something she said incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn will not do. 

"I'm done watching the American dream on life support while Trump tries to pull the plug. The gloves have been off, and now I'm jumping into the ring," she said. 

"Many people wonder why I jumped in this race so late and I just want to be clear that this was never my intention, this was never about me, I never put myself into any of the polls," Crockett said. "But the more I saw the poll results, I couldn't ignore the trends, which were clear, both as it relates to the primary as well as the general election, I could have played it safe and continued serving in the United States House of Representatives for as long as my constituents would have me, but I don't choose to do that, because, Texas, this moment we're in now is life or death." 

"Many people asked, ‘Can we win this race in November? I’m here to say, ‘Yes, we can!’" Crockett fired back while echoing an infamous slogan from former President Obama, who she praised during her speech. 

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"Texas is a big boy state made up of brawlers with a moral code. Our representation should reflect that, sadly enough, it doesn't," she went on. "After evaluating the data, anaylizing the trends, researching historic numbers, and combing over the crosstabs, it was clear, the numbers were strongest for my candidacy for United States Senate, that's why I decided to enter this race." 

Crockett's campaign announcement, which included a video playing several soundbites of President Donald Trump attacking her, will likely further rock a high-profile and heavily contested race in Texas, which, on the Republican side, includes Cornyn and GOP primary rivals state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. 

The official announcement by the rising-star Democrat, who has a large social media footprint and currently represents a Dallas area district, came hours after one of the two Democrats already running for the Senate in 2026 abandoned his bid.

Former Rep. Colin Allred, who was making his second straight bid for the Senate in right-leaning Texas, on Monday morning ended his campaign and instead launched a congressional campaign as he seeks to return to the House. 

But Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian who is also seen as a rising Democratic Party star, remains in the Senate primary, setting up a face-off between two surging contenders with formidable fundraising. 

Talarico responded to Crockett entering the race by saying, "We’re building a movement in Texas — fueled by record-breaking grassroots fundraising and 10,000 volunteers who are putting in the work to defeat the billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians who have taken over our state. Our movement is rooted in unity over division — so we welcome Congresswoman Crockett into this race."

Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder echoed this sentiment, telling Fox News Digital, "Competitive Primaries are the sign of a healthy party."

Scudder added that "the Texas Democratic Party has contested primaries up and down the ballot with a record number of candidates to fight for working-class people. It is a real embarrassment of riches; Republicans are shaking in their boots because they know their days are numbered in Texas."

Crockett held an event announcing her decision roughly 90 minutes before the deadline on the final day for candidates to file for the state's March 3 primary. 

Crockett had teased a possible bid for weeks, and she commissioned polling to make her case for a Senate run in Texas, where no Democrat has won a statewide election in over three decades.

Allred, who was making a second straight Senate bid after losing to conservative firebrand Sen. Ted Cruz by roughly 9 points last year, said in a statement that he didn't want to contribute to anything that would splinter Democrats' hopes of flipping the GOP-held Senate seat in next year's elections.

"In the past few days, I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlickers Paxton, Cornyn, or Hunt," Allred wrote.

By dropping out of the race, Allred will likely allow Democrats to avoid a costly and messy primary runoff in the spring, giving the party more time to consolidate around their nominee and raise much-needed campaign cash.

Meanwhile, with Cornyn, Paxton, and Hunt all taking aim at each other in a combustible primary, the GOP nomination may be headed towards a runoff, which would be triggered if no candidate tops 50% in the primary.

The 44-year-old Crockett, who is Black, is a former state representative and civil rights lawyer. She won her seat in 2022 after longtime Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, who was retiring, hand-picked her as her successor in Congress.

Crockett, who won re-election last year, has become one of the most well-known Democratic politicians in the country the past couple of years, thanks to her viral jabs at Republicans and her verbal sparing on social media with Trump, who has repeatedly questioned her intelligence. And she's grabbed plenty of headlines during her time on the House Oversight Committee.

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While her Senate run will likely excite many Democrats, thanks to her energy and her proven fundraising ability, her frequent push-back against GOP politicians may energize Republicans.

Among her biggest blunders — calling Abbott, who is partially paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, "Gov. Hot Wheels."

Crockett has also compared Trump to Adolf Hitler on multiple occasions while accusing aspects of the Republican Party of fascism.

She notably ran for ranking member of the House Oversight Committee earlier this year following the death of its previous top Democrat, the late Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., but dropped out of the race after failing to win the recommendation of leadership within her party.

But the Dallas-area Democrat has won favor with some party leaders, like ex-Vice President Kamala Harris, who revealed in her memoir "107 Days" that she mentored Crockett as part of her covert "Stars Project" while in office.

Crockett spoke at the Democratic National Convention last year when Harris was named the party's presidential candidate, a notable slot for someone who was then a first-term House lawmaker.

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She had also been facing some tough decisions in her House race after the new GOP-led Texas congressional map appeared to draw her home out of her current district.

Monday's filing deadline came just a few days after the Supreme Court upheld the state's congressional redistricting, which was passed by the GOP-dominated Texas legislature and signed into law by longtime Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. The new map creates five more right-leaning House districts in the Lone Star State and is a key part of Trump’s aggressive national campaign to reshape congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms, when GOP will defend its razor-thin House majority. 

Crockett's entry into the Senate race, and her showdown with Talarico, may shift the spotlight off of the GOP primary, where Cornyn, the longtime incumbent who hails from the party's establishment wing, has cut into the one-time large lead by Paxton, a MAGA firebrand, with Hunt in third.

The concern among Republicans is that Paxton, who has been battered over the past decade by a slew of scandals and legal problems and who is now dealing with a messy divorce, would put the seat in play if he won the GOP nomination.

But Crockett's Senate candidacy may change the political equation.

While her aggressive push-back against Trump and the GOP should play well with the left, it could deflate her chances of winning next November among Texas' general election electorate.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, this past summer paid for a Democratic primary poll in Texas which showed Crockett the frontrunner by double digits. The publicly released survey was apparently done to encourage Crockett to enter the race, with the GOP assuming she would be more beatable than Allred or Talarico.

NRSC communications director Joanna Gonzalez, in a statement to Fox News Digital after Crockett announced, charged that "Jasmine Crockett leading her primary is the latest sign that the Democrat Party is being run by radical leftists."

Delanie Bomar, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, also chimed in, telling Fox News Digital that "Jasmine Crockett’s shenanigans are an embarrassment to Texas. Everything's bigger in Texas — except her ability to win this race."