How the Texas primary could rewrite the Democrat’s campaign playbook

The closely watched Democratic primary for Senate in Texas, which has turned into a battle between Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico, is not just testing what style of candidate Democrats prefer heading into 2026, but also two different theories of how to win elections in a state that Democrats will need to win, if they want to retake control of the Senate.

Any path back to a Democratic majority in the Senate basically requires a win in Texas, with Democrats needing to flip four seats to win a bare 51-seat majority. This, combined with the feeling that 2026 appears to be the best chance for Democrats in Texas since 2018, has made the Senate race one of the marquee congressional races in the midterms.

However, it’s also testing two theories of how to win in the state, which, if Democrats win in 2026, could become a serious battleground in the 2028 presidential election. On one side, the argument goes that Democrats need a candidate who can expand the electorate and appeal to independents and whatever fraction of Republicans disapprove of the current party enough to vote for Democrats. The other side is that Democrats’ best chance to win is by nominating a candidate who can turn out unprecedented levels of voters.

In this race, Talarico has become the favored candidate of those who subscribe to the first theory, a group that includes many Democratic strategists and pundits. Crockett, in contrast, has been a favorite of the party’s base for her personal style when it comes to attacking Republicans.

There have been other major differences in the campaigns as well. Talarico has run a relatively conventional campaign, at least in terms of structure. After announcing his candidacy fairly early in the race last September, he’s done the usual: hired a campaign manager, ran ads and crisscrossed the state holding rallies and fundraising.

Crockett, on the other hand, jumped into the race shortly before the deadline in early December, but has yet to name a campaign manager, at least as of mid-February, has run relatively few ads and has been packing campaign stops in on the weekends in between her work in Washington, D.C.

Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist working with Talarico’s campaign, told Salon that if Crockett wins, Democrats in Texas are going to have to rethink how they run campaigns.

“I’ve been doing campaigns in Texas for 36 years,” Rocha said. “And there’s one thing that’s for sure: if you want to win races, you spend a lot of money and time talking to voters over the longest period of time that you possibly can, and that’s what James has been doing. And if James doesn’t win, it’s going to upend the way people do campaigns.”

Both of these candidates also appear to be bringing a different theory of politics to the particularly high-stakes general election in November.

Joshua Blank, the research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told Salon that based on his research, he’s also seeing conflict between strategists and pundits, and the Democratic Party’s base heading into the primary.

“There’s a conversation on both sides at the elite level about electability and about the general election. And then there’s what’s actually going on in the primary electorate,” Blank said. “On the left, there’s this discussion about electability in Texas, and whether or not Crockett or Talarico would be more electable come November. Again, this is largely an elite discussion. Most voters are looking at the two candidates, looking at who they’re familiar with, looking at who they like more, and going in that direction.”

Blank noted that there’s a similar conversation happening among Republicans own primary, with many in the party’s base preferring state scandal-ridden Attorney General Ken Paxton, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump. Many conservative elites, however, have expressed a preference for Sen. John Cornyn, the incumbent Republican, given his past performance in Texas elections.

The Texas Politics Project’s most recent survey, conducted between Feb. 2 and 16, is evidence of some conflict between party elites and primary voters on the Democratic side, with Crockett leading Talarico by 12 points.

Diving deeper into the results, it looks like this is simply due to her higher favorability and name recognition among Democrats, with 71% of respondents who identify as Democrats holding a favorable opinion of Crockett, compared to just 59% for Talarico.

Blank attributes this in part to Talarico’s personal political brand, which includes embracing Christianity. A Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico has honed an ability to use religious language to defend liberal policies, which has made him a darling of the chattering classes. Blank, however, says that there’s not necessarily “a huge desire among Democratic voters to instill more Christianity into their politics.”

“The conversation going on at elite levels is about electability in November. Expecting that that’s the way that voters are thinking about this is asking too much of most voters,” Blank said. “The discontinuity that I think people are not appreciating as much outside of the state is that the Talarico argument and the Cornyn argument are very elite-driven arguments about eligibility.”

Blank also said that the race has not been nearly as contentious as it’s been portrayed in the national media, with both candidates receiving significant attention in the national press for comments that Blank says have been largely inconsequential.

Shortly after she entered the race, Crockett faced backlash for a year-old comment comparing the mindset of Latino Trump supporters to a “slave mentality.” Crockett later said that she “did not say that every Latino has that type of mentality,” to CNN.

Talarico also faced backlash for allegedly calling a former opponent, Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, a “mediocre Black man,” an allegation which Talarico’s campaign says is inaccurate, with Talarico maintaining that he was saying that Allred was a mediocre candidate. Blank said that both of these moments, which have gained outsized national media attention, paint the picture of a more negative primary campaign than the one that has actually played out.

Brannon Miller, a pollster with Chism Strategies, described a different picture of the race in an interview with Salon, saying that there are more swing voters in primaries and that in the final days of the campaign, these voters seem to be swinging for Talarico.

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“A lot has really changed in the last few weeks, and part of that is the unsettled nature of the primary, but there’s just been a couple of weeks of really good news cycles for Talarico,” Miller said.

He said that he believes his poll, which was conducted on Feb. 23 and 24, is picking up last-minute shifts in the race created by national news events, like CBS allegedly pulling an interview with Talarico on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” and the subsequent virality of that same interview, which has racked up more than 9 million views since its release in mid-February. CBS denies forbidding Colbert from running the interview, saying that it instead advised that running the interview might trigger FCC’s equal time rule, and force the program to have on Talarico’s opponents.

Either way, the issue played out favorably for Talarico, and the Chism Strategies survey found that in the Democratic primary, Talarico leads Crockett by 12 points. Crockett called the CBS debacle at the time a “boost” for Talarico.

Miller also noted that, despite the theory that Talarico may be able to appeal to religious independents and some Republicans, there is some evidence that his religiosity isn’t what’s powering his campaign.

“Talarico actually does worse with Democrat primary voters who attend church or religious service at least once a week. The most religious Democrats were actually the strongest Jasmine Crockett supporters, and that’s because that group is much more composed of voters of color, in particular African American voters,” Miller said. “There is a perception of Talarico, which I don’t know is entirely warranted, that his religious rhetoric can appeal to conservative or moderate religious voters who typically vote Republican.”

Crockett’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post How the Texas primary could rewrite the Democrat’s campaign playbook appeared first on Salon.com.