The Dream of Blue Texas Rides Again

Eyes were trained on Texas last night, for the first elections of the 2026 midterm cycle. The results in two very competitive Senate primaries have major implications in the fight for control of the chamber this fall, as Benjamin Wallace-Wells details in a new piece out today. For the Democrats, James Talarico, a thirty-six-year-old state representative, who has drawn praise from figures as varied as Barack Obama and Joe Rogan, defeated Jasmine Crockett, a U.S. representative. On the Republican side, the incumbent, John Cornyn, and the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, are headed for what could be a bruising runoff in May. Will the right, directed by Trump, unite behind a candidate to keep things status quo in November? Or can Talarico pull off the ever elusive Blue Texas dream?

I reached out to Wallace-Wells to get some wider context on where the two parties stand right now.

Our interview has been edited and condensed.

It was a good night, as you say in your piece, for Talarico. Was it a good night for the Democrats over-all?

Yes. It’s been a pretty good few months for the Democrats. (Though a tough stretch for the country.) But, in Texas, where the Party hasn’t managed to elect a Democrat as governor or to the Senate in more than thirty years, it nominated its arguably stronger candidate for the general election, and slightly more people voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican one. I’d call that a good night.

One theory in Republican primaries is that the Trumpier candidate wins. But the President’s political ground has been a little shaky. What did last night’s results in Texas, North Carolina, and Arkansas show?

Not much yet! The public approval of Trump has been in pretty bad decline in the past year—on immigration, the economy, and now his alarming and underexplained war with Iran. But, within the G.O.P., no one has figured out a way to run other than in his shadow and by seeking his blessing. When Marjorie Taylor Greene broke with Trump this fall—a high-profile defection—she left elective office. The President’s unpopularity looks increasingly likely to cost the Party in November, but, so far, Republicans in these races are still running under the MAGA banner. What would cause them to break with Trump? It might take something as big as a war going badly. Speaking of which…

How might the gerrymandering gamesmanship between the parties play out in the fall?

The aggression with which both parties have worked to manipulate district lines—while loudly inveighing against the other party for doing the exact same thing—is cynical and depressing. There are vanishingly few districts that are genuinely up for grabs, and that means politicians from each party are increasingly insulated from public opinion and, therefore, from the effects of their policies. It’s a recipe for a lousier and less responsive politics.

But, basically, the fight has been a draw: the manipulations on both sides have balanced one another out. The main consequence may be that the party in power is a little slow to see a wave coming. In 2024, that was the Democrats. This time, it may be the Republicans.

Was there a surprise, an outlier, or a particular race that’s shaping your thinking about this political moment going forward?

I’m more interested in the emerging characters. Both parties are stuck in a position they’ve been in for most of a decade: Republicans in Trump’s thrall, and Democrats in anti-Trumpism. In less than a year, though, another Presidential campaign without an incumbent—the third this century—is going to begin, and maybe the parties will become unstuck.

Among the Democrats, Talarico and Senator Jon Ossoff, of Georgia, have made a mark of late, by combining a personal style that includes outreach to moderates with strong talk about the problem of billionaires—it’s Bernie Sanders’s themes in a bipartisan package.

The Republican dynamic looks more top-down right now, with J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio jockeying. (Vance seems to be trying to half-distance himself from Trump’s Iran gambit, while Rubio has been full-throated in his support.) In Texas, the runoff between Cornyn and Paxton could be nasty, featuring an enormous amount of money and, behind the scenes, two of the most powerful consultants on the center-right: Trump’s consigliere, Chris LaCivita, is helping to guide Cornyn’s campaign; and Jeff Roe, who has long been influential in Ron DeSantis’s orbit, is with Paxton. Whatever strategies right-wingers employ in the 2028 Presidential primaries might first be tested in this runoff. In other words, Texas is still the ultimate Republican laboratory.

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