Month: March 2026

DALLAS — James Talarico is fond of saying that the “closest thing we have to the Kingdom of Heaven is a multiracial, multicultural democracy.” But Texas’ battle royale of a Democratic Senate primary feels far from heaven.

Talarico, a white state representative, is facing off with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who is Black, in a contest that’s turned increasingly bitter. It has ignited a fierce intraparty debate — with racial overtones — about what type of candidate Democrats need to nominate to win in tough places as they look to rebuild the racially diverse coalition that President Donald Trump shattered with his 2024 victory.

“Neither candidate can afford to crack Democrats’ multiracial coalition, and each candidate is going to have to work really, really hard to build, maintain and hold that coalition if they want to have any opportunity in a general election,” said Jeff Rotkoff, a veteran Texas Democratic strategist who is neutral in the race. “It is clear that from the math, in order to win Texas, you need to try to get everything right.”

In a state like Texas, Democrats will need every vote. They are desperate to win statewide after three decades of losses and fear that they could blow it this year when the environment feels riper than ever. Trump’s low approval ratings, especially with the young, Hispanic and Black voters he made strong gains with two years ago, gives them hope that flipping the Senate seat is within reach. So does the likelihood that scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton will win the GOP nomination.

The race has been fought much more over candidate style than any ideological or policy differences. Crockett, a political firebrand who spars regularly with Republicans, is focused more on turning out progressive, Black and Hispanic voters in record numbers. Talarico, a seminarian fond of quoting Jesus and the lyrics of John Prine, is pursuing a more big-tent approach that welcomes moderate Republicans and independents exhausted by abrasive GOP tactics. Those stylistic differences have led to questions from some Talarico allies about whether a candidate like Crockett can win a general election — and charges from Crockett’s supporters that those questions themselves may be racist.

Crockett famously responded to then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) saying her fake eyelashes interfered with her reading ability, a comment she and others viewed as racist, in a committee hearing by slamming her “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body.” She’s also mocked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, as “governor hot wheels.”

Prominent Democrats have cautioned that her pugilistic rhetoric could be a problem in the red-leaning state. Democratic strategist James Carville warned last month on his podcast, for instance, that “anybody that has any sense of humanity” would find her Abbott remark offensive (though the governor himself has embraced it, putting on a campaign bumper sticker).

The debate over whether those are real concerns or coded racism has been a hot topic among the hyper-online, drawing in prominent figures within the party and pitting Talarico and Crockett’s supporters against each other in emotional fights on social media.

Crockett’s supporters see the electability conversation as a racist and sexist dog whistle that white male candidates like Talarico never have to engage with.

“Electability is rooted in racism,” said E.J. Carrion, a Fort Worth political activist and Crockett supporter. “James [Talarico] is less threatening to people, and I think if just those people who say that actually voted for the most qualified candidate, you wouldn’t have a problem.”

The first major dustup happened in January, when the hosts of the popular podcast “Las Culturistas” urged people not to send money to Crockett because she had a history of “making it too obviously about” herself rather than the voters, a comment that hosts Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang later apologized for after a furious online response from Crockett supporters who accused them of being racist and sexist.

Tensions ratcheted up further when an influenceraccused Talarico of referring to Rep. Colin Allred as “mediocre Black man” in a private conversation. Allred, who dropped out of the Senate primary the day Crockett announced, took to Instagram to lambast Talarico for the alleged remarks, further heightening the situation.

Talarico defended himself by saying his comment was referring not to Allred’s race but to the quality of his campaign efforts against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2024.

Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who is Black, said the Allred video “certainly didn’t help and it’s hard to measure how much it hurt, but I’m sure it hurts” Talarico’s standing with Black voters.

“I suspect he took it as a wake up call, and probably had to start spending more money and spending more time, and will probably be a lot more cautious,” said Ellis, a Houston power broker who endorsed Crockett.

Their primary has shown a sharp divide in support from different demographics, a sign both candidates have serious work to do if they win the nomination.

According to most polls of the race, Talarico pulls in the most white and Hispanic voters, while Crockett draws the vast majority of Black support. Polls show a mixed picture of who leads the primary. There has been little nonpartisan public polling for the general election. Talarico has polled a bit better than Crockett against their likely GOP foes in some surveys — but she appears competitive as well, especially against Paxton.

Talarico has been working hard to make inroads with Black and Hispanic voters. At a recent Dallas rally, he was introduced by Carlos Eduardo Espina, a Hispanic content creator with 14 million TikTok followers. The crowd was largely white and Hispanic.

Talarico acknowledged the current limitations of his coalition.

“We’re trying to build that, and we will build that for the general election,” Talarico said in an interview with POLITICO, as a stream of young voters waited in a snaking line to snap a photo with the candidate. “I completely understand if I’m not Black Texans’ first choice in this race, but I would love to be their close second choice. And what we’ve seen in our polling is that my approval rating among Black Texans has continued to rise: It’s at the highest point it’s ever been. They may not vote for me in this race, and that’s quite alright. I’m competing for their votes.”

He added, “But if I don’t get it in this race, I’ll hope to have it in the general election.”

For her part, polls indicate Crockett has struggled to win over many Hispanic voters, and she has faced criticism for stating in a 2024 interview that Latinos who support Trump’s immigration policies exhibit a self-hating “slave mentality.” She also said on CNN in December it’s not her goal to win over all of Trump’s supporters.

At a rally in a downtown Houston beer garden last Saturday, speaking to a crowd of mostly Black supporters and elected officials, Crockett took a jab at Talarico over his thin resume, a common attack line from her campaign in its final stretch.

“Some people say, ‘Listen, there’s no way that Texas will support a Black woman,” she said. “We are a majority-minority state, we can start there. The reality is that I didn’t run because I was a woman. I ran because I’m qualified. At the end of the day. I just happened to be Black and woman, but I am the most qualified person in this. Period.”

Crockett declined an interview for this piece. In a statement, a campaign spokesperson said that Crockett “has a broad coalition of support across demographics and is leading with key constituencies that are critical to rebuilding the winning Democratic coalition.”

“Congresswoman Crockett has built strong relations and rapport with voters across Texas long before entering this race, which is why she has such strong support and is able to energize turnout,” Crockett spokesperson Karrol Rimal said.

Asked whether he thought the concept of electability had functioned as a dog whistle in the race, Talarico said: “I guess it can be. I believe Black women are electable.”

When asked why he thought he was more electable than Crockett, Talarico said he was “concerned” when Crockett said she didn’t have to win over any Trump voters.

“I’m the only candidate in the race who has competed in a tough general election. I got elected to the statehouse by flipping a Trump district, and I held onto it after millions of dollars were spent against me, and it’s because I was able to build a big tent, a big coalition,” he said.

But he said that he thought Crockett could also win the general election — and promised he would campaign for her should she win the primary. A spokesperson for Crockett said the congresswoman has expressed she would “absolutely” support Talarico.

His team argues that the contest isn’t about the candidates’ own race and gender but about how well they can build out the diverse coalition necessary to win.

“It starts from a racial profile of one being a white candidate and one being a Black candidate, but then there’s also a difference in the philosophy, and who can actually connect with this new swing vote in Texas,” said Chuck Rocha, a 36-year veteran of Texas and Hispanic Democratic politics and a senior adviser to Talarico. “It’s not about James maximizing the white vote or Jasmine maximizing the Black vote to win a general. It’s about running a campaign that reaches across racial lines.”

Crockett is betting that she can turn out those Black and Hispanic voters who rarely show up in primaries in historic numbers. It will test whether she can translate the cultural status she earned by attacking Republicans into a surge at the ballot box. She’s running ads on BET, bar-hopping in Houston and holding rallies with prominent Black leaders. She campaigned in the Hispanic-heavy Rio Grande Valley on Thursday. Crockett’s campaign materials focus heavily on depicting her as the toughest fighter against Trump.

Her turnout operation also leans on the political power of Black churches. At a breakfast with Black faith leaders in Houston last week, Crockett walked a room full of pastors through how they could guide their congregations in the voting process. “We need you to make sure that you emphasize the importance of this election,” she told them.

Beyond the pews and in the streets, grassroots groups like Texas Organizing Project PAC are deploying members on Crockett’s behalf across major cities with a canvassing plan focused on connecting with Black and Latino voters. TOP helped Crockett get elected to the state House in 2020 in a primary she won by 90 votes, and for this primary they set a goal of knocking on 82,000 doors.

“Our theory of change in the state of Texas is that if we expand the electorate enough, driven by Black and Latino voters, we can win statewide office and we do that starting in cities and counties,” said Brianna Brown, co-executive director of TOP. “A lot of the Black folks we’re talking to at the doors, especially older Black women, are just excited about the idea that who they are is reflected back to them on a ballot and the years that they’ve waited.”

The primary is a significant test of old assumptions about the increasingly swingy Latino vote, said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump GOP consultant and founder of the Latino Working Class Project who is neutral in the race.

“If Latino voters do break towards Crockett, then there is some evidence there’s a solidarity between voters of color, and that has been the orthodoxy of the Democratic Party for the past three decades,” Madrid said. “If Talarico wins, and if he wins by a good measurable margin, then I think that we will probably be able to finally put that to bed.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misspelled Karrol Rimal’s name and misstated the name of the Texas Organizing Project PAC.

​Politics

Four years ago, Valerie Foushee’s support of Israel helped get her to Congress. On Tuesday, it could send her home.

The politics surrounding Israel have shifted so much since the war in Gaza began in 2023 that a candidate who benefited from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spending more than $2 million to shore up her 2022 primary win has now disavowed the group entirely. Now, Foushee has spent her reelection bid fending off well-funded attacks from the left over her former ties to the group.

And that was before this weekend’s joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran cast an even brighter spotlight on the issue.

Foushee is locked in a tight and expensive rematch of her 2022 race with Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, a Bernie Sanders-backed progressive who is the first Muslim woman to hold political office in the state. This time, Allam is backed by heavy spending from a coalition of groups, led by a new super PAC founded to counter AIPAC’s influence, and supporters of both candidates say the race is vanishingly tight.

The election is being fought over a whole slew of issues and interests, including cryptocurrency and AI, but it’s Israel as a political issue that has fueled the big spending against Foushee. The new anti-AIPAC group, American Priorities PAC, is the single largest advertising spender in the race, and it makes up the majority of pro-Allam advertising spending. And Allam and her allies have leaned into the topic: Every single ad supporting her over the last week has mentioned AIPAC.

The joint attack on Iran has pushed the U.S.-Israel relationship into the headlines again in the final days of the primary — and Allam has jumped on the topic.

“Trump’s illegal and reckless war will inevitably be on voters’ minds as they head to the ballot box on Tuesday. They are ready to hold every leader who co-signed a blank check to the Israeli war hawks accountable — including my opponent,” Allam said in a statement to POLITICO after the attack.

Foushee has also been sharply critical of Trump’s attacks on Iran, promising to do everything she could to stop Trump’s “illegal war with Iran.” She also defended her views on Israel again in the wake of the Iran strikes, emphasizing that she broke with AIPAC last summer during a town hall and urging voters to “check my voting record to see how I have voted and what I have voted for as it relates to the people of Gaza.”

“My voting record and support for legislation to stop arms sales to Israel speaks for itself. It is clear to me and my constituents that the Netanyahu government’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians cannot continue,” Foushee said in a statement, highlighting her votes against military aid to Israel and her refusal to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in 2024. That came after she was part of an AIPAC-organized trip to meet Netanyahu in March of 2024, something her opponent has mentioned repeatedly on the campaign trail.

It’s the latest flashpoint in a primary that’s been consumed by nearly all the tensions rippling through the Democratic Party — generational change versus institutional experience, the U.S.-Israel relationship, battles over Big Tech, the influence of dark money, Black leadership in the party.

The primary results from the safe-blue chunk in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, coming Tuesday, could yield early clues for the rest of a chaotic and crowded primary season for a party still finding its way out of the political wilderness.

“It’s establishment versus upstart … it’s a debate about style versus substance,” said North Carolina Democratic state Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, who has endorsed Foushee in the primary, adding that the results “could provide a peek into what the 2026 primaries and the 2028 presidential nomination fight might look like.”

The race has attracted more than $3 million in outside spending, part of an explosion of money that special interests from crypto and AI-backed super PACs to pro-Israel groups are dumping into Democratic primaries across the country, looking to shape the internal politics of the party.

Foushee has the backing of a mysterious pop-up super PAC and one aligned with the AI company Anthropic, which together have spent more than $1.1 million on ads boosting her campaign.

Foushee, a former state legislator, is endorsed by dozens of elected Democrats in the state, including Gov. Josh Stein, as well as the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The 69-year-old sophomore lawmaker, facing an opponent less than half her age, pushed back on the idea that the seat needed a younger face.

“I think the American people are looking for strong leaders, and I don’t think that they’re attaching a generation to it,” she said in an interview.

Allam is a 32-year-old savvy social media campaigner who worked on Sen. Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. She has argued Democrats must be more forceful in attacking Trump over his immigration crackdowns, which included the Raleigh-Durham area last fall.

Democratic voters in 2026 want to “use the leverage that a safe blue seat has to put up the strongest fight against right wing extremism,” she said in an interview.

The multi-candidate primary in 2022 drew nearly $4 million in outside spending, a record for a single North Carolina congressional primary at the time. Foushee was the primary beneficiary of that cash, with help from both AIPAC and a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC funded by Sam Bankman-Fried, and she defeated Allam by nine points.

The outside spending landscape has shifted this year.

Allam initially benefited from the lion’s share, with American Priorities PAC’s $1 million supplemented by $400,000 in spending from David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve, a group focused on electing generational change candidates, and a smaller sum from the left-leaning Justice Democrats.

That left the incumbent heavily outspent, since Foushee’s biggest 2022 backers stayed out this year: Bankman-Fried is currently serving time in federal prison for fraud and AIPAC is staying out after Foushee disavowed them.

“Rep. Foushee rejected AIPAC support and we are not involved in or participating in any way in this race,” Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, told POLITICO.

But a pair of super PACs have popped up in the last two weeks to back Foushee, helping even the scales. Jobs and Democracy PAC, the Anthropic-aligned super PAC is spending nearly $1 million to boost her in the final days, while Article One PAC — the new group whose funding will not be disclosed until after the primary — has spent about $300,000.

“The establishment at the last minute is panicking and throwing in millions of dollars when the cake is baked,” Hogg said.

Allam and her allies are attacking Foushee over her backers. Sanders (I-Vt.) says in an Allam campaign ad that she is the only candidate with “the courage to take on all of these special interest groups who think they can buy American democracy.”

In a video posted to Instagram, Foushee said there has been a lot of “misinformation” surrounding her position on data centers and that she does not support one being built “in the heart of our district.” Still, she said she trusts local leaders to make the final decision.

But progressives are still attacking Foushee’s credentials, and hoping to make her an example of what’s to come.

“This primary is a massive signal to the Democratic establishment and their corporate backers that Democratic voters are fed up with feckless leadership that fails to meet this moment,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi.

Some establishment Democrats believe targeting a Black woman is the opposite of what the party needs.

“For Justice Democrats to target an African-American female, is just, is disappointing, very, very, very disappointing,” said former Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.).

Butterfield said it “is important to reelect Valerie, not just because she’s an African-American female, but because she’s getting the job done.” But he acknowledged that “there is an element within the fourth district that just wants change.”

CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to clarify that American Priorities PAC is the largest spender on advertising in the primary.​Politics