Category: Politics

Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton advanced to a runoff in the Senate GOP primary, extending an already-bruising fight into late May that some Republicans worry could hurt their chances of holding onto the seat — and the Senate.

Tuesday night’s result showed some surprising strength for Cornyn, who had trailed Paxton in most public polls and whose allies were worried might finish far behind the MAGA firebrand. And it indicates the four-term senator still has a real chance to retain his seat in late May.

National Republicans widely expected the runoff when Rep. Wesley Hunt, who finished third, jumped into the race last fall. But while Cornyn is still in the battle, saving him will continue to be an expensive endeavor — and one that risks further damaging Paxton, who could still be their nominee.

The senator and his allies already spent more than $100 million to defeat Paxton, highlighting his political and personal baggage, like his recent divorce, accusations of infidelity, ethics complaints and impeachment proceedings.

Paxton brings huge support from the hyper-conservative grassroots – a devoted following derived from his decade serving as Texas’ top lawyer. He has long been closely aligned with President Donald Trump, supporting his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Trump has not yet endorsed in the race.

Democrats believe they have a shot at flipping Texas after decades of falling short, bolstered by a wave of enthusiasm within the party and backlash to the Trump administration over its immigration and economic policies. They’re hoping that the scandal-plagued Paxton emerges victorious from the runoff and gives them a better opening to entice moderate Republicans and independents.

But Cornyn showed Tuesday that he still has some fight left in him.

​Politics

Rep. Chip Roy will advance to a runoff in the race to replace Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

He will face state Sen. Mayes Middleton, who led Roy by a double-digit margin with three-fifths of the vote counted.

The competitive primary turned into a fealty test to President Donald Trump. Reitz and Middleton slammed Roy for breaking with Trump in the past and calling for Attorney General Ken Paxton to resign after he faced charges of bribery and abuse, while brandishing their own MAGA bona fides.

Trump made no endorsement in the race.

Roy — the House Freedom Caucus policy chair who has represented Texas’ 21st congressional district since 2019 — earned a reputation in Congress as a true conservative ideologue. He has led in polling and fundraising and has been endorsed by well-known conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and fellow Freedom Caucus representatives.

But Mayes’ apparent first-place finish indicates that he begins the runoff as the favorite. It remains to be seen what the president, who once called for Roy to face a primary challenge, might do in the runoff.

​Politics

Israel, after a long, devastating war in Gaza, has become so unpopular among many voters in the Democratic base that major candidates in top primaries are using even small connections to the country’s political leaders to hit their opponents.

One Illinois Democratic operative involved in this year’s primaries has dredged up a 2019 trip that Illinois U.S. Senate candidate Juliana Stratton took to Israel to meet with the then-leader of the Israeli opposition Tzipi Livni. The operative, who was granted anonymity because they feared getting blacklisted from future political campaigns, went even further back citing a decade-old plus arrest warrant a British court issued related to a weeks-long conflict with Gaza that started in December 2008. And one of Stratton’s opponents has gone on the record criticizing the trip.

Livni, of course, is one of Netanyahu’s top critics and is solidly on the left in Israel. She is a vocal advocate of a Palestinian state aside a secure Israel despite support for a two-state solution in Israel falling precipitously in recent years. And she has met with numerous Democratic politicians over the years, including Joe Biden in 2010, Barack Obama in 2013 and a congressional delegation led by Nancy Pelosi in 2018.

Despite that record, Illinois Senate primary opponent Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) said that Stratton’s 2019 meeting with Livni raises questions about her leadership.

“Illinois voters believe that judgement matters,” she said in a statement to POLITICO when asked about Stratton’s Livni meeting. “Juliana Stratton owes them an explanation.”

Kelly sees her stance on Livni as one of her progressive bona fides.

“When I first ran for office I made a promise that nothing would compromise my ability to look myself in the mirror each day, and I’ve spent my career standing up and speaking out against injustice,” she said. “I’m the only candidate to call what happened in Gaza a genocide, reject AIPAC money, and refuse ICE-contractor cash.”

Kelly’s views on Israel’s conduct in Gaza have also shifted since she entered the Senate race in May. Kelly and Stratton, who is backed by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, are facing Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the frontrunner in the March 17 primary. Less than a year ago, Kelly even accepted donations from pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, and she’s been to Israel numerous times as part of congressional trips. In January, Kelly said she wouldn’t take AIPAC money again.

Even tangential ties to the longtime U.S. ally are likely to become campaign issues across the country as the conflict with Iran intensifies into a regional conflagration. All three candidates following the strikes on Iran were quick to condemn the joint U.S.-Israeli action, citing what they believed was Trump’s overreach and swift action without congressional approval. Other Democrats have voiced concern that Trump’s decision could plunge the U.S. into another protracted war in the Middle East.

A Gallup poll released Friday found that around two-thirds of Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians with only around 20 percent saying they are aligned with Israelis, down from half of Democrats being pro-Israel in 2016. Nearly 50 percent of Democrats even had an unfavorable view of the Israeli people, while the same amount had a favorable view, according to a Pew poll taken in September.

Stratton is not the only Democratic candidate who has been criticized by rivals for ties to Israel. In the Michigan Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed has blasted rival Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) for being a vocal advocate of Israel and protesters have shown up to her office to denounce donations she’s received from AIPAC. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), whose Senate primary is Tuesday, has also been forced to defend herself for voting to fund defensive weapons for Israel.

Stratton, the current lieutenant governor of Illinois, went to Israel as part of the “2019 Influential Women in Leadership Delegation” organized by the America-Israel Friendship League and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A video from the organization shows her meeting with Livni, the former vice prime minister and foreign affairs minister.

In 2009, a British court issued an arrest warrant for Livni over accusations of war crimes in Gaza for her role during Operation Cast Lead. She was a member of the Israeli war cabinet during the conflict, which Palestinian authorities and an Israeli human rights organization said killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians.

She was supposed to give a speech in London at the time but later cancelled her trip. The warrant was withdrawn after the court found out that she wasn’t in the U.K. and the British government formally apologized to her for the arrest warrant.

She also had told Palestinian counterparts in 2007 during negotiations that even though she was the justice minister, “I am against law – international law in particular” and that “Palestinians don’t really need international law.”

Livni’s office has said she was “proud of all her decisions regarding Operation Cast Lead” and that the conflict achieved its objectives to protect Israel and restore Israel’s deterrence from Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza.

The America-Israel Friendship League, the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry and Livni didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Although Israel has yet to become a leading issue in the campaign, at a recent debate Stratton said she wanted to “see the suffering end” in the region and said that Netanyahu should step down.

Asked about the trip, a Stratton campaign spokesperson said in an email that the Livni meeting was “a group meeting that took place on a delegation trip promoting women in leadership coordinated by a third party – Juliana did not arrange the meeting and was one of several participants.” The spokesperson reiterated that she supports a two-state solution and “wants to see lasting peace in the region.”

This reporting first appeared in Illinois Playbook. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every weekday.

​Politics

On Jan. 6, 2021, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared to a raucous crowd of President Donald Trump’s supporters, many of whom were moments away from storming the U.S. Capitol: “We will not quit fighting.”

Five years later, Paxton’s fighting spirit has him poised to unseat a 24-year incumbent.

It’s been a steady journey. As Texas’ top lawyer, Paxton became a hero of the far right by using rapid-fire lawsuits to spearhead their most important causes, from expanding religious influence in schools to attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He presented himself as a foil to the Obama and Biden administrations, filing more than 100 lawsuits over issues like immigration and environmental regulations. And he continues to steer the power of his office toward investigating alleged election irregularities, particularly in Democratic-led cities like Houston.

On Tuesday, the MAGA grassroots that fueled his rise will reach its apex of influence so far: Paxton is well-positioned to finish first against John Cornyn in the GOP primary for his Senate seat, despite being saddled with tons of political baggage and targeted by millions of dollars in attack ads.

The bare-knuckle Senate primary is likely headed to a runoff, dragging out the party’s own angst over generational change.

For the far-right in Texas, Paxton’s arc shows the ascendent strength of their movement, which has pushed Republican leaders toward adopting increasingly conservative positions. For Cornyn, it means the potential end of his long career in the Senate, and the near-extinction of establishment Republicans within the party.

“Ken Paxton is more than just an attorney general that’s been MAGA. He is a symbol of the heart of the grassroots MAGA movement,” said Steve Bannon, the former senior adviser to Trump and War Room host who has been broadcasting his popular show from a rented ranch in North Texas in the days leading up to the election.

“He’s resilient because folks here know he has fought the good fight for years and years and years,” Bannon said. “He has resilience because people know where his heart is, and he’s a fighter.”

Cornyn is in serious trouble

The MAGA movement is tenacious in protecting its own and knifing its Republican rivals. Paxton has survived an impeachment by the GOP-controlled state House, a federal securities fraud investigation and slew of ethics complaints. Three months after beginning his Senate campaign last year, Paxton’s wife filed for divorce, alleging an extramarital affair. His competitors — including Cornyn, who has said Paxton is too unethical to serve in public office — have hammered his trail of scandals.

And still he’s the front-runner.

Paxton has continued to lead in polling — from even before he launched — despite a concerted effort by Republicans in Washington to boost Cornyn.

“Ideally you want a saint to be your elected leader, and that is something we all hope and pray for one of these days,” said Bo French, former chair of the Tarrant County Republican party, who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. “But until that happens, we need people who are going to be warriors for the cause. And he is seen and beloved among Republican primary voters in Texas as a warrior.”

Cornyn knows the strong headwinds he’s facing, conceding that the composition of primary voters doesn’t reflect his usual base of support. Many Texas Republicans remain angry with the senator for voting in favor of a bipartisan gun control package after the Uvalde school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead. Cornyn was famously booed onstage at the Texas GOP convention in 2022.

“If only the most radical people show up in the primary … then I think that’s going to be a challenge,” Cornyn said in an interview Saturday with CBS. His other primary opponent, Rep. Wesley Hunt, who is also running a campaign appealing to the far right, said on X that Cornyn’s comments show he has “lost touch with the people you’re supposed to represent” and “your contempt for the voters of Texas is exactly why your career is coming to an end.”

Trump has not endorsed in the race, throwing a wrench into any MAGA pickup Cornyn could get — or that could put Paxton over the line. At an event in Corpus Christi last week, Trump said he had “pretty much” decided who to support, but did not reveal that pick.

Democrats believe Paxton’s baggage makes him beatable in the general election, a view shared by many national Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who is working to keep Cornyn in the GOP caucus.

Kendall Scudder, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, said Paxton jeopardizes Republicans at every level of the ticket. “Every one of these top-tier Republicans in the state is wildly unpopular, and they’ll be led by Ken Paxton,” he said. “That’s what puts a lot of these different seats in interesting hands.”

The MAGA vs. establishment fight has been years in the making

Paxton has endured years of legal and personal scrutiny. He also kept winning.

Texas Republicans have repeatedly reelected both Cornyn to the Senate and Paxton as attorney general, backing the leaders of both wings of the party. But recent elections have shown the growing strength of the MAGA faction.

Paxton’s reelections have been aided by the deep coffers of Texas megadonors like Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers in addition to his hyper-conservative supporters. In 2022, he was challenged by Land Commissioner George P. Bush — the relative of former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Bush tried to sell conservative voters on his vision to restore integrity to the attorney general’s office at a time when Paxton was facing years of securities fraud investigations and bribery allegations. It’s a playbook Paxton allies say Cornyn is reusing.

Voters seemed to prefer Paxton’s combative style. Paxton thumped Bush by a two-to-one margin in that year’s run-off, the clearest sign yet that voters were siding with the MAGA wing and rejecting the old-school establishment.

In 2022, Paxton agreed to pay restitution and perform community service to settle the securities fraud case, which was brought over allegations that he duped investors in a tech startup. The Justice Department, in the final weeks of the Biden administration, decided not to prosecute Paxton over the remaining bribery charges. That eventually led the GOP-heavy Texas House to impeach him before the Senate voted to acquit.

As scrutiny over Paxton intensified within the Texas Republican Party, he cast himself as a martyr, a victim of spurious probes that not only threatened him, but also the integrity of the MAGA base. For the far-right, Paxton’s impeachment acquittal only further strengthened his parallels to Trump.

The onslaught energized his supporters. State Rep. Gary Gates, a Republican, learned that firsthand when he publicly recanted his vote to impeach Paxton after dealing with blowback from the base.

“There was a certain faction of those that support him that were rather upset,” said Gates, who represents a suburban district outside of Houston. “You have to deal with that political reality.”

Paxton often brags that he was one of the few Republicans to attend Trump’s campaign launch at Mar-A-Lago in 2022, when many in the party had abandoned him following the violent insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.

“When you try to take out somebody like those two guys who have fought for our values, and the whole world is weaponized against them, the people are ride-or-die,” said Aaron Reitz, a former deputy in Paxton’s office who, with his backing, is running to succeed him.

“I hope that the establishment wing of the GOP would learn a similar lesson when they have tried to take out Trump, which is they are not in control of this party,” Reitz said. “The grassroots, the people, are in control of the party, and they have to stop spending their millions.”

How Paxton got here

Paxton’s deep base of support is built in part from his lawsuits against frequent targets of the right — high-profile cases that were splashed on the front pages of local newspapers from Beaumont to Amarillo. Throughout his decade as Texas’ top lawyer, Paxton oversaw the Lone Star State’s transformation into an incubator for ultra conservatives issues, from defending abortion restrictions to warning that Muslims will attempt to introduce Islamic law in Texas.

At a recent campaign event in the Houston suburbs as early voting was underway, Paxton ticked off his courtroom successes to a group gathered at a “safari ranch” in Richmond with roaming peacocks, zebras and goats.

Paxton, speaking to the crowd of about 75 supporters, recounted the beginning of his career, starting with when he decided to run for attorney general during his first term in the state legislature because he viewed former President Barack Obama as “a really epic threat” who relied excessively on executive orders to bypass Congress.

In his first AG race, Paxton rode the wave of the Tea Party insurgency to topple an establishment Republican backed by former President George W. Bush. Paxton told the audience, to chuckles, that he sued Obama 27 times in the 22 months they overlapped.

After Obama left office and Trump took his place, Paxton turned his sights away from the White House and toward Silicon Valley. He sued Google (“who was doing really bad things”), Facebook (“we got a lot of money from them”), Twitter (“before Elon”) and Pfizer (“they lied about the vaccine”).

Then Paxton became fixated on probing voter fraud allegations, making him an instrumental figure in Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. He even filed a case directly with the Supreme Court seeking to invalidate election results in Pennsylvania and other battleground states — though the justices rejected his attempt, ruling Texas did not have standing.

When Joe Biden was sworn in, Paxton picked back up his onslaught against the federal government. Then Trump was reelected in 2024, Paxton said, and he “felt like I didn’t have a mission. I’d done my three different missions. I felt like 12 years was enough.”

“And I looked around,” Paxton told the crowd, “and I saw a guy: John Cornyn.”

Adam Wren contributed reporting.

​Politics

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Hours after the American military strikes in Iran started, Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett scrambled to write up a presentation on how centrist Democrats should talk about foreign policy in 2028.

On stage during Third Way’s “Winning the Middle” conference, Bennett described focus groups before the war in Iran started, where “the appetite for ongoing war among the voters we talked to was zero.”

Even though Americans usually default to Republicans on national security, they’re concerned about President Donald Trump’s “erratic” and “unstable” foreign policy, he told a crowd of early-state strategists, Democratic consultants and aides for prominent moderates and 2028 contenders. That, he added, gives Democrats the opening they need to win.

“Voters are going to ask, ‘who can steady the ship? Who’s going to avoid another endless war? Will we demand fairness from our allies?’” Bennett said during his presentation. “You must be decisive and you must be clear that American self-interest will drive your foreign policy.”

The American strikes in Iran reverberated through what was meant to be a domestic-focused conference on Monday, as the party starts to grapple with how to respond to a military maneuver that could become a flashpoint in the midterms. So far, Democrats have been largely united in attacking Trump for authorizing the attacks without Congress’ approval — or a clear exit strategy.

It’s a notable departure for moderates, some of whom backed the Iraq War in 2003, including then-Sen. Hillary Clinton. Her vote, and then-state Sen. Barack Obama’s opposition to the war, would define much of the 2008 presidential primary.

“Democrats don’t want a replay of the Iraq War and they are heeding the calls of the American people to focus on issues here at home,” Doug Thornell, a Democratic strategist who advised Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s campaign, said at the conference in an interview. “This administration has done very little to make the case that this is something worth the blood and treasure of the United States.”

There’s early evidence voters broadly disapprove of the Iran strikes: A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only one in four Americans support Trump’s decision — a data point that zinged around Democrats’ group chats during the afternoon’s presentations.

Mentions of Iran were limited during the conference’s panels, which drilled in on domestic issues: “‘Affordability’: Buzzword or Breakthrough,” and “Elevating Moderate Voices Online.” But within minutes of kicking off the event Sunday night, Third Way president Jon Cowan addressed the war.

“You can hate the regime in Iran and you can celebrate their downfall, but you can also have legitimate skepticism about the war because you can have doubts about Trump’s truthiness,” he said.

Online and in TV interviews, some fractures have begun to emerge.

Several progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have pushed for an immediate end to the war. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who is running for governor, called for “values-based arguments against war with Iran,” and “NOT process (‘Come to Congress’) ones,” in an X post on Saturday. That’s an apparent reference to Democrats like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffriees and battleground lawmakers who’ve taken a more measured response.

Jeffries, in his initial statement, condemned Trump for failing to seek congressional authorization and called for Iran to be “aggressively confronted.” Jeffries said Monday morning on CNN that “nothing has been presented to justify what’s taken place up until this point.”

“The crutch that the moderate, corporate wing of the party is using is a process argument,” said Usamah Andrabi, Justice Democrats’ communications director. “It’s not just that Trump didn’t come to Congress first, we need to oppose this war no matter the process and Democratic leadership has not done that clearly enough.”

One adviser to a potential 2028 candidate, granted anonymity to speak candidly, defended the more nuanced approach from moderate Democrats as a reflection of “people’s understanding that just opposing every single thing that [Trump] does, from a foreign policy standpoint, just because it was him doing it, is not a sufficient approach.”

The two-day confab was primarily focused on doling out tough-love guidance to allies, consultants and early-state strategists, some of whom are aligned with centrist potential 2028 presidential candidates, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

With an eye toward 2028, Third Way’s senior vice president Lanae Erickson presented polling dataon Democratic primary voters. She said three-quarters prefer a candidate who compromises to achieve their goals and two-thirds worry that nominating someone too far left risks losing the general election.

“If we’re going to be the ‘abolish police,’ ‘abolish ICE,’ virtue-signaling party, I don’t care who they nominate, we’re going to lose,” said Jim Messina, who served as Barack Obama’s campaign manager. “We continue to want to be ideological purists at exactly the wrong time to do that.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misidentified Barack Obama’s title at the time of the Iraq War vote. He was a state senator.​Politics

The Democratic National Committee has decided against hosting a midterm convention, as the party faces a fundraising crunch.

The DNC also announced Monday that it would hold the 2028 presidential convention from Aug. 7 to Aug. 10, 2028. Five cities — Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia — are under consideration to host it, officials said.

The committee announced its decisions to DNC members during a phone call Monday afternoon, according to two people who participated and were granted anonymity to describe a private meeting. DNC Chair Ken Martin said he’d received feedback from Democrats, urging the party committee to focus its resources on campaign work in states, one of those people said.

The DNC is facing a staggering fundraising problem, with the Republican National Committee holding a $100 million cash edge over them at the start of 2026. Last fall, the DNC took out a $15 million loan to invest in the Virginia and New Jersey elections, a move that raised concerns among Democrats about the party’s financial health.

In a statement on the decision not to host a midterm convention, DNC’s executive director Roger Lau said they’d “baited” Republicans “into wasting time and money on a midterm convention,” while the DNC has “put resources where they’re needed most.”

Jessica Piper contributed to this report. 

​Politics

Americans broadly disapprove of the Trump administration’s military strikes on Iran, according to several polls conducted after the U.S. attacked Tehran early Saturday morning.

Nearly six in 10 Americans said they oppose the decision to take military action against the Middle Eastern country, according to a text poll conducted by SSRS for CNN on Saturday and Sunday. A separate SSRS poll, conducted via text message for The Washington Post, found that more than half of Americans disapprove of the strikes, with 52 percent opposing and 39 percent supporting.

The lack of public support for President Donald Trump’s decision to move forward with airstrikes comes as White House allies worry the move could throw the GOP’s fragile coalition into jeopardy ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. A POLITICO poll conducted in January, when the president was still weighing diplomatic and military options, found that nearly half of Americans opposed the possibility of military action in Iran.

Support for the attacks was largely split along partisan lines, with Democrats far more likely than Republicans to say they opposed Trump’s decision.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend, which closed before the U.S. military announced the first American casualties in the war, found that 55 percent of Republicans approved of the strikes — but 42 percent said they would be less likely to support the attacks if they resulted in American troops being harmed or killed.

The Washington Post poll also found that Americans varied widely in their impressions of the Trump administration’s primary goal in the conflict, with some respondents citing regime change and others pointing to oil or regional stability.

The administration has repeatedly said that the strikes were motivated by the goal to destroy Iran’s conventional and nuclear weapons programs — despite Trump’s insistence that the country’s nuclear capabilities were “totally obliterated” in limited airstrikes last year.

A majority of the people surveyed by CNN said they anticipate that a long-term military conflict between the U.S. and Iran is likely, a possibility Democrats are raising alarm about as they push for a vote on congressional war powers resolutions. Trump said Monday his administration had initially “projected four to five weeks” of conflict but had the capability to fight for longer, if necessary.

Support for the war also plummeted when Americans were posed with the possibility of gas prices rising due to the conflict. More than a third of Republicans polled by Reuters said they would be less likely to support continued attacks if oil or gas prices increased in the U.S., and 38 percent of registered voters polled by Morning Consult on Saturday said the U.S. should seek a diplomatic solution if the conflict leads to “significantly higher gas prices.”

That comes after oil prices jumped more than 10 percent Sunday after Tehran launched retaliatory attacks on several oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, which facilitates more than a fifth of the world’s waterborne crude oil transportation.

​Politics

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