Texas Democrats Are Dreaming Again: Talarico Leads Most Polls, Hinojosa Trails Abbott by a Few Points, and 1994 Is the Drought on the Line
Reuters found a Democratic Party contesting every race in Texas for the first time since 1972 - and a Republican Party answering with $300 million, the fundamentals, and three decades of history.
FORT WORTH - Texas has been the Democratic Party's great, unrealized hope for three decades, and on the eve of a midterm that could decide control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats are dreaming again, Reuters reported Friday. Most polls show state Rep. James Talarico, 37, narrowly ahead of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Senate race, while state Rep. Gina Hinojosa trails three-term Gov. Greg Abbott by just a few points in the governor's race.
The stakes are written in one date: 1994, the last year a Democrat won statewide office in Texas - the longest drought in the nation. 'This is the most competitive election between the parties that we have seen here since the early stages of Republican hegemony,' said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. 'If Talarico or Hinojosa win, it's a political earthquake.' For the first time since 1972, Democrats are contesting every state and federal race in Texas.
Reuters' reporting, drawn from more than 40 interviews, found three potential cracks in the Republican coalition: Latino voters jolted by the Trump administration's immigration raids - among likely Latino voters, UT polling shows Talarico leading 54 to 41 and Hinojosa 56 to 42, and about 1.56 million Latinos had cast ballots by Wednesday, nearly double the same point in 2022 - conservative women uneasy about Paxton's alleged marital infidelity, and some Republican men squeezed by rising prices. Both campaigns have built their closings on those voters: Talarico and Hinojosa on the cost of living and billionaire influence - Elon Musk has poured nearly $160 million into Texas to buoy Paxton - and Republicans on culture-war issues and border security.
The Republican answer is fundamentals and money. About 49 percent of Texas voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party against 40 percent for Democrats, and Republicans have spent over $300 million on ads supporting Paxton against $102 million for Talarico, according to FEC data cited by Reuters. 'We're going to win, absolutely,' said Dave Carney, Abbott's chief strategist, describing a ground game peaking late by design. Tuesday decides which read of Texas was right.
