Senate seat in Texas on Tuesday, defeating Republican Ken Paxton to pull off the first statewide victory in more than 30 years and sending a jolt through a longtime GOP stronghold that President Donald Trump carried by double digits just two years ago. Democrat James Talarico flipped a U.S.
The 37-year-old state legislator, former middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian will become Texas ’ first Democratic senator since 1993, laying bare how voter frustration midway through Trump’s second term imperiled Republicans deep inside typically safe turf. John Cornyn, 74, who lost a bruising GOP primary to the scandal-plagued Paxton, whose nomination bolstered Talarico’s appeal to Republican and independent voters. Track the 2026 US midterm election here .
The victory in US midterm elections is a rejection of Trump’s pick for the seat and threatens Republicans’ control of the Senate, where Democrats needed to gain four seats to retake the majority. Talarico will become the Senate’s youngest member and replace longtime Sen. The heated campaign in Texas, one of the most expensive of the midterms, became partly a referendum on Paxton’s legal, personal and ethical troubles that have shadowed much of his three terms as the state’s attorney general. That included a federal corruption investigation, which did not result in charges, and impeachment by his own party in the Texas House over accusations of abusing his office to help a political donor. He was later acquitted in the state Senate. Democrats have spent much of this century on a sputtering quest to win in Texas, and finally achieving victory could offer a roadmap in states where the party has struggled to compete. “is not left versus right, it’s top versus bottom. Rarely maligning the Republican Party as a whole, the Democrat, whose path to victory required converting GOP voters, focused on the top issue of a frustrated electorate: the rising cost of living.
Talarico found success in a campaign with scant partisanship, TikToks that racked up millions of views and a railing against billionaires he said were corrupting politics at the expense of everyday Americans — a target that included Elon Musk , the world’s richest person and a Texas resident, who spent heavily backing Paxton. He told crowds that the biggest divide in U.S.
