May28

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Texas Two-Step

Now that there's been time for the dust to settle from Tuesday's primary, we wanted to take a second look at the mother of all Senate races, the one that has every chance of being the linchpin upon which control of the 120th U.S. Senate rests. We have some additional information available, we've had a bit more time to think about the whole thing, and we've gotten some useful suggestions from readers. So, away we go, with an approach that should make clear why we think this one is definitely up for grabs:

Five Reasons to Think Ken Paxton (R) Will Win:

1. Texas: Various commentators, particularly right-leaning ones, are already leaning into this very basic fact: Donald Trump won Texas by 14 points in 2024, 56%-42%. That certainly makes a statement about the fundamentals of the Lone Star State, especially since Paxton is basically a Trump Mini-Me (MAGA-Me?)
   
   
2. Track Record: Paxton, as we have pointed out, has won statewide in Texas three times, as compared to zero for Democrat James Talarico. In a state as large as this, that is no small thing. A smaller state can be something of a monoculture, politically. A larger state definitely is not, and it helps a lot if a candidate already knows how to connect with various constituencies.
   
   
3. Trans: Like "Communist enabler!" 50 years ago, and "Terrorist enabler!" 25 years ago, "Trans enabler!" is an all-purpose weapon for Republicans these days, one that they will use and use and use some more, until they've worn that club down to a nub. It worked against Kamala Harris, and Paxton and his campaign are going to try to make it work against James Talarico. The GOP's oppo research team has dug into everything Talarico ever said on the record, and they came up with two things from a few years back: (1) He said that God is non-binary and (2) He said modern science recognizes six biological sexes, explaining that refers to the chromosomal variations XX, XY, XXY, XYY, XXXY, and X (which Team Paxton has turned into "Six-Gender Jimmy"). Both of these were back in 2021.
   
   Some Republicans, namely Stephen Miller, have gone even further, and insisted that Talarico himself is trans. What is the proper response to such an outlandish, bigotry-driven claim? How about: "shut up you ugly fuck"? That's not our response, mind you, it's the response put out on the official eX-Twitter account of the Democratic Party (and remember, we do not censor utterances that were made publicly). Many left-leaning voters were very pleased to see the blue team muckety-mucks roll up their sleeves and get a little dirty.
   
   Anyhow, this trans-centric strategy has worked, and worked well, for Republicans in the past. That said, and as we have written, it smacks of desperation, and tacitly says, "I have nothing to offer except OTHER MAN BAD." Also, it is worth noting that this trick did not work for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), whose "Paxton is a trans enabler" onslaught might well have caused some Texans to start tuning out that line of attack. Talarico, for his part, has conceded that he did deliver the six biological sexes quote, and the non-binary quote. He said that he "missed the mark" with some of his remarks in the heat of debate, but that, in the end, "what Ken Paxton is doing is clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption." Sometimes, when a candidate confronts an issue head-on, there's nowhere left to go with it.
   
   
4. Polls: There is no question that, in preliminary polling of this race, Talarico is the (slight) favorite. The three aggregators who are tracking the race have Talarico up by an average of 4.3 points, 3 points, and 1.5 points, respectively, which averages out to Talarico +2.9%.
   
   However, as we pointed out yesterday, none of the pollsters had Paxton crushing Cornyn the way he did. Most pollsters were off by at least 10 points, some were off by more like 20. If so, that could imply that Paxton has hidden strength that is not showing in the polls, and that Talarico +2.9 is actually more like Paxton +5 or Paxton +8. Given that pollsters struggle to accurately measure Donald Trump's support, and given, again, that Paxton is Mini-MAGA, it's possible. That said, see "Tuesday Turnout," below.
   
   
5. GOP Establishment: If Paxton absolutely blows it coming out of the gate, and if the folks who run the Republican Party become convinced he's a lost cause, then they might cut him off and leave him to his own devices. But, failing that, the GOP pooh-bahs are going to be all-in on him. First, because the loss of this Senate seat could well lay the groundwork for the loss of the Senate. Second, because if a Democrat gets a 6-year foothold in a prominent statewide office, that could be disastrous to the GOP's long-term prospects. We've been talking about the eventual "blue-ing" of Texas for years, and a Democratic senator, particularly if he's well-liked, could hasten the process. If a world exists where the Democrats have California, New York and Illinois in the bag for sure, with Texas a real possibility, it will be very difficult for Republicans to win the presidency.

Five Reasons to Think James Talarico (D) Will Win:

1. Texas: Again, if you laser-focus on 2024, Texas looks pretty good for Paxton. However, in 2024 Trump was running against an opponent who was female, and a double minority, and was doing so in a "throw the bums out" kind of year. By contrast, in 2020, Trump was running against an opponent who was male, white, and tended to wear his religion on his sleeve, and it was Trump himself who was the bum who needed to be thrown out. In that year, Texas only broke for Trump by 6 points, 52%-46%. And which person is Talarico more like: Kamala Harris or Joe Biden? Exactly. The "Trump won by 14" thing obscures the fact that Texas' current PVI is actually just R+6. As every reader knows, R+6 is doable for the Democrats in a wave election, doubly so when it's a weak Republican candidate.
   
   
2. Tuesday Turnout: We didn't have time to look carefully at this as we tried to write up the results; we thank the various readers who brought it to our attention. Take a look, first of all, at the GOP totals for the first round of voting in the Texas Senate race:
   
   

   Candidate	Votes
   Paxton	878,564
   Cornyn	910,382
   Wesley Hunt	293,250
   Other Candidates	84,714
   Total Votes	2,166,910

   
   Now take a look at the totals for the second round:
   
   

   Candidate	Votes
   Paxton	885,949
   Cornyn	501,725
   Total Votes	1,387,674

   
   Notice that Paxton got very nearly the same number of votes in each round, and that Cornyn lost because his vote total cratered. It's hard to know exactly what happened, and to know how many voters moved from Cornyn or some other candidate to Paxton. However, one way of reading these totals is that, by and large, Paxton has a hardcore MAGA base that will show up to vote for him no matter what and... that's about it. If Cornyn voters really did lose faith, en masse—perhaps because of Trump's late endorsement—then that is something that polls might struggle to capture. It's also worth noting that the one poll that did get close to the final result was also the second-to-last poll, and one of the few conducted entirely after the endorsement. So, the polling might not be broken, after all.
   
   
3. Politics: There is no way to quantify this, but sometimes a politician comes along who seems to be unusually talented. It was obvious with Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama long before either of them became president. Of more recent vintage, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was very clearly a rising star from the outset. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) was, too, before he yielded to MAGA. Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner (D) and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), at least in early going, seem like they could be special talents. And our gut says the same about Talarico.
   
   Just like it's very interesting to watch a particularly gifted athlete, even if they don't play for your team, it's very interesting to watch someone who shows early promise, and to see what they do with that. Some, of course, burn bright and then fade out (ahem, Rudy Giuliani). Others go far. We have been very impressed, thus far, with Talarico's talent for messaging, and for communicating his ideas in a clever and digestible form. For example, this week, in response to the resurgence of the bizarro "Talarico is a vegan" stuff, the candidate said: "C'mon. I've been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment." Another line the campaign has been using is: "Paxton wants the election to be about woke, Talarico wants it to be about broke." These are... not too bad. At very least, we are confident that Talarico's raw political skill is many orders of magnitude superior to that of Paxton.
   
   
4. Sleaze: There was much supposition that, because Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is a "bad guy," he was at risk of losing to Beto O'Rourke or Colin Allred. Obviously, that did not happen.
   
   However, Cruz is just an a**hole and a selfish jerk who heads off to Cancun when the going gets rough. He's not a serial adulterer, and he's not a crook. Oh, and in a non-presidential (and thus non-Trump) year, he only defeated O'Rourke by a couple of points. It is not going to help Paxton that he's not only an a**hole and a selfish jerk like Cruz, but he's also so corrupt he'd make Boss Tweed blush. And don't forget that Paxton's divorce will be playing out while the campaign is underway, reminding everyone who might have forgotten that he's a lech. Think Talarico might have a few relevant pieces of scripture at the ready as needed—say, the parts of the Bible having to do with adultery? Our understanding is that neither Jesus, nor his dad, was a fan of that particular practice.
   
   
5. Infrastructure: Speaking of Beto O'Rourke, it's pretty easy to see Talarico as something of a sequel, and to expect the same result. However, when O'Rourke ran against Cruz, the Democrats' statewide machinery in Texas was pretty moribund, and O'Rourke and his team had to rebuild it. Now, Talarico will benefit from that infrastructure and, unlike O'Rourke, won't have to build it from (almost) scratch.

On the whole, we think the arguments for Talarico are stronger. So, if you made us bet money, we'd bet on him. But we wouldn't bet much because, at the moment, there's no actual proof of concept, and the road to the Senate chamber is littered with the bodies of promising Texas Democrats.

Meanwhile, if the blue team can't win this one, with a strong candidate, a weak opponent, and the wind at their back, then they probably just need to give up on Texas for a decade or so. But for now, someone at the DSCC should just make sure Talarico gets a refresher course in how to keep his zipper zipped. (Z)