James Talarico just did what no Democrat in Texas has done since 1988

Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas' U.S. Senate race Tuesday night, pulling off the first Democratic statewide win in the Lone Star State since 1994 and the first Democratic Senate victory there since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. The Associated Press called the race shortly after 10 p.m., and by Wednesday morning Talarico led by a margin that caught even optimistic Democrats off guard. The result is trending everywhere this morning because it is, without exaggeration, one of the most seismic single-seat results in modern American political history.

What happened

Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton in the race for the U.S. Senate, ending a three-decade Republican monopoly on statewide offices in Texas. By Wednesday morning, Talarico held about 55% of the vote, according to the Texas Secretary of State.

The Associated Press called the race for Talarico shortly after 10 p.m., as he led Paxton by margins that easily exceeded his narrow polling lead heading into Election Day. Paxton conceded at approximately 10:20 p.m. Speaking to a large crowd late Tuesday night, Talarico told supporters, "We just took back Texas."

The Senate drought for Texas Democrats extended back to 1988, when Rick Perry was still a Democratic state lawmaker, the Cowboys were coached by Tom Landry and Talarico was not yet born.

Who is James Talarico

Talarico, 37, is a former teacher and Presbyterian seminarian who identifies himself as a progressive Christian and ran on fighting corruption and lowering costs. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University, he started pursuing a Master of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary while serving in the Texas House.

A four-term state lawmaker from Austin, Talarico tied or led Paxton in most statewide polls starting in midsummer. He first rose to prominence in 2018 by flipping a heavily Republican state House district, which had voted for Donald Trump for president two years earlier.

He joined Joe Rogan's popular podcast for a three-hour conversation in which the host, who backed Trump in 2024, told Talarico he should run for president. That appearance became a cultural moment in its own right, a soft-spoken guy who quotes Scripture comfortably enough in a three-hour conversation with Rogan to leave the host saying, out loud, that he'd vote for him.

Texas has long been a white whale for Democrats, especially after 2018, when Beto O'Rourke came within 3 percentage points of unseating Sen. Ted Cruz and lifted a new class of down-ballot Democrats, including Talarico, who flipped a red House seat in Round Rock that year.

Who is Ken Paxton, and why Republicans picked him anyway

Paxton is a figure who has haunted Texas Republican politics for years. The Texas attorney general was impeached by the state House in 2023 on accusations of bribery, obstruction of justice and abuse of the public trust. He was later acquitted by the state Senate. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the fraud charges after he agreed to a pretrial diversion deal, victories that burnished his brand as a fighter persecuted by the political establishment.

On May 19, 2026, Donald Trump announced his endorsement for Paxton. Trump's backing cleared a path through a crowded primary. John Cornyn was defeated by Paxton in the primary after Trump endorsed Paxton. Cornyn, who had held the seat for more than two decades, was done in by the same MAGA energy that now cost the party the state.

Most polling heading into Election Day showed Talarico, a state legislator and seminarian, running ahead of Paxton, the scandal-plagued state attorney general who had faced criminal inquiries and narrowly dodged an impeachment conviction by his fellow Republicans in Austin.

The money: half a billion dollars and counting

This was not a normal Senate race by any financial measure. Between the general election and primaries, a combined $573.2 million was spent to advertise for either Paxton or Talarico. The race is considered one of the most expensive non-presidential electoral races in American history.

Elon Musk put more than $150 million into super PACs backing Republican Ken Paxton. Talarico raised $145 million for his own campaign, mostly from smaller donors, while Paxton's campaign raised $22 million.

Paxton was the largest beneficiary of outside spending, including $168 million from Musk to the Senate Leadership Fund, which went almost completely to supporting the Republican candidate, according to a New York Times analysis. The Times estimated that Musk had spent at least $212 million on Paxton, noting it was likely an undercount due to so-called "dark money" spending.

A Republican super PAC spent approximately $131 million in independent expenditures over 17 days supporting Paxton's Texas Senate bid, an average of about $7.7 million per day, according to Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by Newsweek. Texas PAC, the entity connected to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, spent $131 million through the end of September, dwarfing all other groups.

Talarico's response on the trail was simple and consistent. "Texas is not for sale," he said often on the campaign trail, arguing that the inflated spending blitz made clear the urgent need for checks on powerful interests. Voters, apparently, agreed.

The campaign: manhood, faith, and false attacks

The Republican strategy in this race was striking for how personal and culturally specific it got. In what became the most expensive Senate race in state history, Paxton attacked Talarico on questions of manliness, characterizing the Democrat as "low-T," a reference to testosterone levels that influencers in the manosphere often use.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Trump, called Talarico the "first transgender Senate candidate." Talarico is cisgender and in a relationship with a woman. Miller said, "He's clearly transitioning into a female."

Paxton's campaign also focused on Talarico's previous support of transgender rights, including through an array of AI-generated ads broadcast across the state and highlighting a 2021 remark in which he said, "God is nonbinary." Talarico, a seminarian and aspiring Presbyterian minister, said this on the Texas House floor in 2021.

Republicans also attempted to portray him as vegan, another attack rooted in the manosphere's association between dietary choices and masculinity.

Talarico did not run away from his faith. He leaned into it. Though he focused his campaign on questions of costs and corruption, the Democrat leveraged his religious background when talking about issues such as LGBTQ+ rights and abortion. Texas Democratic strategist Matt Angle said Talarico is "a particular problem for them because he talks about his faith with passion and authenticity that conflicts with Texas Republicans' pray and hate model."

He did soften some previous positions on transgender rights during the campaign. Talarico stated that he would oppose transgender girls participating in school sports if doing so endangered safety or fairness.

What the broader 2026 map means for this result

Talarico led the polling average for the entire general election, in a cycle in which Trump's plummeting popularity and high everyday costs put Republicans on their heels across the country.

His win came atop a Democratic ticket that took over most of Texas' statewide offices in a historic GOP wipeout. Texas Democrats had not just been thirsty for one win here. The 2026 environment, with Trump deep into a second term and consumer costs still biting, gave the whole party infrastructure a boost it hadn't felt since Ann Richards was governor.

Talarico overcame a $168 million ad assault by the world's wealthiest man and rebuked the MAGA movement in a state President Donald Trump won handily three times. The loss for Musk personally is notable. He spent lavishly, publicly, and repeatedly on this race, and it did not move the needle enough.

Talarico worked to build an unlikely coalition that included plenty of folks who had been reliably Republican votes in the recent past. Suburban women in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metro areas were a key part of that coalition, as were younger voters who showed up in numbers that surprised both parties' internal models.

What happens to Ted Cruz and the Texas GOP now

Ted Cruz was not on the ballot Tuesday. Sen. Ted Cruz is not up for election this year, but he had been campaigning across his home state as though he were, making a spirited case for Paxton's Republican Senate bid. Cruz now returns to Washington as the state's senior senator, but in a Texas that just elected a Democrat to sit next to him. Cruz faces re-election in 2030. The question his party will be asking between now and then is whether Tuesday was a fluke tied to a rough national environment for Republicans, or whether the state's demographics have finally crossed the threshold that Democrats have been predicting for fifteen years.

Talarico's victory marks the first time in 38 years that Texas has elected a Democrat to the Senate. Talarico plans to focus on issues like the cost of living and corruption during his time in office.

Paxton, for his part, took the loss with public grace. After conceding, Paxton told gathered supporters he will be praying for Talarico to do well in his new role and represent the people of Texas well. That is a considerably more gracious exit than his behavior during the impeachment proceedings suggested he was capable of.

The bottom line on the money question

The sheer scale of spending in this race raises a question that goes beyond Texas. If $212 million from a single billionaire cannot save a Senate seat in a state Donald Trump carried by double digits two years ago, what exactly does that level of outside money buy? Total spending in the race ran well over $500 million. The two sides paid for their campaigns in different ways. Most of the money working on Paxton's behalf came from outside groups, not from his own campaign. Musk's contributions alone came to more than six times what Paxton's campaign raised.

Talarico's answer, repeated in town halls from El Paso to Galveston, was that money floods in when candidates and parties are weak on their own. He made the spending itself into an argument. It worked.

Speaking to supporters Tuesday night, Talarico said: "We just took back Texas." Then he added: "The people of Texas, you were my slingshot and tonight we defeated Goliath."

Sources

• Texas Tribune, James Talarico defeats Ken Paxton, giving Democrats their first U.S. Senate win in Texas since 1988
• NBC News, Democrat James Talarico turns Texas blue, defeating Ken Paxton
• CBS News, James Talarico wins Texas 2026 Senate election
• NPR, James Talarico wins Texas U.S. Senate race
• Houston Public Media, Democrat James Talarico wins U.S. Senate seat, ending GOP's 32-year Texas statewide winning streak
• OPB / AP, Democrat James Talarico flips a U.S. Senate seat in Texas
• 19th News, James Talarico wins Texas Senate seat in race focused on masculinity and anti-trans attacks
• NewsNation, Texas Senate race becomes most expensive in state history
• Newsweek, Republicans Spending Over $7M per Day To Try and Save Ken Paxton in Texas
• Al Jazeera, Texans vote in most expensive Senate race in U.S. history
• Time, Talarico Wins Texas Senate Race, First Democrat to Win Statewide in More than 30 Years
• Washington Post, In Texas Senate race, Ted Cruz tries to push Ken Paxton across the finish line