Nobody in Texas dares to breathe too loud because we may be on the verge of breaking a three-decade long curse of not having a Democrat win state office. It could happen with the Talarico v. Paxton contest however. Texas Tribune is reporting Talarico with 59.7% of the vote to Paxton’s 38.8%.
Democrats have not won statewide in Texas since 1994, and they last captured one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats in 1988 — when Rick Perry was still a Democratic state lawmaker, the Cowboys were coached by Tom Landry and Talarico was not yet born.
But Talarico’s campaign breathed new life into Democrats’ perennial dream of turning Texas blue. He smashed fundraising records and held a narrow but consistent lead in the public polling average — something even Beto O’Rourke never did when he came within 3 percentage points of toppling U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.
A Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico kept his campaign relentlessly focused on a crosspartisan message tying voters’ cost-of-living woes to a broken political system corrupted by billionaire and corporate influence. He depicted Paxton as the “embodiment” of that system, pointing to the attorney general’s numerous legal and ethical controversies and to the more than $200 million that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent in support of Paxton.
Talarico himself proved to be the most prolific fundraiser in the country this cycle, while also benefiting from a significant outside spending effort previous Democrats in Texas lacked.
So far, sooooo good tonight. Roy Cooper is now a senator-elect, Georgia just elected its first Black governor, and Jon Ossoff has been reelected. Keep the champagne corks popping, things are going wonderfully.
Watching MS NOW and Ali Velshi who has been making note of early vote vs. same day vote has emphasized that in some places where we have high hope the same day vote is favoring GOPers as much as the early voting favored the Democratic candidate.
What he just said about TEXAS was stunning. With 54% of the vote counted as expected Talarico had a hefty lead, some sixty percent plus in early voting. The stunner is he says to this point the same day voting there is favoring Talarico by more! Sixty-six percent! At this point he says Paxton would have to pull 61% of the remaining vote. He went on to say given it’s Texas in a normal year that would be difficult at this point but quite doable.
Well, this isn’t a normal year and Paxton is the GOP candidate from hell. For me, a lifelong Cubs fan who learned to live with getting big dreams trashed I won’t celebrate yet. But dammit it’s hard not to think that this could finally be the year.
Florida was as deep red as Texas. The GOP barely won the Senate and Gov. races there. And those four districts DeSantis gerrymandered to toss out Democrats? As of this point we’ve won THREE of them! Texas was already worried their own redistricting might backfire and it would be sweet indeed if Talarico wins. Even more so if we flip the Governorship which at this point also seems possible. Oh how I’d love to be able to give the Texas GOP a giant FUCK ALL Y’ALL by winning at least four of those gerrymandered seats. Texas started this years mid-cycle redistricting war and indications are it’s backfiring in multiple states!