Democrats are used to heartbreak in Texas - could Talarico turn the tide?

Democrats are accustomed to disappointment in Texas — could Talarico change that?

Democrats are hoping that James Talarico, 37, can bring an end to Republicans’ decades-long run of victories in Texas Senate contests.

The battle for a US Senate seat in Texas could be decisive in deciding which party takes control of Congress next year — a major prize in itself — but for both sides it means far more than that.

For Democrats, their string of defeats in statewide races now goes back more than 30 years. In America’s second-most-populous state, liberals have spent a generation on the sidelines.

Yet polls indicate their candidate, 37-year-old James Talarico, may be on the brink of breaking through and flipping a Texas Senate seat blue for the first time since 1988.

That would be a dream outcome for Democrats — and a possible disaster for Republicans.

“If the Democrats do pull it off, I think it’s going to cause a lot of soul searching and a lot of psychological damage to the Republican Party in Texas and nationwide,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based Republican campaign strategist.

The high stakes help explain why this Senate race has surged into the most expensive in US history, with total spending topping half a billion dollars.

For Talarico, it marks an extraordinary ascent for a candidate who in 2025 was still a relatively obscure state-level Democrat.

At the Fiesta Center in Lubbock, Texas, on Tuesday night, the queue to see the softly spoken former teacher — who studied to become a Christian minister before entering politics — wrapped around the building and stretched down the broad parking lot to a busy road.

In this dusty western plains city of about 250,000, which voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump two years ago, a visit from a major Democratic candidate on the eve of an election was unusual.

“It’s just so amazing to watch,” said Aaron Gonzalez, the Democratic Party chair for Hockley County, which borders Lubbock. “This time is different.”

When Talarico stepped onto the stage before an estimated 3,000 supporters — with another thousand listening on speakers outside — his message was familiar to many national Democrats this year, though with a Texas flavor.

He attacked a conservative political establishment he said was indifferent to the economic struggles of ordinary Americans. He denounced the corrupting power of big money in politics. And he pledged to pursue a “comprehensive anti-corruption agenda” in the Senate.

“Texans are ready for change,” he said. “We are done with the extremism and the corruption. We’re done with the politics of division, and we are ready for something new.”

His final two weeks of campaigning use the slogan “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose,” borrowed from Friday Night Lights, the popular early-2000s TV series about a determined small-town Texas high school football team.

His playlist is heavy on twangy Texas country music. He praises Texas breakfast tacos, quotes legendary Texas singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett and often says his family’s roots in the state go back eight generations.

In the Lubbock crowd, Andrew Robinson, a student from nearby Texas Tech University, liked what he heard. But the 26-year-old’s optimism was tempered by a lifetime of watching Democrats try, and fail, to gain a foothold in the state.

“A Talarico win would mean so much,” he said. “I haven’t been keen on wanting to stay in Texas. And if the government were to change, it could give me a reason.”

Donald Trump won Texas in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential elections

For Republicans, a Democratic victory in Texas would carry a very different meaning.

Around the same time Talarico was speaking to supporters at the Fiesta Center, Trump — together with the Republican Party’s Senate candidate Ken Paxton — was only a few miles away at a venue twice as large.

“If you go out and vote, we’re going to have a tremendous win in Texas,” the president told the crowd.

Trump’s appearance in reliably Republican Lubbock suggests the party is worried about turnout even in the state’s most conservative areas. That concern has been echoed by other Texas Republicans.

“Understand, we could lose Texas,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz said on his podcast on Friday. “The Democrats are massively out-turning-out the Republicans.”

Don Huffines, who is running for election as the state’s chief financial officer, issued an even darker warning. “Texas is the foundation of the Republican Party in America,” he posted on X.

“When the foundation breaks, it all falls apart. When we lose Texas, we lose the USA.”

For weeks, party leaders have warned that a liberal breakthrough in the Lone Star State could have serious consequences.

They fear a Talarico victory would encourage more local Democrats to run for statewide and federal office. Stronger candidates with more money could create a snowball effect similar to Democratic gains in other Southern states, including Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

“I think that it’s pretty clear that Republicans, especially candidates, consultants, operatives, and others who are active in the party, see that this is a real threat,” said Steinhauser.

“The days of waving this off and saying that Texas would never turn blue are over.”

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For the Texas Senate race to reach the point where recent polls show Talarico with a narrow but steady lead has required a rare mix of events and political forces — a “perfect storm,” in Steinhauser’s words.

“Everything that could go well for the Democrats is going well,” he said, “and everything that could go badly for the Republicans is going badly.”

But much of that storm has also been created over the past year by Trump himself.

The national climate for Republicans is a difficult one.

Voters are angry about high consumer prices, including petrol, and largely blame Trump’s tariff policies and the Iran war.

Political corruption has also become an increasingly important issue. In a recent Cook political report poll, Democrats, independents and many Republicans pointed to “greedy billionaires and corporations” and politicians seeking “personal gain” as the culprits.

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Texas-specific issues have also helped create a hostile environment for the party in power.

Polling and recent special elections in Texas suggest that Hispanic voters — many of whom shifted to Trump to help him win the White House in 2024 — have turned against the administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

Hispanics account for nearly a third of the state’s population — and after more than a week of early voting in Texas, they have been voting in historically large numbers.

Data centre construction, which Texas Republicans had promoted as a welcome investment in the state, has drawn broad criticism, especially in rural areas that have long been strongly conservative.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, in his own tight re-election race, recently announced a one-year moratorium on AI construction in the state — a sign of how quickly the issue has become a political liability.

“It’s bad for Republicans,” one Texas political strategist, who asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC. “We’re asking a whole lot of the electorate at this point for us to continue to be the guys in charge.”

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Then there is the baggage Paxton brings to the race after defeating longtime incumbent Senator John Cornyn in a bitter primary campaign earlier this year.

The 63-year-old Republican successfully portrayed the 74-year-old Cornyn as too old and too disconnected from Texas conservatives. He got a late boost, just days before his runoff victory over Cornyn, from a Trump endorsement.

“Ken Paxton has gone through a lot, in many cases, very unfairly, but he is a Fighter, and knows how to WIN,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Our Country needs Fighters, and also Loyalty to the Cause of Greatness.”

The “a lot” Trump referred to includes a 2015 federal indictment on securities fraud charges — later dropped — and a 2023 impeachment by the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives on corruption, bribery and abuse of power charges.

The Texas Senate later acquitted Paxton after Trump intervened to pressure state Republican leaders.

All of this has left Paxton with more than a few critics — and enemies — in Texas, including within his own party.

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By contrast, Talarico has shown himself to be an effective candidate. The state legislator defeated a well-known rival, Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, in the Democratic primary.

Since winning the nomination, he has held onto his polling lead despite a relentless barrage of negative advertising — much of it financed by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company is based in Texas.

Musk alone has poured more than $170m into the race.

Trump’s MAGA Inc. committee has added $40m.

Although Paxton has struggled as a fundraiser, the outside money spent on his behalf has saturated the state’s airwaves — spilling into sporting events involving Texas teams that are broadcast nationwide.

The attacks have focused on Talarico’s past remarks supporting transgender people, on his description of “radicalised white men” as a domestic terrorism threat and on his criticism of the fossil fuel and beef industries, two powerful interests in the state.

Talarico has distanced himself from some of those earlier comments, saying many were taken out of context and “missed the mark” or were “deliberately provocative” or “cringy”.

Meanwhile, the Texas Democrat has become a historically strong fundraiser, collecting more than $140m in donations during his campaign and setting a three-month fundraising record for a Senate candidate.

That money has enabled Talarico to strike back at Paxton, highlighting his past controversies and defending himself against Republican attacks.

He often draws on his religious background — as the grandson of a Southern Baptist preacher who spent time in a seminary — and his stump speeches are sprinkled with biblical references.

One passage Talarico has especially favored lately is the familiar Old Testament confrontation between the underdog David and the giant Goliath.

“We are going up against our own Goliaths,” he said in Lubbock. “The billionaire mega-donors, the corporate special interests, the entire Washington DC establishment. Their power is real, but so is ours.”

But Texas Democrats’ strength has been overstated before. In 2018, Congressman Beto O’Rourke posted his own record fundraising totals, drew major national attention and still lost to Texas Senator Cruz by just over 2%.

Talarico’s lead in the polls, while steady, remains close to the margin of error in most surveys. And last-minute Republican appeals, along with Trump’s repeated campaign visits, could drive conservatives to the polls in larger numbers on election day, wiping out any Democratic advantage from early voting.

Inside the small Democratic Party office at a Talarico rally in Amarillo on Tuesday, retired schoolteacher Terri Mills listened to the candidate’s stump speech.

Despite acknowledging the decades of Democratic disappointment and false dawns, she said she was allowing herself to hope for a Democratic win once again.

“I have gotten my hopes up before, you know,” she said. “But I do feel that this time is a little different.”