If Democrats expect to flip a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, they\u2019ll need all the stars to align. This almost never happens, because politics has a way of scrambling the constellations. But on Tuesday, the first star blinked on.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m referring to state Rep. James Talarico\u2019s victory over Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary. Most political prognosticators agree that Talarico, an eloquent young Democrat who speaks openly about his Christian faith, is their best hope in a red state that Donald Trump won by 14 points.<\/p>\n
The second star was Crockett\u2019s conciliatory concession \u2014 far from a foregone conclusion after a nasty primary<\/a> \u2014 in which she pledged to \u201cdo my part,\u201d<\/a> adding that \u201cTexas is primed to turn blue, and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person.\u201d<\/p>\n The third star \u2014 a vulnerable Republican opponent \u2014 has not yet appeared over the Texas sky, although forecasters say it might.<\/p>\n Most observers agree that scandal-plagued Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton would be beatable in the general election, while incumbent Sen. John Cornyn would present a much tougher challenge. Cornyn is the kind of steady, conventional politician who tends to win elections, and so, of course, modern voters are extremely suspicious of him.<\/p>\n In the GOP primary on Tuesday, Cornyn\u2019s 42% share of the vote edged out Paxton by about a point. Unfortunately for Republicans, neither candidate garnered enough votes to avoid a May 26 runoff election.<\/p>\n Conventional wisdom suggests that when a majority of Republican voters choose someone other than the incumbent in the first round of voting, an even greater majority will inevitably break toward the challenger in the runoff. If that happens, Paxton would become the nominee, and Democrats would get their third star to align.<\/p>\n Even better for Democrats \u2014 a fourth star, so to speak \u2014 would be for this protracted runoff to become a \u201cknife fight,\u201d as one Texas Republican predicted,<\/a> in which Paxton staggers out of the fight as the battered GOP nominee.<\/p>\n The only problem is that Republicans can see these stars aligning, too.<\/p>\n And while the Texas Senate seat matters a lot on its own, it matters even more in the context of nationwide midterm elections, in which a Texas win would help Democrats take back the Senate.<\/p>\n Enter the cavalry \u2014 or, more accurately, President Trump, who is now entering a second war in the span of a week, this one a civil war in the Lone Star State.<\/p>\n The day after the primary, Trump announced that he would<\/a> be \u201cmaking my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don\u2019t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!\u201d<\/p>\n Reports suggest Trump may endorse Cornyn<\/a> in order to save the seat for Republicans. But who knows? Trump is famously unpredictable. And it\u2019s likely he admires Paxton\u2019s ability to survive scandals that would have caused most normal politicians to curl up in the fetal position. As they say, \u201cgame recognizes game.\u201d<\/p>\n Whomever he backs, conventional wisdom also says Trump should make his endorsement \u201csoon,\u201d as he promised. That would save Republicans a lot of time and money. But Trump currently has enormous leverage. Right now, people are coming to him, pleading for his support.<\/p>\n Do you think he wants to resolve that situation quickly?<\/p>\n Me neither.<\/p>\n With Trump, you never know what you\u2019re going to get. In 2021, he helped torpedo Republican Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler <\/a>in Georgia, handing Democrats control of the Senate. The following year he backed football legend Herschel Walker in another Georgia Senate race, which did not exactly work out great. Democrat Raphael Warnock won and holds that seat, though Walker is now ambassador to the Bahamas so that\u2019s something.<\/p>\n This is to say: Trump\u2019s political assistance does not always assist.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether Trump\u2019s endorsement would be dispositive \u2014 and whether he could muscle the other Republican out of the primary race.<\/p>\n Paxton, for example, initially vowed to stay in the race,<\/a> no matter what. (He later suggested he would \u201cconsider\u201d dropping out <\/a>if the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, a bill to require proof of citizenship to vote.)<\/p>\n There\u2019s also this: Trump\u2019s endorsements tend to either be made out of vengeance or to pad the totals of an already inevitable winner, so his track record is probably overrated.<\/p>\n Case in point: While most of his endorsed candidates won their Texas elections, his endorsed candidate for agriculture commissioner lost reelection. And according to the Texas Tribune,<\/a> \u201cat least three Trump-endorsed candidates for Congress were headed to runoffs, one of them in a distant second place.\u201d<\/p>\n Another issue is that Cornyn needs more than a perfunctory endorsement: He needs a clear, full-throated endorsement.<\/p>\n In a 2022 Missouri Senate race, Trump endorsed \u201cERIC,\u201d<\/a> which was awkward because two candidates named Eric were running.<\/p>\n More recently, he endorsed two rival candidates<\/a> in the same 2026 Arizona gubernatorial race \u2014 like betting on both teams in the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n This is all to say that the only thing standing between Texas Democrats and a rare celestial alignment may be the whims of the Republican Party\u2019s one and only star.<\/p>\n Sure, establishment Republicans can beg Trump to quickly step in and settle the race, and maybe he will. But it\u2019s entirely possible the president will find a way to blow up his party\u2019s chances for holding the U.S. Senate \u2014 and there\u2019s nothing they can do to stop him.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re a star, they let you do it.<\/p>\n Matt K. Lewis is the author of \u201cFilthy Rich Politicians\u201d<\/a> and \u201cToo Dumb to Fail.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Democrats expect to flip a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, they\u2019ll need all the stars to align.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49975,76623,39740,2133,5059,30910,342,13161,2424,7837,13164,5881,27,29,28,2558,3860],"class_list":["post-193246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-candidate","tag-conventional-wisdom","tag-cornyn","tag-democrats","tag-endorsement","tag-paxton","tag-point","tag-race","tag-republicans","tag-runoff-election","tag-senate","tag-star","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-trump","tag-vote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}