It\u2019s also possible that none of the above quibbling matters a whit. Because perhaps the best news for the Texas Democratic Party was delivered Tuesday<\/a> courtesy of Republican voters.<\/p>\n In a nearly 30-point rout, Attorney General Ken Paxton, propelled by a late Trump nod, vanquished incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn to seize the Texas GOP\u2019s top ballot position come November. While early polling didn\u2019t always show a wide electability gap between the two Republican men, there are times when one must trust one\u2019s lyin\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n This is about more than Paxton\u2019s sordid string of past scandals as compared to Cornyn\u2019s relatively clean past. This is about a fairly straightforward question: If the (narrow) path to victory for Talarico depends on ticket-splitting between him and Governor Greg Abbott\u2014which the conventional analysis says it does\u2014then who was the GOP candidate more likely to repel an Abbott voter?\u00a0<\/p>\n An Abbott-Talarico-sized door needed to open, and it\u2019s simply much easier to imagine voters stepping through it when they\u2019re presented with the walking ethical nightmare and 110-percent pot-committed Trump minion that is the state\u2019s sitting attorney general. (Now, if Abbott himself enters the danger zone this year, we\u2019re talking about another, more historic scenario with much greater implications for the actual lives of Texans, but for now I\u2019m going to leave such speculation stranded between these parentheses.) It\u2019s worth noting, as well, that the last time Texas saw a somewhat competitive midterm\u2014in 2018\u2014Paxton notably underperformed the other statewide Republicans outside of Ted Cruz.<\/p>\n Talarico could be strong enough, and Paxton should be weak enough, that another five months of terrible news for Trump and Republican rule just might bring the senatorial finish line beneath a blue wave\u2019s high-water mark.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of conditional clauses amounting to this: It is now plausible that hope is not delusional. (For any non-Texan readers out there, this is actually a very bold claim I\u2019m making here.)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a few rungs down, GOP voters also nominated Bo French<\/a> over incumbent Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright. French is what you might delicately call a promoter of fascist beliefs. Or, rather, the man is a fascist. But even the opposition of Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick couldn\u2019t stop the Paxton ally from seizing the nod, creating another possible soft spot.<\/p>\n Facing a difficult midterm year, Texas\u2019 hardcore Republican electorate voted its highly questionable conscience rather than playing the electability-seeking pundit. If this tiny and zealous assemblage doesn\u2019t pay the price for this decision in November, then we all will.<\/p>\n In assorted downballot Democratic news, the rising Houston star Christian Menefee easily prevailed<\/a> in his congressman-versus-congressman showdown with the 78-year-old Al Green. And in two other congressional matchups also created by the GOP\u2019s mid-decade scrambling of the electoral map, Colin Allred regained a position<\/a> in the U.S. House at the expense of Congresswoman Julie Johnson, and a candidate widely condemned as antisemitic was defeated by a Blue Dog Democrat<\/a> for the redrawn 35th Congressional District\u2014a San Antonio-area seat that the GOP plans to flip but that could be in play in a blue-wave scenario.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Membership-Banner-Aug-2024-Evergreen.png\")
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