{"id":315297,"date":"2026-05-30T09:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T09:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/315297\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T09:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T09:54:14","slug":"can-talarico-win-over-some-of-cornyns-voters-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/315297\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Talarico win over some of Cornyn\u2019s voters in Texas?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The morning after Ken Paxton, the hard-right, scandal-prone attorney general of Texas, handily won<\/a> his state\u2019s Republican runoff race for Senate, I asked supporters<\/a> of his primary opponent, Senator John Cornyn, what they would do in the general election.<\/p>\n

Line up behind Paxton? Consider the Democratic nominee, James Talarico? Sit out the election?<\/p>\n

Readers who had supported Cornyn in the Republican primary, brimming with choice insults for Paxton, were ready to vent. It was a \u2014 highly unscientific! \u2014 reflection of the challenge Republicans face in \u201cfinding their kumbaya moment\u201d after a bitterly personal primary contest, as my colleagues J. David Goodman and Lauren McGaughy wrote this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s Republican Party no longer reflects the values we hold dear. John Cornyn does. A good citizen, honest, hard working, a family man,\u201d wrote in Kirk Bennett, 76, of Frisco, Texas. \u201cMay vote Democrat for the first time in my life. Character has to count.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI will hold my nose and vote for Talarico, the first Democrat I have ever voted for,\u201d offered Neil Beck, 84, a retired international attorney from Missouri City, Texas.<\/p>\n

For all of that anguish, will those sentiments actually translate into meaningful Republican-leaning votes for Talarico?<\/p>\n

There are good reasons to be skeptical.<\/p>\n

In these hyperpartisan times, many voters tend to return \u201chome\u201d to their respective political parties by Election Day, whatever their reservations about a particular candidate. Others may not vote at all in November.<\/p>\n

Some readers noted that their priority was helping Republicans maintain control of the Senate, and others said they found Talarico, with his long history of progressive musings<\/a> on social media, too liberal to stomach.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will still NOT vote for a Democrat, especially a left-leaner like Talarico,\u201d wrote a reader, Kay H.C., 74, who wanted to be identified by her last initials. \u201cBelieve I am in the \u2018reluctant Republican\u2019 quadrant. I\u2019ll vote for Paxton but will be holding my nose.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while there are ample signs<\/a> that Hispanic voters, perhaps the most important swing demographic in Texas, have grown disillusioned<\/a> with President Trump, that does not mean they will automatically embrace a Democrat. That\u2019s especially the case for more socially conservative Hispanic voters, in an election where Republicans may spend a lot of money to try to disqualify Talarico on cultural issues.<\/p>\n

Texas has not elected a Democrat to a statewide office in a generation<\/a>, either, and Paxton inspires loyalty among the conservative base.<\/p>\n

Despite all of that, one top Republican strategist in Texas, who insisted on anonymity because of professional constraints, told me this morning that \u201cas of right now, it looks like a very tight race.\u201d<\/p>\n

My colleague Shane Goldmacher had a helpful video explainer<\/a> on why Democrats think they can flip Texas. Talarico is a powerhouse fund-raiser<\/a>, they see Paxton as uniquely flawed, and Democratic energy is off the charts.<\/p>\n

Talarico is also making explicit appeals to Cornyn supporters<\/a> and other Republicans, both on social media and in person<\/a>, and is campaigning in areas that typically favor Republicans. It\u2019s part of his broader campaign strategy, an adviser told me, which includes efforts to run up the score in the cities, to heavily emphasize outreach to Black, Hispanic and young voters, and to overperform, for a Democrat, in rural areas.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one Cornyn supporter I\u2019ll be watching especially closely: the senator himself. He has said he intends to support<\/a> the Republican ticket in the general election. But he also cryptically posted a fable today on social media about a stinging scorpion<\/a> who was not to be trusted. (Was the scorpion Trump, who endorsed Paxton? Was it Paxton himself? Cornyn left it ambiguous.)<\/p>\n

In another post<\/a>, the angsty departing senator borrowed from Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow this is not the end,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

quote of the day<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said it would get bad because of tariffs, and he said it would get better. We\u2019re still waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was Owen Cheyne, 21, who listens to podcasts from influencers who supported President Trump in 2024 \u2014 like Joe Rogan and Theo Von \u2014 and has been disappointed by the president\u2019s tariffs.<\/p>\n

Propelled by economic worries, young men lurched to the right in the 2024 election \u2014 a 15-percent swing from 2020 \u2014 and helped Trump win the White House. But a year and a half later, some Gen Z men say they are disillusioned by his second term.<\/p>\n

My colleagues Kellen Browning and Emma Goldberg have more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One Number<\/p>\n

43 percent<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the share of voters who are dissatisfied with both major political parties<\/a>, according to a recent New York Times\/Siena poll \u2014 the latest sign that the frustration that has built over the last decade will roil American politics for the foreseeable future, my colleague Ruth Igielnik writes. The malaise was especially prominent among young voters.<\/p>\n

TAKE OUR QUIZ<\/p>\n

This question comes from a recent article in The Times. Click an answer to see if you\u2019re right. (The link will be free.)<\/p>\n

Where did Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman from Kentucky who recently lost to a Trump-backed challenger, meet up with former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to go fishing and have some \u201cspicy\u201d conversations about politics?<\/p>\n

Taylor Robinson contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The morning after Ken Paxton, the hard-right, scandal-prone attorney general of Texas, handily won his state\u2019s Republican runoff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[73167,113351,39740,3269,288,50575,8799,20187,61240,30910,101014,54576,75165,3270,13164,13338,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-315297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-conservatism-us-politics","tag-content-type-quiz","tag-cornyn","tag-democratic-party","tag-elections","tag-james","tag-john","tag-ken","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-paxton","tag-politics-and-government","tag-polls-and-public-opinion","tag-primaries-and-caucuses","tag-republican-party","tag-senate","tag-talarico","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315297","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=315297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}