Terry Virts, a retired NASA astronaut, is not a household name, even in his home of Houston. But the way he announced his campaign on Monday for Senator John Cornyn’s seat in Texas, taking a swing at both political parties, may be blazing a trail for Democratic candidates in 2026.
Mr. Virts’ official announcement video was revealing in two ways. It reflected the growing hunger among Democratic outsiders to take on President Trump. And it underscored how such outsiders believe the best way to do that is to also take on the Democratic leaders in Washington.
“Trump’s chaos must be stopped,” Mr. Virts said in the video. “But leadership is M.I.A.,” he added over an image of the Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.
Mr. Virts, who describes himself as a “common sense Democrat,” emphasized the point in a telephone interview on Monday. “The Texas senator should not work for the senator from New York,” he said. “I’m going to work for Texas voters.”
He said he was willing to break with the national party on issues such as immigration, which he says he supports only if it is legal. “The Democratic Party, for some inexplicable reason, gaslit us and told everybody that, ‘Hey, this illegal immigration is OK,’ and voters knew that it wasn’t,” he said.
Democrats in Texas, who have not won statewide office since the 1990s, have become hopeful about their chances in 2026, particularly if Mr. Cornyn is defeated in the Republican primary next year by the state’s hard-right attorney general, Ken Paxton.
Already polls have shown the senior senator struggling against Mr. Paxton, a polarizing figure even in Texas who has strong support among the Trump-aligned wing of the party but remains unpopular with many voters.
A chance to face off against Mr. Paxton in a general election has drawn the interest of better-known Democratic politicians in Texas. Among those weighing a run are Colin Allred, a former congressman from Dallas who ran unsuccessfully against Senator Ted Cruz last year; Beto O’Rourke, another former House member who nearly defeated Mr. Cruz in 2018; and a State House representative from Austin, James Talarico, who is seen as a rising force among Texas Democrats.
But it was Mr. Virts, not on anyone’s short list, who jumped out first with a message seemingly aimed at Democratic leaders in Washington who might favor candidates such as Mr. Allred and Mr. O’Rourke.
In his video, Mr. Virts said the party had failed to learn from its defeat to Mr. Trump in 2024.
“They cling to the same old bankrupt ideas, that they, and not voters, should pick our candidates,” he said. He seemed to refer to Vice President Kamala Harris being chosen to run after President Joseph R. Biden Jr. dropped out — and possibly to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee eventually picking someone for the Senate seat in Texas who isn’t him.
Mr. Virts, 57, was born in Maryland and served as a pilot in the Air Force, where he rose to become a colonel. He moved to Texas when he became an astronaut, and has been a commander on the International Space Station. Recently, he has worked as a consultant for an energy company based in Houston, NOV, and has delivered talks about his time as an astronaut and his photography from space.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
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