Jasmine Crockett, a fiery second-term congresswoman and former public defender, is one of two leading contenders in the Democratic primary for Senate in Texas on Tuesday.
Here are five things to know about Ms. Crockett, 44, of Dallas.
1. She has built a large social media following. Ms. Crockett has more than 500,000 followers on X, where she is known to quote rap lyrics by Tupac Shakur; and more than two million on Instagram, where she sometimes shares images of herself at football games. But her most popular account may be on TikTok. There, one of her videos, which shows her using an obscenity to express her feelings about Elon Musk, reeled in more than 20 million views.
2. She has a history of making provocative comments. Ms. Crockett once told Vanity Fair that Democrats should “take a page or two, or three or four, out of Donald Trump’s book,” and she has thrilled her fans by directing cutting insults toward Republicans. But her name-calling has also drawn some blowback: She was criticized by disability rights groups last year after she referred to her state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair, as “Governor Hot Wheels.” Ms. Crockett defended the nickname, saying in a statement that she had been “thinking about the planes, trains and automobiles he used to transfer migrants” to cities with Black leaders. She also suggested in the Vanity Fair interview that pro-Trump Hispanic voters had “almost like a slave mentality” on immigration, a comment that has drawn criticism.
3. She has been outspoken in her criticism of party leadership. After Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, broke with most of his party last year to allow a Republican-led spending bill to pass, Ms. Crockett did not hold back. “He’s absolutely wrong,” Ms. Crockett told CNN, shaking her head.
4. She suggested that efforts to question her electability represented a “dog whistle” to highlight her race. And Ms. Crockett objected to mailers that her campaign claimed had darkened her skin and were sent by a group backing her Democratic opponent James Talarico, a state legislator. “It is straight-up racist,” she told reporters. Mr. Talarico’s campaign said it had no involvement with the creation of the mailer.
5. She made a splash at an African American film festival last summer on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. The event included a discussion with some high-profile people, including the Rev. Al Sharpton and Representative Ayanna Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts. But it was Ms. Crockett who brought the house down. “I don’t care who you are, you are getting stomped on in some way,” Ms. Crockett said onstage, railing against the Trump administration. “No matter how much money you got, if you’re Black, for sure, they are stomping on us.” In an interview last week, Mr. Sharpton said Ms. Crockett spoke in a “language that anyone, from the streets to the suites, can understand.”
Yola Mzizi contributed reporting.
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