James Talarico, a 36-year-old state legislator who was a virtual unknown only months ago, won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Texas, according to The Associated Press, as his party’s voters put their faith in him to pursue an elusive decades-long goal of turning the state blue.
On the Republican side, national party leaders bought a May runoff election for Senator John Cornyn of Texas, for the price of at least $70 million.
The results in Texas — final for the Democrats, interim for the Republicans — set up a bruising election year in one of the nation’s biggest and most politically complex states.
Mr. Cornyn, 74, must navigate a costly 80-plus day sprint to deliver what he promised on Tuesday would be “judgment day” for Ken Paxton, the state attorney general and a right-wing rival he plainly disdains. He is seeking his fifth term.
Mr. Talarico finished ahead of Representative Jasmine Crockett, a liberal firebrand, who had yet to concede when The A.P. called the race after 2:30 a.m. Eastern. She had earlier pointed to voting problems in Dallas, her hometown, and said that people had been “disenfranchised.”
The primaries exposed the divisions in both parties — and Republicans are staring down another acrimonious stretch of a campaign that has already featured talk of infidelity, indictment and impeachment.
Here are six takeaways from the consequential first night of primaries in the 2026 midterms:
Cornyn’s fight for survival went into overtime.
Allies of Mr. Cornyn said they had one goal all along: Get to a runoff. After Representative Wesley Hunt entered the Senate race last fall as a well-known third candidate, Cornyn supporters knew it would be challenging for anyone to clear 50 percent.
In reality, Team Cornyn wanted not just to make the runoff, but also to keep Mr. Paxton close. The margin mattered because the primary within the primary has been — and will continue to be — wooing President Trump. And he has long been reluctant to risk his endorsement on people he fears will lose.
Mr. Cornyn was hovering around 42 percent of the vote with 88 percent of ballots counted as of 3 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, compared with 41 percent for Mr. Paxton.
Team Cornyn succeeded in staying competitive — even if it cost more than $71 million in ads. AdImpact, a media tracking firm, said that was the most in history for a Senate incumbent in a primary.
The runoff will be held the Tuesday after Memorial Day, a day that Paxton allies believe will benefit him because his more impassioned supporters are likelier to turn out after a holiday.
The extended race is unwelcome for national Republicans, who have warned for months that Mr. Paxton’s scandal-filled history — he has been indicted, impeached and divorced by his wife “on biblical grounds” — would put the seat in jeopardy.
In Talarico, Democrats pick faith over a fighter.
The matchup between Mr. Talarico’s Bible-infused message of bridging divides and Ms. Crockett’s fiery stance as a fighter could not have provided a clearer contrast in styles.
Mr. Talarico’s victory showed that Democratic voters, even in this moment of intense fear and frustration with the Trump administration, can be drawn in by a message of inclusion.
“The people of our state gave this country a little bit of hope,” Mr. Talarico said in a speech early Wednesday, before the race had been called. “And a little bit of hope is a dangerous thing.”
Republicans had quietly worked to encourage Ms. Crockett to run, seeing her as a weaker general-election candidate. Gov. Greg Abbott even featured her in late television ads.
But Mr. Talarico prevailed, leading Ms. Crockett by about 53 percent to 46 percent as of 3 a.m. Eastern. The result raised the possibility of a Talarico-Paxton contest that Republicans, privately and publicly, said they feared could put the state in play this fall.
Republicans immediately sought to cast Mr. Talarico as “too radical” for Texas — as they faced their own dragged-out primary.
The Republican runoff could be a ‘red wedding.’
For months, Mr. Cornyn has prosecuted an argument that Mr. Paxton is unelectable. It has been a tough sell. Mr. Paxton, after all, is a sitting statewide official. It’s hard to say someone can’t win when they have won before.
But Mr. Cornyn and his allies appear prepared for a sharper message in a runoff, with Mr. Hunt out of the race. The Senate G.O.P. campaign arm gave a preview with a recent ad calling Mr. Paxton a “wife-cheater and fraud.” Chris LaCivita, an adviser to a leading pro-Cornyn super PAC, used an expletive on social media to warn Mr. Paxton of the “second wave” of attacks coming.
Democrats are delighted about the possibility of a prolonged Republican fight, and many are not-so-quietly rooting for Mr. Paxton.
Mr. Paxton’s super PAC tried to invert the electability argument in a memo on Tuesday, saying that he was in fact “the strongest general election candidate.” Mr. Cornyn, the memo said, had “lost the trust of the Republican base” and spending more to prop him would only delay the inevitable. “The time to unite is now,” it urged.
Unity may be elusive.
In a pre-election interview, Matt Mackowiak, a Cornyn adviser, compared the coming runoff to a famously shocking and bloody scene from the show “Game of Thrones.”
“The red wedding,” Mr. Mackowiak said, “begins in early to mid-March.”
Democrats are dreaming of a big 2026.
Texas looms large in the Democratic imagination, even if national leaders say it is unlikely to be a key part of the party’s path to a Senate majority. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, has said that seats in Alaska, Maine, Ohio and North Carolina are his party’s best bets to flip this year.
But Mr. Paxton’s vulnerabilities and Mr. Talarico’s unique ability to fund-raise — he raised more money online in the second half of 2025 than Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York — have some party strategists hoping they can compete without diverting resources from other states.
One other part of Tuesday’s results was encouraging for Democrats: their turnout.
In North Carolina, neither party’s Senate primary was contested, but roughly 200,000 more people cast ballots in the Democratic primary than the Republican primary. Democrats nominated former Gov. Roy Cooper, while Republicans chose Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman, in a race that is expected to be one of the nation’s most hard-fought and expensive.
Democratic incumbents got a scare.
The Tuesday elections represented the first test of Democratic voters’ appetite for tossing out an older generation of lawmakers in favor of new, younger faces.
The results were worrying for the old guard — but hardly decisive.
In Texas, Representative Christian Menefee, 37, who won a special election to join the House a few weeks ago, was locked in a close race with Representative Al Green, 78, who has served for more than two decades. The two men were running for the same Houston seat after Republicans last year eliminated one Democratic district in the city. As of early Wednesday, both were below 50 percent, a result that would force a May runoff.
In North Carolina, the race between Representative Valerie Foushee, 69, and Nida Allam, 32, a county commissioner, was excruciatingly close, with Ms. Foushee clinging to a narrow lead. A recount seemed possible.
Representative Julie Johnson of Texas was trailing her predecessor, former Representative Colin Allred. Another Texas Democrat, Representative Sylvia Garcia, fended off a challenger comfortably.
In other words, the first day of results wasn’t a resounding rejection of Democratic incumbents. But most lawmakers tend to coast through primaries, and the results suggested a potential rocky road ahead.
A once-rising G.O.P. star was toppled by the hard right.
Representative Dan Crenshaw arrived in Washington after the 2018 elections with the résumé and look of a rising Republican star: a charismatic, Harvard-educated retired Navy SEAL who wore a distinctive eye patch after losing his right eye during a deployment.
But on Tuesday, he lost a Republican primary to a challenger who ran to his right after Mr. Crenshaw spent years irritating the MAGA wing of his own party and occasionally breaking with Mr. Trump. He was the only House member in the state’s Republican delegation not to receive Mr. Trump’s endorsement.
One other Republican, Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas, was forced into a runoff with Brandon Herrera, a gun activist and YouTube personality. Mr. Gonzales is mired in an ugly scandal involving allegations that he pressured a staff member into a sexual relationship; she later killed herself.
Mr. Crenshaw’s defeat at the hands of Steve Toth, a state representative, was a reminder of the power of Mr. Trump’s endorsement — even its absence. Mr. Trump did not back anyone in the race, but Mr. Crenshaw had other enemies: Senator Ted Cruz of Texas recorded a late ad backing Mr. Toth.
Mr. Crenshaw had spent years proudly antagonizing his hard-right colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus, calling them “performance artists” and “grifters.”
On Tuesday, the group got the last laugh after endorsing Mr. Toth.
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
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