James Talarico, a 37-year-old Democratic state legislator, has won the race to become the next senator from Texas, The Associated Press said on Tuesday. He defeated a scandal-plagued Republican to end a three-decade drought for Democrats in one of the nation’s largest states.
The victory immediately vaulted Mr. Talarico into the political stratosphere as one of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars after he accomplished the generational dream of turning Texas blue.
Mr. Talarico toppled Ken Paxton, the Republican state attorney general and a close ally of President Trump, after a bruising and costly campaign. Mr. Talarico survived an onslaught of advertising financed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who poured about $200 million into various efforts to keep the Texas seat in Republican hands.
Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance campaigned repeatedly for Mr. Paxton in a state that the president coasted to victory in just two years ago. Mr. Trump tried calling Mr. Talarico “Talafreako” and cast him as outside the mainstream.
But it was not enough to save Mr. Paxton.
Mr. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, ran on a platform that sought to redefine the traditional divides in America as not “left versus right” but rather “top versus bottom.” And he used Mr. Musk’s unprecedented gusher of spending to further his own case as a disrupter of a broken status quo.
Mr. Paxton, 63, beat the state’s current Republican senator, John Cornyn, this spring after a prolonged primary fight by mobilizing the party’s still-potent MAGA base. Mr. Paxton had spent years courting Mr. Trump, including amplifying the president’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Republican officials, including Mr. Cornyn, had warned loudly that nominating Mr. Paxton would jeopardize the seat because of his laundry list of scandals and vulnerabilities. Mr. Trump ignored them and backed Mr. Paxton in his runoff against Mr. Cornyn anyway.
Mr. Paxton’s history of controversy is long.
He was once indicted on felony charges of securities fraud. His wife has accused him of infidelity. And he was impeached three years ago — with the support of numerous Texas Republican lawmakers — on accusations of bribery and abusing his office, though he was ultimately acquitted by the State Senate.
Mr. Talarico called Mr. Paxton “the most corrupt politician in America” and barnstormed the state with a Christianity-infused message of bipartisanship and bringing the state together. He pushed for term limits and banning congressional stock trading, and against corruption in general. He captured the imaginations of small Democratic donors online, putting him on track to raise well more than $150 million, more than any other Democrat in the 2026 midterms.
An eighth-generation Texan, Mr. Talarico campaigned on his deep ties to the state, telling the story of his mother, who left his abusive father when he was young. He first won election to the state House of Representatives in 2018, but his district was redrawn by Republicans. He eventually switched to a safer seat that now includes the liberal stronghold of Austin.
Mr. Talarico burst into view nationally in the summer of 2025 following an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, with Mr. Rogan telling him at one point that he should “run for president.” Then, when Texas legislative Democrats fled the state by plane to try to forestall a Republican effort to redraw the state’s congressional lines, Mr. Talarico became a fixture on cable news programs, showcasing his media savvy.
In the primary, those skills would help him to outlast the 2024 Senate nominee, Colin Allred, who dropped out, and defeat Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Dallas Democrat and one of the party’s social media stars in her own right.
The general election was brutal. Mr. Musk’s money funded a barrage of ads. By the end of the race, the PAC funded by Mr. Musk had paid for all six of the most expensive political ads in the country this election, according to AdImpact, the advertising tracking firm.
Many slammed Mr. Talarico for his past support for transgender rights. Mr. Talarico tried to push back. “I don’t support sex change surgeries for kids,” he said in one ad of his own.
By the fall, advertising in Texas became so prohibitively expensive and the airwaves so cluttered that some groups began airing commercials nationally during football games rather than booking ads in each of the state’s many, pricey media markets.
Mr. Talarico and Mr. Paxton never debated, even as Mr. Trump called for such a face-off.
Mr. Trump campaigned repeatedly for Mr. Paxton but also commented cuttingly on his looks, including at the Republicans’ rare midterm convention, which was held in Dallas.
“I don’t like the way Ken dresses,” Mr. Trump said at one point. “I don’t really like the way Ken talks,” he said at another, before calling him the “greatest” state attorney general in the country.
Yet Republicans never fully united after the bitter primary, with Mr. Cornyn notably never endorsing Mr. Paxton even as he raised money for other Senate Republican candidates. He instead criticized Mr. Paxton’s skills and work ethic.
Mr. Talarico become the first Democrat to win statewide since 1994 — the same year that George W. Bush, the future president, won the governorship — and the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since former Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
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