There have been dueling ads over a candidate’s personal life, allegations of racism and more negative mailers than anyone can count.
The Senate battles in Texas have taken on a testy tenor as they barrel toward Tuesday’s primaries, with both major parties divided by closely watched and increasingly personal races.
In the Democratic primary, Representative Jasmine Crockett, a fiery former public defender, is facing State Representative James Talarico, a seminarian who has put his Christian faith at the center of his politics.
In the Republican race, Senator John Cornyn, an occasional critic of President Trump, is trying to fend off challenges from Representative Wesley Hunt, a Trump-aligned former Army helicopter pilot, and Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, who has cultivated a following in the MAGA base.
“It’s a dandy,” said Vinny Minchillo, a Dallas-area Republican consultant, adding: “Our intraparty battles are always very nasty. This one is meaner just because of the scale of it.”
Here are five feisty moments from the campaign.
Family Business
Since last Wednesday, a Cornyn-aligned group has been running a minute-long TV ad with a voice-over that describes Mr. Paxton as “crooked,” calling him a “wife cheater and fraud.”
Mr. Paxton’s wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year, accusing Mr. Paxton in a court document of having had an extramarital affair. (Mr. Paxton responded by saying that his marriage had been strained by the pressure of public life. He requested privacy.)
Mr. Paxton, in turn, released an ad framing himself as a family man. Announcing the release of the commercial, Mr. Paxton hit back at Mr. Cornyn.
“My kids know I’m running for Senate because I’m fighting for them and their children’s future,” Mr. Paxton wrote on social media. “Unlike John Cornyn, who’s become a desperate shell of a man clinging to power, my campaign is not about attacking someone else’s family.”
‘Top-Notch Hater’
Ms. Crockett has earned a reputation as a partisan brawler. But in one case she wound up at odds not with a rival candidate but with a magazine feature writer.
The journalist, Elaine Godfrey of The Atlantic, reported last week that she was covering a Crockett event in Lubbock when she was confronted by a campaign staff member, as she tried to join other reporters speaking with the candidate.
Ms. Godfrey was told she was being ejected because she was a “top-notch hater” and would “spin” the event, she wrote in The Atlantic. (Ms. Godfrey had previously written a profile of Ms. Crockett.) Ms. Godfrey said that she had been escorted out of the event by guards and left on the edge of a county road.
Ms. Crockett told CBS News that there was “no evidence” of Ms. Godfrey’s account. “Nothing like that happened,” she said.
Later Ms. Godfrey published audio of the exchange at the event.
A Former Candidate Is Pulled Back In
Former Representative Colin Allred, a Dallas Democrat who gave up his House seat in 2024 to run for Senate, had once been running for Senate this cycle, too. He left the race in December, just as Ms. Crockett was getting in, and he is now running for the House.
Still, Mr. Allred found himself back in the center of the Senate race last month, when a political content creator, Morgan Thompson, accused Mr. Talarico of describing Mr. Allred as a “mediocre Black man.”
In a TikTok video, Ms. Thompson asserted that Mr. Talarico had said he was now running against a “formidable and intelligent Black woman.” She said Mr. Talarico had made the comment at a campaign event in January.
Mr. Talarico said that Ms. Thompson had mischaracterized his remark, that he had described Mr. Allred’s campaign as mediocre and that he would not criticize Mr. Allred on the basis of race.
In a video he posted on social media, Mr. Allred told Mr. Talarico to “keep my name out of your mouth.”
“If you want to compliment Black women, just do it, just do it,” Mr. Allred said. “Don’t do it while also tearing down a Black man.”
Ms. Crockett told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial board, “I definitely don’t think there’s anything mediocre about Colin Allred.”
A Bipartisan Scolding
Mr. Hunt, a late entrant in the race who has often been absent in Congress during the campaign, scrambled back to Washington in January to help House Republicans halt a resolution that would have barred Mr. Trump from unilaterally taking military action in Venezuela.
Mr. Hunt’s campaign sought to present his return as a heroic act in support of his party, which has a razor-thin majority in the House.
“In the middle of his campaign to retire a 40-year career politician, John Cornyn, Congressman Wesley Hunt left the campaign trail, rushed to Washington, and cast the decisive vote,” a statement from the campaign said.
But members of both parties seemed less impressed by Mr. Hunt, who had missed 55 of the previous 58 votes.
Representative Pat Ryan, a New York Democrat, called the Republicans’ 22-minute wait for Mr. Hunt to arrive from the airport “pathetic.”
And a spokesman for Mr. Cornyn, Matt Mackowiak, said Mr. Hunt needed “to do his job” and had put “selfish political ambitions before his responsibilities.”
The Cornyn campaign created the website WheresWesleyHunt.com, which shows Mr. Hunt in the striped red-and-white shirt of the main character from the “Where’s Waldo?” children’s book series.
‘Ugly Things’
Ms. Crockett has objected to mailers that her campaign claims were sent by a group backing Mr. Talarico and darkened her skin.
“It is straight-up racist,” Ms. Crockett told reporters in Dallas in mid-February.
Asked if she blamed Mr. Talarico for the mailers, she said: “Usually when you’re behind that’s when you start to do ugly things.”
A spokesman for Mr. Talarico’s campaign, JT Ennis, said, “They’re not our mailers.”
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