More than an hour and a half into a pop culture discussion that spanned a gay hockey rom-com and a shared love for Cher, two comedians briefly turned to politics on their popular podcast.
“Don’t waste your money sending to Jasmine Crockett. Do not do it,” Matt Rogers said during the “Las Culturistas” episode earlier this month. “She’s not going to win a Senate seat in Texas, you guys. If Beto O’Rourke couldn’t do it, Jasmine Crockett is not going to do it.”
The backlash was swift.
Legions of Crockett fans vented their rage on social media, calling the comments dismissive or even racist against a Black woman. Rogers apologized on Instagram a few days later, saying he has respect and admiration for the 44-year-old Democratic congresswoman vying for one of the year’s most hotly contested Senate seats.
“I just want us to win, and I will be better at finding ways to help,” he said.
The controversy is part of a larger Democratic disagreement about what makes a candidate “electable,” a term many party leaders have used in recent years to describe scripted, vetted, broadly acceptable contenders poised to capitalize on centrists’ anger with President Donald Trump. After a dismal 2024 performance, Democrats are deciding whether they should embrace more tempered candidates or more pugnacious firebrands in primaries from Maine to Michigan this year.
The long-running debate about whether the party should focus more on turning out its base or persuading the middle was scrambled in 2024, when Democrats alienated young, non-White and irregular voters who defected to Trump. Large Democratic constituencies acted like swing voters and would not have voted Democratic even if they had turned out to the polls, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.
“There’s always been a fight about who is electable and who is not,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said. “I don’t remember a time when there was such a debate about what electability is. Is it creating and mobilizing a base? Is it a record of accomplishments? Is it change?”
The tensions, which at times encompass race and gender, have been on display in Texas, a conservative state that underdog Democrats are hoping to put into play in their long-shot attempt to retake control of the Senate. The March 3 Democratic primary between Crockett and state lawmaker James Talarico, a 36-year-old Presbyterian seminarian who has amassed a large social media following in his own right, has divided Democrats across the country as they remain torn over how the party can rebound from its losses. It will pose an early test of which direction Democratic voters want to go.
To Crockett, the backlash she has received shows the power of her uniquely fiery style — an in-your-face brand that she thinks is necessary to reengage blue-leaning voters in Texas and give the party its best shot at winning a Senate seat that has eluded them for over 35 years.
“I really do think that the host said the quiet part out loud, which basically was: If a White man couldn’t do it, then why would a Black woman even have the audacity to think that she could?” Crockett said in an interview in the U.S. Capitol this month. “We’ve tried, I don’t know however many White men, and they’ve all lost. The only thing we know for sure is that a White man can lose.”
Crockett critics say their concerns are not about identity, but rather the provocative comments she has made excoriating Trump and his voters, which they worry will turn off people needed to win in a state that Trump carried by more than 14 percentage points. Rogers, the comedian who attracted her fans’ fury, said on his podcast that he was interested in Talarico because he seemed less “defined” as a liberal partisan in the red state.
In some ways, both Crockett and Talarico mark a departure from the kinds of cautious candidates Democratic leaders in Washington have sought to recruit in recent years. They have both built large online followings with viral political content. The two are stylistically different but are not neatly divided along ideological lines. Crockett has taken some heat from the left for taking donations from cryptocurrency and other industries in past campaigns, and the two appear to share similar mainstream Democratic policy stances on many issues.
Crockett said that her unfiltered style — which attracts both intense fans and detractors — is key to reaching out to less engaged voters, and that she believes in cultivating a brand as a person who tells the truth, even when it hurts.
“I get that I’m not a traditional candidate. And that’s exactly why I’m going to win,” Crockett said.
Many Republicans believe Crockett — who has called Trump a “piece of s—” and referred to the state’s Republican governor, who uses a wheelchair, as “Hot Wheels”— is unelectable in Texas. House Speaker Mike Johnson called it “one of the greatest things that’s happened to the Republican Party in a long, long time” when she entered the race. The Republican Senate campaign arm even added her name to their polls of the race last year and texted Texas Democrats to encourage her to run, as NOTUS first reported, wagering that she would be the easiest to beat.
Crockett said she doesn’t believe in the “mythical Republican crossover” and does not believe people she calls “Trumpers,” meaning hardcore Trump supporters, will vote for her. She argues, however, that she will attract the support of some who voted for Trump in the last election, including young people and Black men who drifted his way. She said she will be focused on turning out the state’s diverse but infrequent voters.
“I tell people all the time that the state of Texas does not look like Iowa. It looks more like California,” Crockett said. “In fact, it is more diverse than California.” (In the 2020 Census, Texas’s population was 38.7 percent White non-Hispanic, compared with 33.6 percent for California).
Ron Kirk, the former Democratic secretary of state of Texas who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2002, said Crockett’s “electric personality” will help her bring in new voters. But he added that it’s vital to reach out to “independents and disaffected Republicans” in a statewide run if Democrats are ever going to win. “I’ve been waiting 30 years for us to close that gap,” he said.
Talarico, for his part, has created his own viral moments and fired up left-leaning voters through critiques of how some Republicans interpret Christianity. He has also touted his appeal among swing and red-leaning voters — he won his mostly White state House district in 2018 even as the Republican governor also carried it. (After redistricting, he shifted to representing a new, far bluer district that is majority minority.) Crockett’s majority-minority Dallas district is solidly blue.
“Ending 30 years of one-party rule in Texas requires a campaign that energizes the Democratic base, turns out new voters and welcomes Trump voters who are now feeling conned,” said Talarico spokesman JT Ennis.
Talarico also has made appeals to Latino voters and garnered the endorsement of Tejano singer and congressional candidate Bobby Pulido — while Crockett has faced questions over year-old remarks to Vanity Fair when she said some Latino voters who support Trump’s immigration policies have a “slave mentality.”
Many prominent Democrats are staying out of the intraparty fight, saying they believe either could win.
“I don’t know that I buy the conventional wisdom about either of them,” said Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat who came within 3 percentage points of winning a Senate seat there in 2018, and who has not endorsed in the race. “I really don’t think we have a bad outcome out of this primary.”
Public polling in the race thus far is scant, and the polls released so far have variously shown Crockett and Talarico in the lead.
“In order to win in a state like Texas, all the stars have to align,” said Texas pollster Nancy Zdunkewicz, who is not working on either campaign. The candidate would need to energize Democrats, win over the vast majority of independents and, on top of that, convert some Republican voters as well.
What makes that a particular challenge for Crockett, she believes, is that Republicans dislike her with special intensity — and in larger numbers than the Democrats in the state who like her with intensity. “It’s a recipe for countermobilization,” she said. “James doesn’t have this issue.”
She described Crockett as a “Marjorie Taylor Greene of the left.” (The right-wing lawmaker, who later became a Trump critic and recently left Congress, once made fun of Crockett’s eyelashes during a congressional hearing. That prompted the Texan to retort that Greene had a “bleach-blonde, bad-built butch body.”)
Crockett said she has heard most of the objections and brushed them off.
“My theory of the case is this: If you believe we’re going to lose anyway then what difference does it make if it’s me or anybody else?” Crockett said. “If you think it’s a losing cause, then who cares? But at least you could say we tried something new and we learned something from this experience.”
Crockett suggested her authenticity and ability to “fit into any room that you throw me into” will allow her to reach nonvoters in Texas and bring them into the primary and general election. Her unfiltered style, which she called “liberating,” is why people trust her, she said. On a recent tour through Houston, San Antonio and South Texas, she manned the DJ booths at Houston clubs as a way to attract younger voters.
“I don’t have to send a surrogate to the clubs for me. I can go myself,” Crockett said. “At the same time, by Sunday I was in the church praising the Lord.”
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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