Tension over race and electability in the Democratic primary campaign for U.S. Senate in Texas burst to the surface this week over a comment attributed to one of the top candidates, James Talarico.
The comment, in a private conversation with a onetime supporter, did not focus on his main rival in the Democratic primary, U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett, who is Black. Instead, Mr. Talarico, a state representative who is white, was said to have disparaged another Black politician, former Representative Colin Allred, who dropped out of the Senate race in December, though the exact nature of the affront is in dispute.
“James Talarico told me that he signed up to run against a mediocre Black man, not a formidable and intelligent Black woman,” Morgan Thompson, a Dallas-area political content creator, said in a video over the weekend.
Mr. Talarico’s remark was then amplified by Mr. Allred, who responded in his own video.
The eruption of anger cracked the veneer of positivity that Democrats have attempted to maintain over the campaign, injecting a raw and politically sensitive debate over identity and race into the final weeks before a March 3 primary. National Democrats are watching it closely in hopes that the seat of Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, could be in play in November.
Early voting begins in Texas on Feb. 17.
Mr. Talarico confirmed in a statement that he had spoken with Ms. Thompson, who is Black, at a political event last month, but he said her description of his remark was a “mischaracterization.”
“In my praise of Congresswoman Crockett, I described Congressman Allred’s method of campaigning as mediocre,” he said in the statement. “I would never attack him on the basis of race.”
The infighting dampened a moment of enthusiasm among Democrats in Texas after their decisive upset victory in a State Senate special election on Saturday in a conservative corner of a critical battleground county.
Instead, the description of Mr. Allred as a “mediocre Black man” continued to ricochet across the Democratic political world on Tuesday, in large part because of Mr. Allred’s video.
“Maybe you used the word ‘mediocre’ because there was something creeping into your mind about yourself,” Mr. Allred said, looking into his phone camera. He concluded: “Go vote for Jasmine Crocket. This man should not be our nominee for the United States Senate.”
Ms. Crockett defended Mr. Allred on Monday during an interview with The Fort Worth Star Telegram’s editorial board. “I definitely don’t think there’s anything mediocre about Colin Allred,” she said. She also said she had never heard Mr. Talarico say anything “racial.”
“Have I ever experienced Talarico say anything like this? Absolutely not,” she said.
Ms. Thompson, who once supported Mr. Talarico but is now backing Ms. Crockett, said in a phone interview that the comment was made in the course of an off-the-record conversation with Mr. Talarico at a campaign event in Plano on Jan. 12.
“I went in with good intentions to have an honest conversation with him,” she said, adding that she had not seen a need to record the roughly 10-minute discussion. But the comment, she said, “did catch me off guard.”
She said she decided to make a video about it after becoming increasingly disillusioned with Mr. Talarico’s campaign and its supporters in recent weeks, leading her to revisit the conversation. “What I shared was a direct quote, not a mischaracterization,” she said in the interview, on Tuesday. “He did say those words exactly as I shared them.”
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Neither campaign made the candidates available for an interview on Tuesday. Mr. Allred also did not respond to a request for an interview.
In September, when he entered the Senate race, Mr. Talarico told The New York Times that he wanted to run a positive campaign and would critique other candidates “only if provoked.”
“I always have run positive races, you know,” Mr. Talarico said. “I only act in self-defense if necessary.”
A super PAC backing Mr. Talarico was expected to begin airing ads on television this week, according to a person with direct knowledge of the private planning of the group, Lone Star Rising PAC, who requested anonymity to discuss it.
Among Black supporters of Ms. Crockett in Texas, a debate that had been happening largely online and indirectly suddenly appeared to have burst into the mainstream in an unvarnished way. National Democrats have been saying out loud for weeks that Texans should choose Mr. Talarico because he would be more electable in the general election.
“When they talk about electability, it’s dog whistles, and it’s allusions to speaking about her race, speaking about her being a woman,” said Shea Jordan Smith, a Democratic political strategist in Houston who is Black and is supporting Ms. Crockett. “They want to call her ghetto and Black and trash so bad, but they don’t say that.”
The controversy erupted soon after fund-raising numbers came out over the weekend showing that Mr. Talarico had outperformed Ms. Crockett. And it came on the same day Mr. Talarico appeared on “The View,” saying that he disagreed with those who suggested that Ms. Crockett could not win a statewide race.
He said she could “absolutely” beat a Republican.
“She is a leader in our state,” he said, “and I’ve said before that if she wins this nomination, I will be behind her 1,000 percent.”
Polls have suggested a close race, and each candidate can point to endorsements. On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle announced its endorsement of Mr. Talarico. The San Antonio Express News endorsed Ms. Crockett last week.
Still, Mr. Talarico’s statement regarding his conversation with Ms. Thompson did little to tamp down the controversy. It only seemed to have prolonged the debate over race and electability and over the quality of Mr. Allred’s 2024 campaign for U.S. Senate, in which he lost to Senator Ted Cruz.
“When a former N.F.L. player, civil rights attorney and former congressman can be dismissed as ‘mediocre,’ it reveals the impossible standards Black candidates are held to,” Sandhya Raghavan, a spokeswoman for Mr. Allred, said of him. “Colin refused to accept that disrespect in silence — and in doing so, he stood up for every Black professional who has had their qualifications unfairly dismissed.”
Mr. Allred is now seeking to take back a House seat that he had given up to run against Mr. Cruz.
For much of Tuesday, surrogates and supporters of Mr. Talarico and Ms. Crockett continued to battle back and forth on social media. Some brought up past comments by Ms. Crockett that angered some Hispanic voters.
“Jasmine Crockett is literally on the record saying Latinos have a ‘slave mentality’ and there’s tape of her casting aspersions on ‘mediocre white boys,’” wrote Tré Easton, vice president for policy at the Searchlight Institute, a centrist Democratic research organization in Washington. “Like what are we even doing here? Do y’all want to try and flip the Senate or not?”
Vincent Evans, the executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, expressed exasperation on social media at a post criticizing Mr. Allred’s reaction as “self-serving.”
“Translation: ‘Black people, show up on Election Day. After that, be quiet,’” he wrote.
Some Democratic strategists worried that the debate was counterproductive and could undermine the party’s chances in November. But publicly, many tried to embrace the debate as the inevitable result of having two strong, young candidates in the primary, while cautioning that the real target remained the Republican candidate in the general election.
“Particularly coming off the heels of flipping a seat in Tarrant County, let’s make sure our focus is toward November 2026.” said Odus Evbagharu, the former Harris County Democratic Party chair and a candidate himself for the Texas House. “Keep our eyes on the prize.”
J. David Goodman is the Texas bureau chief for The Times, based in Houston.
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