U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett on Monday jumped into the race for Senate, upending an high-stakes Democratic primary that now pits two of the fastest rising stars in the Texas Democratic Party against each other.
Crockett filed her paperwork to run with the state party ahead of an official announcement expected Monday afternoon. The move comes on the final day to declare as a candidate for the March 3 primary and after weeks of speculation that she would join the contest. Earlier on Monday, former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred bowed out of the race and filed instead to run for his old congressional seat.
That leaves the Senate primary a winner-take-all bid between the 44-year-old Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico, 36, of Austin. The race has already captured national attention for the right to face the winner of a grueling Republican primary featuring four-term incumbent John Cornyn, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston.
By entering the Senate primary, Crockett and Talarico will either advance to one of the most watched contests of the 2026 midterms, or end — for now — each’s promising political careers. Talarico is forsaking what would appear to be an easy reelection campaign for a fifth term in the Texas House while Crockett is walking away from a short, meteoric rise in the U.S. House, during which she has become a frequent target of Republicans and President Donald Trump.
A bitter primary could further complicate the state Democratic Party’s chances of ending its decades-long drought in in statewide elections, said University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus.
The upside for either Crockett or Talarico, he added, is that the winner will emerge from the primary both battle-tested and well known to voters in November.
“There is this theory in primaries that iron sharpens iron,” Rottinghaus said. “But sometimes, that can be very painful.”
Talarico, who entered the Senate race in September, has built a national following through social media and a willingness to appear on venues all but written off by most Democrats. A Presbyterian seminarian and a former schoolteacher, Talarico has sparred with Fox News hosts on issues ranging from partisan gerrymandering to immigration and spoken openly about his Christian faith in a 2 1/2-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
Crockett, the daughter of a minister, is an attorney who graduated from the University of Houston Law Center. She served one term in the Texas House before being elected in 2022 to the congressional seat vacated by long-serving Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson. If she were elected, Crockett would become Texas’ first female Democrat to serve in the U.S. Senate, and the state’s first Black senator.
While Talarico tends to be a practitioner of the art of persuasion, Crockett brings a decidedly more confrontational style to the campaign. She has openly sparred with Trump, calling the president a “piece of sh**” and being accused by him in turn as having a “low IQ.”
Recent polling has shown that Crockett is better known than Talarico, but also that she has more political baggage. Nearly half of respondents in a statewide poll last month said they would “definitely not” vote for Crockett, compared to 40% for Talarico.
Whoever the Democrats send up in the general election, the candidate will start off as the underdog. The party has not elected a U.S. senator from Texas since 1988 and has not won a statewide race since 1994.