It finally happened.
For the first time in 38 years, a Democrat has been elected senator in Texas.
And for the first time in 36 years, a Democrat has been elected governor of Texas.
Riding a blue wave of anti-Trump sentiment, James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton in the traditional red state, fulfilling a decades-long dream come true for Democrats, while Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott to take the governor’s mansion.
“David wasn’t as big or as strong as Goliath but he had hope, he had faith and he had a slingshot.” Talarico told supporters at around 11:30 pm local time. “You were my slingshot.”
With final election results still coming in, both NBC and CNN called the race for Talarico. About 85 percent of the votes have been tallied as of late Tuesday night, and Talarico is up some 12 points. With the same count in, Hinojosa is up seven points, and CNN and NBC have now called that contest too.
The candidates’ performance was the result of a perfect storm of circumstances (as CNN’s Alyssa Farah Griffin said early in the evening, “If Texas were ever going to go blue, it’s now”).
There was, clearly, some of the strongest tailwinds for Democrats in years given widespread dissatisfaction with President Trump, who currently has some of the worst poll numbers of his political career.
There were the candidates themselves. Talarico is an unabashed Christian, telegenic and charismatic, making himself rather hard to dislike — even as the GOP spent an estimated $221 million on negative attack ads to brand him as a progressive radical. While Hinojosa ran a populist campaign focused on lowering household costs, raising teacher pay and challenging corporate influence in state government.
And finally, there were their opponents.
Paxton was considered a weak, scandal-prone candidate, one who’s been accused of corruption and adultery, and ran a low-energy campaign. Earlier this year, Paxton won a primary runoff against long-serving senator John Cornyn after Trump gave Paxton his endorsement, a move that was against the advice of GOP establishment insiders. It was an obvious error by Trump, as it would have been much tougher to imagine Talarico defeating Cornyn in November.
Abbott has served for nearly 12 years, and it’s tough to find Texans — even conservatives — who feel particularly warm towards him. Abbott has governed with so-what-who-cares style, yet until now managed to fend off challengers by presenting himself as the more practical choice.
The GOP rushed to Paxton’s defense, pumping a whopping $316 million in Republican-aligned outside spending into the Senate race to help him ward off Talarico, while the White House reportedly micromanaged his campaign remotely. Republicans also spent heavily to protect Abbott, whose campaign outspent Hinojosa’s nearly eight-to-one — $281 million to $36.8 million — according to The Texas Tribune. Elon Musk played a big role in both races, donating $158 million to a GOP Senate super PAC helping Paxton and another $5 million to Abbott’s campaign. Musk relocated to Texas in 2020 (and has since brought much of Tesla with him).
Even as voters nationwide cited affordability as their top concern, Republican attack ads heavily pushed culture-wars issues like transgender rights. Local news viewers — even in the liberal “blueberry in the tomato soup” city of Austin — were bombarded with two commercials for the senate campaign: One suggested Talarico would help make your kids trans, the other that Paxton would “protect” your kids. The ads had a stale quality — trying to re-run a GOP strategy from 2024 when Republicans made electoral gains.
Mailers sent to residents likewise declared that Hinojosa would introduce a state income tax “to pay for her socialist agenda.” And after Talarico took a highly publicized 12-day break from in-person campaigning due to the flu, Paxton’s campaign sent a mailer showing Talarico on a milk carton blazoned with “MISSING: Where’s James Talarico been? With the defund-the-police radicals in Austin.”
And so Texas voters crossed ideological lines to elect their first Democratic U.S. senator since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 and their first Democratic governor since Ann Richards in 1990
If you’ve spent some years in Texas (I’ve spent most of my life here since 1991, back when Ann Richards, the state’s last Democratic governor, was in office) you come to realize that much of Texans’ longtime reluctance to vote for Democrats has to do with contentment with the status quo as much as it has to do with conservative vs. liberal policies.
Since 1990, the population of Texas has grown 87 percent — 15 million residents — more than any other state in the union (including 8.6 million Hispanics, a statistic that’s helped fuel Dem dreams of flipping the state). But many people who move to Texas, or have always lived in Texas, are here because they like Texas. They like that there’s no state income tax, that authorities are tough on crime, that regulators are pro-business and that, in general, the government plays a distant background role in their everyday lives.
In other words, part of the reason Democrats have faced uphill battles in Texas is because Democrats run on advocating dramatic change, and most Texas voters aren’t looking for dramatic change. It’s always tougher to sell something people don’t feel they need.
This year, however, was different.
Trump’s dual unforced errors — his tariff policy and the ongoing Iran War — caused the cost of living to surge nationwide, all while coming across as callously indifferent to Americans’ economic suffering.
The average Texas voter may not love everything Talarico and Hinojosa stand for, but one suspects that plenty wanted to push back — punish, even — Trump and his polices, which Republicans in Congress have declined to stand up to. Anonymous GOP insiders have been in the press this last week preemptively blaming Trump for the expected electoral blowout. But when a fearful Congress doesn’t check and balance the executive branch, they’re arguably at fault too and should expect voters to give the other party a shot.
At an Oct. 24 rally, Trump made his latest comment expressing a lack of concern about the cost of living, saying he did not “give a damn” about high gas prices resulting in negative headlines because the oil and gas industry is “making a fortune.” That’s a pretty big misstep given high diesel prices have hit Texas particularly hard due the state’s trucking, agricultural and energy industries (Abbott even declared a statewide disaster over the prices in September). While it might not be typical Texas to vote Democrat, casting a vote that throws a punch at a president for having such a dismissive attitude about working people’s financial hardship? That’s about as Texas as it gets.
This is part of The Hollywood Reporter’s ongoing midterm coverage. You can check out all of our pieces here.