U.S. President Donald Trump with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in Corpus Christi, Texas, U.S., February 27, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Democratic insiders often joke that for their party, Texas is like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football in the "Peanuts" cartoons. Brown famously kept hoping that Lucy would finally give him a chance to kick a football only for her to repeatedly pull the football away when he was ready to kick it — and in Texas, the "football" that "Lucy" keeps pulling away from Democrats is a victory in a statewide race.
The last time a Democrat won a gubernatorial election in Texas was Ann Richards in 1990, and Texas' last Democratic U.S. senator, Bob Krueger, left office in 1993. Democrats perform well in Texas' major cities — from Austin to Houston to El Paso — and in certain congressional districts, but they struggle in statewide races.
Yet some prominent conservatives, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota), Washington Post columnist George Will and former White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, believe that Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race could be in play for Democrats if incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) isn't the nominee and Democrats have the right candidate. Democrats now have a nominee in that race: centrist James Talarico, who defeated the more progressive Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) in an early March primary. But it remains to be seen whether Cornyn or the far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will be the Republican nominee.
During an appearance on The New Republic's "The Daily Blast" podcast posted on March 5, veteran Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett laid out the challenges that members of his party face in the Lone Star State. Hackett believes that Talarico is electable, but he was also candid about why Texas is such a struggle for Democrats in statewide races.
"Republicans have done a fantastic job of suppressing the vote in Texas, of keeping voters at home, of making it extremely difficult to vote in the state," Hackett told host Greg Sargent. "And that's why Texas, I think, today has one of the lowest voter participation rates in the country. Texas also has a lot of unaffiliated independent voters out there who have tended over the years to vote Republican. Those voters, I think, in large part, make up areas in the suburbs outside of the major cities and in parts of rural Texas."
Hackett continued, "Texas has a lot of counties, and Democrats have to compete in all of those counties if they want to win. Democrats have not built the infrastructural support needed to compete in every county throughout Texas the way that Republicans have. I mean, they have 30 years of voter suppression and organization that have brought them to this point and kept Democrats out of power for 30 years. If Democrats want to win, they have to go everywhere. They have to compete everywhere. They have to maximize their voters. They have to divide Republican voters, and they have to win over the sizable number — 15 percent or more — of unaffiliated independent voters that are often in the rural and suburban parts of Texas."
Hackett emphasized that if Democrats are going to win statewide races in Texas, they will need the right coalition.
"I think the headline coming out of this primary cycle — beyond Talarico's victory, beyond Paxton and Cornyn headed to this runoff — is kind of the winning Democratic coalition being reassembled, in part thanks to Trump pushing voters toward Democrats, whether that's Latino voters who showed up big time yesterday for James Talarico, or Black voters who turned out strongly for Crockett in a lot of these key areas across Texas," Hackett told Sargent. "I think if Talarico is able to reassemble that winning coalition — if he's able to keep Latino voters on board in the general election, which honestly I think will be dependent on Trump and how he presents his agenda for the next few months — but also, if Talarico is able to make inroads and bring those Crockett voters into the fold of his coalition, if he's able to keep that message that has been resonating in the suburban parts of the state outside of these big cities, among independent swing voters across Texas, of which there are very many."
The Democratic strategist added, "He has shown that he has the ability to assemble this coalition, but he’s going to have to maximize turnout among those key constituencies —Latino voters, Black voters, and I think young voters too."
