U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico is the lone Democrat leading in a major statewide race, according to a survey released Tuesday by Texas Southern University’s Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center.
Talarico, a state representative from Round Rock, is facing GOP nominee Ken Paxton, the current Texas attorney general, in the November 3 election. Texas voters haven’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in 32 years.
Rice University political science professor Mark Jones, who conducted and analyzed the survey with TSU professor Michael Adams, said Paxton should be worried.
“Democrats smell blood in the water,” Jones said. “Paxton is not a good retail politician when that retail has to be carried out among November voters. He’s very good when he’s in friendly, small Republican conservative settings where no one asks any tough questions and he can effectively just rehash basic talking points.”
“Talarico is the one Democrat who Texans really know,” Jones added. “That’s pretty impressive. Over the course of the past year, he’s gone from being a virtual unknown to a household name.”
A separate TSU survey, also released Tuesday, shows that 77 percent of Black voters think the Texas Democratic Party takes them for granted, but only 7 percent said they are less likely to vote in November due to Jasmine Crockett’s loss to Talarico in the March primary.
Talarico has struggled to win over some Black voters who were disappointed that Crockett, a Black U.S. representative from Dallas, lost the primary by 6 percentage points. However, many voters have chosen to set their feelings aside to ensure that Paxton doesn’t win in November.
At a town hall meeting in southwest Houston on July 19, Kandice Webber, a former lead organizer with Black Lives Matter Houston, confronted Talarico over his alleged shortcomings in outreach to Black voters, expressing frustration that the event was scheduled to wrap after only a few questions were asked.
“Black people don’t trust you for this reason,” Webber said at the town hall. “And you cannot win without us. So you stay here, you answer our questions, or you suffer the consequences.”
Talarico stayed and answered questions. Webber, a social media influencer with more than 22,000 followers, later posted a series of videos referring to Talarico as a “mediocre white boy” and suggesting that he should work to earn the votes of the Black community. She also mentioned that she loathes Ken Paxton, a sentiment that appears to be growing stronger among voters from both parties, as evidenced by the TSU report.
Jones said Talarico doesn’t have much to worry about when it comes to securing African American support. “They’re still going to turn out in large numbers to vote for James Talarico,” he said. “Part of that is because of Donald Trump’s approval rating among Black voters. It’s about as low as you can get.”
Many have criticized Paxton for adultery, abuse of power and fraud that led to being impeached by the Texas House of Representatives, including members of his own party in 2023. Talarico has faced backlash for being too far left for the moderates and undecideds and for saying that “God is nonbinary” during a 2021 House debate over gender identity in K-12 sports.
While Talarico acknowledged he used “provocative” wording, he claims that the statement wasn’t controversial theologically and that “most Christians believe God is beyond gender.” He further noted that the comment was rooted in his Christian beliefs and his support for transgender Texans.
In a rare show of support for Donald Trump on Monday, Talarico issued a statement on the Texas THC ban, saying he backs the President’s call for an end to needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of personal-use marijuana.
“I’m asking Texas Republicans to oppose the cartels, stand with President Trump and reverse this crazy ban,” Talarico said, noting that the prohibition, which became effective August 1, is a “gift to the cartels.”
Paxton has been endorsed by Trump and was acquitted three years ago by the state Senate on the impeachable charges of corruption and abuse of office. He’s generally been able to ride the coattails of Gov. Greg Abbott in past elections, but he can’t simply rely on the R next to his name in his campaign against Talarico, Jones said.
“About one in 10 Republicans are not in support of Ken Paxton,” Jones said. “Ken Paxton has a long history of ignoring the media and not holding press conferences. Holding a press conference where the main takeaway is not the message of border security or overall law and order but your refusal to answer questions about a host of other issues, that’s a problem. Going to England on July 4 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States with your paramour is not a particularly smart political move.”
The TSU survey that shows Talarico leading Paxton in the U.S. Senate race polled 1,200 Texas voters. The report on Black Texans included responses from 500 people.
Results showed that Talarico was leading the U.S. Senate race over Paxton by 2 percentage points. GOP nominees Abbott (governor), Dan Patrick (lieutenant governor), Mayes Middleton (attorney general), Don Huffines (comptroller), Dawn Buckingham (land commissioner), and Bo French (railroad commissioner) were leading their races.
The other report, “The State of Black Voter Opinion in Texas: Between Jasmine Crockett’s March Primary Defeat and the November U.S. Senate Election,” found that 80 percent of Black Texans believe Crockett’s race played an important role in influencing the decisions of non-Black primary voters to not vote for Crockett in the March primary.
Sixty-one percent of Black voters say Crockett’s loss in March had no impact on their likelihood of voting in November. According to the survey, Black voters have an 84 percent favorable rating of Crockett, a 71 percent favorable rating of Talarico, an 11 percent favorable rating of Paxton and an 8 percent favorable rating of Trump.
