The Democratic Party candidate, James Talarico, has won the elections for the United States Senate for the state of Texas against the Republican Ken Paxton, in the midterm elections held this Tuesday. The first projections point to a Upper House that could come under Democratic control.
Until now, the last elected Democratic senator from Texas had been Lloyd Bentsen, in 1988. With this victory, Talarico becomes the first member of his party to win a race for the federal Senate in this territory in the last 38 years.
The state of Texas was won by United States President Donald Trump by nearly 14 points in 2024. The seat that was held by the Republican John Cornyn was among the positions that Democrats needed to win in order to regain a majority in the Senate.
Ken Paxton, the current Texas attorney general, defeated Cornyn in the runoff of the Republican primaries, with the explicit backing of Trump, and thus became the first senator from Texas to lose the option to be renominated since 1970. In 2023, Paxton faced impeachment proceedings over allegations of bribery and corruption, from which he was ultimately acquitted by the state Senate.
Talarico presents himself as the closest possible version to progressivism in Texas’s political landscape, a Christian democrat whose website works as an ideological manifesto. "It’s time to turn over the tables," he proclaims, evoking the biblical episode of Jesus in the temple taken over by merchants.