Talarico, Paxton trade attacks as Texas Senate race turns bitter

James Talarico opened the Texas Senate general election with a packed Houston rally and a blunt attack on Ken Paxton, turning the contest into an early test of whether Democrats can make Texas competitive beyond their base. About 1,000 supporters filled a downtown dance club on Wednesday as Talarico, the Democratic nominee and a former middle school teacher and nonprofit director from Austin, argued that Paxton represents a broken political culture in Texas.

Paxton’s victory in the Republican runoff on Tuesday over four-term Sen. John Cornyn gave the race an immediate edge, and Talarico moved quickly to define the matchup around character rather than ideology. He cast Paxton as the face of corruption and said the Texas attorney general failed a basic character test, aiming to make Paxton’s long trail of scandal the central issue for suburban voters and younger Texans who could decide whether the state is merely competitive or still solidly Republican.

Talarico’s campaign enters the fall with momentum from the March 3 Democratic primary, where he defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett with 1,212,832 votes, or 52.4%. Paxton’s political strength was equally clear in his own primary, where he won 881,386 votes, or 40.7%, before advancing to the runoff and defeating Cornyn. Talarico’s campaign also says it raised $6.2 million in the first three weeks of his Senate bid, a haul that suggests Democrats are preparing to spend aggressively in a race that has already turned into a major money and messaging battle.

Paxton’s vulnerabilities are stark. The Texas House of Representatives impeached him in 2023 on 20 articles, and the Texas Senate later acquitted him of all 16 articles that went to trial, allowing him to remain in office. That record now sits at the center of Talarico’s effort to make the Republican nominee a liability rather than a standard-bearer.

The general election is set for November 3, 2026, and both parties see the contest as one of the marquee Senate races of the cycle. Democrats view Talarico as their best chance in years to win a Texas Senate seat, while Republicans are counting on Paxton’s loyal base to hold the line in a state that could help decide control of the U.S. Senate.