When Texas last sent a Democrat to the Senate in 1988, James Talarico had not been born. Since then, the state has been turning deeper shades of red.
In Mr Talarico’s lifetime (and he’s 37), no Democrat had won a statewide election in Texas.
People backed Republican governor after governor, senator after senator, attorney-general after attorney-general. Until Tuesday night, that is.
“Don’t wake me up. I’m dreaming. Don’t wake me up,” Van Jones, a political commentator who worked as an advisor in the Obama White House, told CNN after seeing the midterm results in Texas.
He took the analysis beyond the Lone Star state, declaring: “This is a new country. We’re in a new country.”
There were wild celebrations at Talarico HQ as the results rolled in. (Reuters: Mike Fresh)
Polls suggested the US midterm election results would be bad for Donald Trump’s Republicans (also known as the GOP), but what transpired this week was surely beyond the Democrats wildest dreams.
People inside the party have long talked about turning Texas “purple” (making it more competitive in elections) and were cautiously optimistic of claiming an historic, and narrow victory this week, so long as everything went their way.
In the end, it was not even close. With most ballots counted, Mr Talarico is 12 points ahead of his Republican rival Ken Paxton.
“This is a win the size of Texas,” the Democrat told supporters at his victory party, to wild cheers.
“Now we have a mandate the size of Texas. This election was about chasing a vision of what this state can be.”
The Democrats were up against more than history. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and on-again, off-again friend of the president, tipped about $US160 million ($229 million) into Paxton’s campaign.
Mr Musk has moved part of his business empire to Texas, where tax laws are more favourable than many parts of the US.
While it’s true that midterm elections in the US almost always deliver a backlash against the sitting president’s party, analysts say Tuesday’s results go much further than that.
Many consider Texas the epicentre of this political earthquake.
“It’s going to be almost impossible to win this state back. I blame it on our leadership,” Republican Don Huffines, the state’s top financial official, said during his election night party.
The GOP lost control of both the House and the Senate. That’s something that has happened to the president of the day only four times previously since World War II.
As part of the blue wave in Texas, a Democrat governor was also elected for the first time since 1990. Gina Hinojosa defeated three-term Republican Greg Abbott.
In some ways Ms Hinojosa, a Latina woman, embodies the shift that happened in the state.
At the 2024 presidential election, data showed significant support among America’s Latino community for Mr Trump. But the president’s immigration crackdown and policy of mass deportations over the past two years has changed that.
Speaking on CNN, Democratic analyst Jones pointed out people may have voted to “close the border” when they sent Mr Trump back to the White House.
“But they didn’t vote for nannies to be thrown on the ground,” he said.
“They didn’t vote for babies to be ripped away from their mothers. And the Latino community said no.”
Democrats James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa on the campaign trail. (Supplied: Talarico campaign)
During her election night party, Ms Hinojosa honoured her heritage.
“No te dejes,” she told the crowd, a Spanish phrase which translates to “don’t let yourself be pushed around”.
“A lot of Latinas in Texas grew up hearing those same words from their own mothers, their own abuelas,” Ms Hinojosa said.
“This year we lived them, and we changed this state. And this win belongs to you and to them.”
US politics is looking and sounding different after the midterms.
On top of Ms Hinojosa’s win, voters in Georgia elected the country’s first Black woman governor, Keisha Lance Bottoms (another Democrat).
Indeed, women were elected in record numbers on Tuesday evening and a total of 17 female governors will be in office from January — the highest number ever.
In Michigan, meanwhile, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed will be America’s first Muslim senator, after he beat his Republican rival.
James Talarico is well-known in the Texas Capitol, but soon he will be heading to Washington DC. (Reuters: Kaylee Greenlee)
The stunning Senate flip in Texas was not the only one around the country.
Megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Kansas in almost a century.
South Carolina sent a Democrat senator to Washington DC for the first time since the 1990s.
North Carolina, Maine, Iowa and Ohio’s Senate seats, which were all held by the GOP, changed hands.
There could be more Republican losses, too, as counting continues to try and split close races in deep red Alaska and Mississippi.
In the House, meanwhile, the controversial redrawing of multiple districts the country over (something known as gerrymandering) in favour of Republicans failed to deliver the party an advantage.
Many of the GOP candidates Donald Trump backed (like Paxton and Darline Graham in South Carolina) performed the worst.
Veteran Texas senator John Cornyn had been keen to run again for the seat he was first elected to in 2002.
However, he drew the president’s ire for speaking out against some White House policies. While he did criticise Trump at times, he almost always voted with Republicans in the Senate.
Mr Trump endorsed Mr Paxton in the Texas primaries.
Although the latter was considered an experienced political operative, he was weighed down by multiple scandals.
At the Republican candidate’s official function in Dallas on Tuesday night, the bloodletting commenced: “I blame our president for this loss, 100 per cent,” one man told the ABC.
Ken Paxton leaves the stage in Dallas after his thumping midterms defeat. (Reuters: Callaghan O’Hare)
Many Americans first became aware of Mr Talarico when he went viral.
Last year, the schoolteacher-turned-state politician delivered a speech about Republicans’ push to force Texas schools to display the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.
Mr Talarico, who is also a Presbyterian seminarian, called the proposal “idolatrous” and “un-Christian”.
“A religion that has to force people to put up a poster to prove its legitimacy is a dead religion,” he said in the speech, clips of which have now been viewed millions of times.
The declaration caught the eye of uber-popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who invited Mr Talarico onto his show to explain why a man of the church would adopt such a stance.
It was published in July last year and garnered massive attention.
At one point in the two-and-a-half-hour interview, Rogan told Talarico: “You need to run for president.”
James Talarico’s win bucked almost four decades of history this week. (Reuters: Mike Fresh)
Mr Talarico’s star rose rapidly after that. He won a primary battle against the firebrand Democrat congresswoman Jasmine Crockett to run for the Texas Senate slot.
An interview with the comedian Stephen Colbert, which was yanked from the airwaves under a rarely enforced “equal time” rule, fuelled a narrative that powerful interests were trying to “silence” the young Texan. Donations started to pour in and never stopped.
Though Mr Paxton was backed by huge money, Mr Talarico vastly outraised his opponent on a personal level.
In describing that financial battle, and his wider bid to turn Texas blue, the Democratic candidate used a biblical example at his victory party: David and Goliath.
“David wasn’t as big or as strong as Goliath,” Talarico told his victory party on Tuesday.
“He didn’t have as many weapons. But he had hope, he had faith, and he had a slingshot.
“You were my slingshot. The people of Texas were my slingshot.”
Source: www.abc.net.au
