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Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Texas two-step: Why the state's primary matters so much

On Tuesday night, two major standoffs will take place in Texas that carry broad implications for the midterm elections in November.

On the surface, a Texas race for the U.S. Senate should be easy pickings for Republicans. President Donald Trump won the state three times. Democrats have not won a Senate race in Texas since 1988.

But Trump’s approval is falling across the country, and that has even spread to the reliably crimson Lone Star state, where a poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas found that 49 percent of Texans disapprove of Trump.

So, today’s contentious Republican Primary — which pits incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a vestige of the conservative establishment, against the state’s scandal-ridden ultra-MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton — has left Democrats feeling like they have a real chance to capitalize on the chaos, flip the seat and ultimately win back a Senate majority, which currently stands 53-47 in favor of Republicans.

And that glimmer of hope has triggered its own contentious race on the other side of the aisle between two very different types of Democrats, pitching two very different messages to win over voters.

It has turned the Texas Senate primary race into one of the most expensive primaries in U.S. history, with more than $128 million spent.

Cornyn and his allies alone have spent $71 million, while Democratic state representative James Talarico has spent $24.3 million, living up to that old adage that everything is bigger in the state.

Here’s a breakdown of the dynamics at play Tuesday, brisket and tortillas not included.

Read more here:

By Eric Garcia

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Daily briefing

From left, Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39; Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42; Sgt. Declan Coady, 20; and Capt. Cody Khork, 35, are the first named American casualties of the US assault in Iran (Department of Defense)

Pentagon identifies first US troops killed in Iran war after Kuwait drone strike

The Department of Defense has identified four of the six American service members killed in an Iranian drone strike, marking the first U.S. casualties of the conflict. Alex Woodward has more.

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