Texas Senate candidate James Talarico addresses supporters on primary election night in Austin, Texas. Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
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Democratic state Rep. James Talarico has won the U.S. Senate race in Texas, according to a race call from the Associated Press. Talarico's victory breaks the Republican Party's three-decade monopoly on statewide offices in Texas.
Talarico defeated Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a close ally of President Trump, in one of the most closely watched and expensive races this year.
Talarico's victory is a major blow for Republicans and Trump himself. Trump and his allies poured millions of dollars into the race, and Trump often attacked Talarico in campaign rallies across the U.S., using him as a national stand-in for Democrats.
Paxton becomes the first Republican to lose a Texas Senate seat since 1990's.
Paxton, who had never lost a race since winning election to the Texas House of Representatives in 2002, defeated incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in a primary runoff election to capture the Republican nomination. He was helped in securing that victory by a last-minute endorsement from Trump.
But with the president's popularity having dipped underwater, Trump's support may have acted as a drag on Paxton. The attorney general had expressed concern about this after Trump campaigned for Paxton at the Republicans' midterm convention in Dallas in September.
Talarico, a four-term state lawmaker from Austin, tied or led Paxton in most statewide polls starting in midsummer. He led Paxton by a wide margin in fundraising for most of this year, although conservative super PACs allied to the attorney general offset that advantage with heavy spending on advertising in the final two months of the campaign.
Talarico first rose to prominence in the state in 2018 by flipping a heavily Republican state House district, which had voted for Donald Trump for president two years earlier. A former San Antonio middle school teacher and a Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico focused his campaign on education and staunchly opposed efforts to inject religion into the public school system. He was one of the most vocal opponents of a law requiring the display of an explicitly Protestant translation of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms, which is now subject to multiple federal lawsuits.
Talarico garnered national attention through an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in July 2025, followed by a February 2026 interview for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert . CBS declined to broadcast the latter interview, apparently under pressure from the Trump administration through the Federal Communications Commission, but it subsequently went viral on YouTube. That not only built his national name recognition but also transformed him into a fundraising juggernaut.
Throughout the campaign, Paxton also battled negative perceptions of his record related to past scandals involving his alleged corruption in office — which, in 2023, led to his impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives, and of which he was subsequently acquitted by the Texas Senate — as well as his ongoing divorce from state Sen. Angela Paxton over his alleged marital infidelities.
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