James Talarico

James Talarico has become one of the Democratic Party's most-discussed new faces: a former middle-school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian who has served in the Texas House since 2018 and built a national following by talking about faith and politics in plain moral language. That profile gives him reach beyond his party's usual Texas coalition, and he beat Representative Jasmine Crockett in the March primary. He now faces Attorney General Ken Paxton, who ousted Senator John Cornyn in a May runoff, in a contest that pits two very different Texas reputations against each other. The discount is history and résumé: no Democrat has won a Texas Senate race since 1988, and a state-House record is thin for statewide office. An absence of about nine days from the trail around the start of October, which his campaign attributed to the flu, drew Republican taunts before he returned. His floor rests on an energized, broad coalition; the ceiling depends on whether November makes him the Democrat who ends Texas's long statewide drought.