James Talarico wins Texas 2026 Senate election, flipping seat for Democrats

 Democrat James Talarico will defeat Republican Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race, CBS News projects, marking a major flip for Democrats that they have long sought in the Lone Star State. 

Talarico, 37, is a former teacher and Presbyterian seminarian who identifies himself as a progressive Christian and ran on fighting corruption and lowering costs. He faced off against Paxton, the state’s attorney general, in a closely watched Senate contest as Democrats saw their first real opportunity for a Senate victory in Texas for the first time since 1988.

Paxton, 63, defeated Sen. John Cornyn in a runoff for the GOP nomination, ousting the incumbent senator who has represented Texas since 2002 with the support of a last-minute endorsement from President Trump. After the primary, Democrats saw their chances improve, thanks to Paxton’s history of personal controversies and his more conservative positions, as many Republicans lamented that they would have to spend millions to keep the seat in Texas. By mid-October, spending in the race had already topped half a billion dollars, making it the most expensive in the state’s history.

The Texas attorney general was impeached by the state House in 2023 on accusations of bribery, obstruction of justice and abuse of the public trust. He was later acquitted by the state Senate. During the campaign, amid messy divorce proceedings, additional reporting emerged, including that he spent New Year’s Eve in 2024 at a Dubai party with two U.S. fugitives and a woman who was not his wife. The Paxton campaign decried the reporting, without denying it, while saying he had been politically persecuted. 

Paxton, and the GOP more broadly, took aim at Talarico, painting him as too extreme for Texas while pointing to previous comments he made on issues like veganism and gender, some of which Talarico has said “missed the mark” and even called “cringey” later. When Talarico was away from the campaign trail for more than a week last month with what he described as a bad case of the flu, Republicans scrutinized his whereabouts, spurring conspiracies. But the attention appeared to fizzle after Talarico’s campaign shared security camera footage that appeared to show Talarico at his home in Texas during his absence from the trail.

With Talarico’s projected victory, Democrats clinch a key win as they aim to take control of the Senate.