Democrat James Talarico has won the Senate race in Texas, facing off more than $200m in opposition spending and creating one of the biggest upsets for Republicans in the midterms.
Talarico’s stunning victory over Republican Ken Paxton marks the first time a Democrat has won a US Senate seat in Texas since 1988 – and helped solidify Democrats taking control of the US Congress in a wave of wins across America.
Talarico, a former schoolteacher, was little-known until last year. He made the rising cost of living under Republican leadership a central theme of his run.
Paxton sought to portray Talarico’s views as too progressive for the state, and campaigned alongside Trump on several occasions.
In a further, historic victory for Democrats in the state, Gina Hinojosa will become the first Latina governor in Texas, ousting Republican incumbent Greg Abbott – one of the nation’s highest profile governors and a long-standing Trump supporter.
At a watch party in Austin, the state’s capital, there were jubilant scenes among Talarico supporters as giant television screens projected him the winner on Tuesday night.
Supporters hugged, they kissed, and they drank to a reality that many say they dared not believe would come true.
Emerging on stage to rapturous applause at his official watch party at a nearby performing arts theatre, Talarico pronounced: “We just took back Texas.”
“We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas,” he continued, referring to his win over Paxton whose campaign was backed by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.
He invoked religious themes that have grown familiar to his campaign, comparing his unlikely odds to the biblical story of David and Goliath.
“This win, this win is for every Texan who’s ever wondered if anyone is listening,” he said. “I hear you, we hear you. And tonight the world hears you.”
For decades, the idea of a Democrat winning a statewide race had felt like a pipe dream for Texas liberals.
As the nation’s second most populous state, Texas has been a bastion of conservatism, routinely rolling out Republican policies that are later employed elsewhere.
But throughout the campaign, polls suggested state legislator Talarico was breaking through with voters, energising a Texas Democratic base desperate for new leadership.
Spending in the race skyrocketed, and it quickly grew to become the most expensive US Senate race in history, with more than half a billion dollars spent.
Billionaire Elon Musk poured in $158m (£117m) to a super PAC supporting Paxton’s campaign – a point that Talarico used in attacks on Paxton’s campaign.
Speaking to CBS on Wednesday morning after his victory, Talarico said Musk “wanted a senator who was going to do his bidding, who was going to sell off Texas land to his data centers, who was going to give [away] our Texas water”.
“I think last night the people of Texas delivered a crystal clear message to the world’s first trillionaire: Texas is not for sale,” he said.
Then two members of the Bush family, the Republican political dynasty that counts Texas as its political launchpad, backed Talarico in a stunning move foreshadowing Paxton’s doom.
George Washington University political science professor Quardricos Driskell told the BBC that Paxton was a major part of Republicans’ downfall, calling him an “objectively terrible candidate”.
He said the win in Texas by Talarico, combined with another upset on Tuesday that ousted the state’s Republican governor Greg Abbott, was “absolutely historic”. Abbott’s loss marked the first time a Democrat had won a race for governor in the state since the 1990s.
“This wasn’t just a tsunami, not just a referendum, but this was a bloodbath,” Driskell said about Democrats gains in the Lone Star State. “A clear distinction that the country wants to go in a different direction”.
Talarico defeated a well-known opponent, Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, in the Democratic primary. Then continued to maintain good polling numbers despite an onslaught of negative adverts, including attacks on past comments where he supported transgender people.
Throughout his campaign, he frequently leaned into his religious upbringing – as the grandson of a Southern Baptist preacher who spent time in a seminary – sprinkling his stump speeches with biblical references.
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Paxton had been beleaguered by a number of political scandals, including his impeachment by his own party in 2023 on corruption accusations, before he was later acquitted by the state’s Senate.
He was also indicted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission on federal fraud charges, but they were later dismissed.
Trump made multiple stops in Texas to beef up support for Paxton and other Republicans – including in reliably-Republican spots, signalling how concerned party leadership was about turnout.
Voters have been frustrated with high consumer costs, including the price of petrol, and largely blame Trump’s tariff policies and the Iran war.
Hispanic voters and those who live along the southern US border have also taken issue with Trump’s immigration policies.
Despite border crossings plummeting under Trump – something that had been popular with Texas voters – polls suggested Trump’s support among Hispanics, who make up a third of the state’s population, had ebbed significantly.
Surveys taken since late summer indicated a majority of Texan Hispanic voters – many of whom switched to Trump to help him win the White House in 2024 – now disapproved of the president. They also suggested that Hispanic voters were favouring Democrats over Republicans by a significant margin.
Many Texas Hispanics who spoke to the BBC before the election pointed to Trump’s immigration crackdown as the reasoning behind their change of heart. They pointed to aggressive measures that led to citizens being detained and non-violent offenders being rounded up indiscriminately.
Reacting to the result on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO [Republican in name only] in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost.”
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