The catalog of unrequited hopes and hearts is a protracted one.
Captain Ahab went mad in his vengeful seek for “Moby Dick.” Jay Gatsby’s ostentatious fortune failed to win the love of Daisy Buchanan. Charlie Brown by no means kicked the soccer.
Then there’s Texas, the land of broken Democratic dreams.
It’s been half a century for the reason that get together carried Texas in a presidential election. The final time Democrats gained a statewide workplace, again in 1994, “The Lion King” was smashing field workplace information, Boyz II Males dominated the radio and the World Extensive Internet was about to alter every part.
As Texas grew more and more Republican, and politically past attain, Democrats insisted each election yr was the one after they’d finish their futility and take again energy in both Washington, D.C., or Austin, the state capital.
It by no means occurred.
However is that this, lastly, the yr?
With Ken Paxton stomping incumbent John Cornyn on Tuesday in a fierce and astronomically costly U.S. Senate major, many Democrats consider so — and even impartial observers agree they’ve been handed their finest shot at resurrection in a very good whereas.
“Paxton goes to be a a lot harder man [for Republicans] to haul over the end line 5 months from now versus Cornyn, who by no means misplaced an election till this one,” stated Richard Murray, an emeritus political science professor on the College of Houston, who spent many years surveying Texas voters. “We’re taking a look at a really costly, hard-fought race.”
Paxton, Texas’ three-term lawyer common, is a singularly flawed candidate. Indicted, impeached, accused by his ex-wife of adultery, the GOP nominee is, to place it mildly, “an ethically challenged particular person,” because the famously understated (and concerned) Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins put it.
However Paxton was the choice of President Donald Trump — he, too, of impeachment, indictment and adulterous infamy — and that settled that.
Trump described Cornyn, a four-term senator and former justice of the Texas Supreme Court docket, as a “good man” however insufficiently supportive when “instances had been powerful.” Amongst these events of abandonment, Cornyn voted to certify the incontrovertible result of the 2020 presidential election, thwarting Trump’s bid to illegally stay in office.
The Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate is James Talarico, 37, a state consultant from Austin and a Presbyterian seminarian and former public schoolteacher who’s constructed a nationwide following together with his articulate and scriptural takedown of Republican foes. Think about Beto O’Rourke with a clerical collar and capability to mint cash.
In 2018, O’Rourke got here from seemingly nowhere and nearly upset Republican Ted Cruz within the closest Texas Senate race in many years. Earlier than that it was the filibustering Wendy Davis who fired up Democratic imaginations nationwide. She commandeered the ground of the state Senate to briefly block anti-abortion laws — That is the yr! — earlier than falling effectively brief in a 2014 bid for governor.
The important thing distinction this time, with all due credit score to Talarico and his prodigious fundraising, is his damaged-goods opponent. Usually, all it takes to win in Texas is a Republican ‘R’ beside a candidate’s title. However polling suggests a not-insignificant variety of GOP voters may have a tough time supporting Paxton, which doesn’t essentially imply they’ll again Talarico. They might merely not vote within the Senate race, which may very well be almost as expensive.
(The counterargument is that Paxton, a martyred hero to the MAGA motion, may increase turnout among the many get together base at a time Trump is leaking support inside the institution GOP.)
Both means, the president’s me-first political self-indulgence is not making things any easier for his fellow Republicans as they combat to hold on to manage of the Home and Senate in November.
In the 2022 midterm election, Trump boosted a batch of unappealing misfits — their sole attribute being their fealty to him — with poor outcomes. Republicans misplaced eminently winnable Senate contests in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and, with it, their probability at management of the chamber.
Even when Paxton prevails in November, Trump’s endorsement may show fairly expensive to the GOP, and never simply within the figurative sense.
Democrats want a acquire of 4 seats to flip the Senate. To take action, they have to efficiently defend seats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire after which decide up a minimum of 4 others from a menu that features Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and, now, Texas.
It’s a substantial attain. However Democratic chances look a lot better than they did only a few months in the past, earlier than Trump mired the country in an Iranian quagmire and the price of gas and just about everything else started to sail by way of the ceiling.
Holding on to Cornyn’s seat will find yourself costing Republicans a kingly sum — cash that “can’t be spent in two locations on the similar time,” as Matt Mackowiak, a longtime Texas GOP strategist and adviser to Cornyn’s marketing campaign, famous. “It may go both to Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia, Iowa, Alaska. Or it might probably go right here to Texas, which is extraordinarily costly.”
Odds are towards Talarico and Democrats successful the Senate race in November, as a result of Texas stays, essentially, a Republican and conservative-leaning state. Paxton could win for that cause and that cause alone.
“That is nearly as good an surroundings as Democrats are going to get realistically,” stated Jim Henson, head of the Texas Politics Undertaking on the College of Texas in Austin, who’s witnessed many highly touted Democrats fail in a blaze of unwarranted hype. “However once you begin doing the maths, it’s a little bit bit laborious to see all of it including up.”
Which isn’t to say it can’t occur.
Reality, because the saying goes, may be stranger than “Moby Dick” or some other fiction.
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